Mairead Maguire

Mairead Maguire
Mairead Maguire, July 2009
Born	Mairead Corrigan (1944-01-27) 27 January 1944 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Other names	Mairead Corrigan Maguire
Alma mater	Irish School of Ecumenics
Organisation(s)	The Peace People, The Nobel Women's Initiative
Known for	International social activist
Spouse(s)	Jackie Maguire (m. 1981–present)
Children	2 (5)
Relatives	Anne Maguire (sister)
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize (1976) Norwegian People's Peace Prize (1976) Carl von Ossietzky Medal (1976) Pacem in Terris (1990)

Mairead Maguire (born 27 January 1944), also known as Mairead Corrigan Maguire and formerly as Mairéad Corrigan, is an Irish peace activist. She co-founded, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, the Community of Peace People, an organisation dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Maguire and Williams were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize. Maguire has also won several other awards.

In recent years, she has become an active critic of the Israeli government's policy towards Palestine and the Palestinian people. To draw attention in a supposedly peaceful and nonviolent way to this policy, in particular to the land and naval blockade of Gaza, in June 2010 Maguire went on board the "aid ship", the MV Rachel Corrie. The ship was the remaining member of an international flotilla bound for the Gazan coastline, but finally was denied to go there.

Early life (1944–1976)

Maguire was born into a Roman Catholic community in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the second of seven children – five sisters and two brothers. Her parents were Andrew and Margaret Corrigan. She attended St. Vincent's Primary School, a private Catholic school, until the age of 14, at which time her family could no longer pay for her schooling. After working for a time as a babysitter at a Catholic community center, she was able to save enough money to enroll in a year of business classes at Miss Gordon's Commercial College, which led her at the age of 16 to a job as an accounting clerk with a local factory. She volunteered regularly with the Legion of Mary, spending her evenings and weekends working with children and visiting interns at Long Kesh prison. When she was 21 she began working as a secretary for the Guinness brewery, where she remained employed until December 1976.

Northern Ireland peace movement (1976–1980)

Maguire became active with the Northern Ireland peace movement after three children of her sister, Anne Maguire, were run over and killed by a car driven by Danny Lennon, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) operator who had been fatally shot by British troops while trying to make a getaway. Danny Lennon had been released from prison in April 1976 after serving three years for suspected involvement in the PIRA. On 10 August, Lennon and comrade John Chillingworth were transporting an Armalite rifle through Andersonstown, Belfast, when British troops, claiming to have seen a rifle pointed at them, opened fire on the vehicle, instantly killing Lennon and critically wounding Chillingworth. The car Lennon drove went out of control and mounted a sidewalk on Finaghy Road North, colliding with Anne Maguire and three of her children who were out shopping. Joanne (8) and Andrew (6 weeks) died at the scene; John Maguire (2) succumbed to his injuries at a hospital the following day.

Betty Williams, a resident of Andersonstown who happened to be driving by, claimed to have witnessed the tragedy and accused the IRA of firing at the British patrol and provoking the incident. In the days that followed she began gathering signatures for a peace petition from Protestants and Catholics and was able to assemble some 200 women to march for peace in Belfast. The march passed near the home of Mairead Maguire (then Mairead Corrigan) and, joining it, she and Williams thus became "the joint leaders of a virtually spontaneous mass movement."

The next march, whose destination was the burial sites of the three Maguire children, brought 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women together. The marchers, including Maguire and Williams, were physically attacked by PIRA members. By the end of the month Maguire and Williams had brought 35,000 people onto the streets of Belfast petitioning for peace between the republican and loyalist factions. Initially adopting the name "Women for Peace," the movement changed its name to the gender-neutral "Community of Peace People," or simply "Peace People," when Irish Press correspondent Ciaran McKeown joined. In contrast with the prevailing climate at the time, Maguire was convinced that the most effective way to end the violence was not violence but re-education. She received the Nobel Peace Prize with Betty Williams in 1977 (the prize for 1976) for their efforts. 32 at the time, she is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate to date.

After the Nobel Prize (1980–present)

Though Betty Williams resigned from the Peace People in 1980, Maguire has continued her involvement in the organisation to this day. It has since taken on a more global agenda, addressing an array of social and political issues from around the world.

Jackie and Mairead Maguire

In January 1980, after a prolonged battle with depression over the loss of her children in the 1976 Finaghy Road incident, Mairead Maguire's sister Anne finally committed suicide by slashing her wrists and throat. A year and a half later, in September 1981, Mairead married Jackie Maguire, who was her late sister's widower. She has three stepchildren and two of her own, John Francis (b. 1982) and Luke (b. 1984).

In 1981 Maguire co-founded the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a nonsectarian organisation dedicated to defending human rights.

She is a member of the pro-life group Consistent Life Ethic, which is against abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia.

Maguire has been involved in a number of campaigns on behalf of political prisoners around the world. In 1993 Maguire and six other Nobel Peace Prize laureates tried unsuccessfully to enter Myanmar from Thailand to protest the protracted detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She was a first signatory on a 2008 petition calling for Turkey to end its torture of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. In October 2010, she signed a petition calling for China to release Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo from house arrest.

Maguire was selected in 2003 to serve on the honorary board of the International Coalition for the Decade, a coalition of national and international groups, presided over by Christian Renoux, whose aim is to promote the United Nations' 1998 vision of the first decade of the twenty-first century as the International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World.

In 2006, Maguire was one of the founders of the Nobel Women's Initiative along with fellow Peace Prize laureates Betty Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams, and Rigoberta Menchu Tum. The Initiative describes itself as six women representing North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa who decided to bring together their "extraordinary experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality" and "to help strengthen work being done in support of women's rights around the world."

United States

Mairead Maguire is an outspoken critic of U.S. and British policy in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has also been personally critical of U.S. President Barack Obama’s leadership. Her activism in the U.S. has occasionally brought her into confrontations with the law.

Iraq and Afghanistan

Following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 661, imposing various economic sanctions on Iraq in order to compel it to withdraw its troops from Kuwait. In January 1991, after Iraq’s refusal to comply with Resolution 678, the United States and Britain led a coalition of thirty-four nations to war, with the goal of expelling Iraq’s troops from Kuwait and liberating it by force. Though the Gulf War officially ended in March 1991, the economic sanctions continued until May 2003 and are believed to have resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Mairead Maguire voiced strong opposition to the U.N. sanctions, calling them "unjust and inhuman," "a new kind of bomb," and "even more cruel than weapons." During a visit to Baghdad with Argentinian colleague Adolfo Perez Esquivel in March 1999, Maguire urged then-U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to end the bombing of Iraq and to allow for the U.N. sanctions to be lifted. "I have seen children dying with their mothers next to them and not being able to do anything," Maguire said. "They are not soldiers."

In the aftermath of al-Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. in September 2001, as it became clear that the U.S. would retaliate and deploy troops in Afghanistan, Maguire campaigned against the impending war. In India she claimed to have marched with "hundreds of thousands of Indian people walking for peace." In New York, Maguire was reported to have marched with 10,000 protesters, including families of 9/11 victims, as U.S. war planes were already en route to strike Taliban targets in Afghanistan.

In the period leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mairead Maguire campaigned vigorously against the anticipated hostilities. Speaking at the 23rd War Resisters' International Conference in Dublin, Ireland in August 2002, Maguire called on the Irish government to oppose the Iraq War "in every European and world forum of which they are a part." On 17 March 2003, St. Patrick's Day, Maguire protested the war outside the United Nations Headquarters with, among other activists, Frida Berrigan. On 19 March, Maguire addressed an audience of 300 people in a chapel at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. "Armies with all their advanced weapons of mass destruction are facing the Iraqi people who have nothing," she told the crowd. "In anybody's language, it's not fair." Around this time, Maguire held a 30-day vigil and began a 40-day liquid fast outside the White House, joined by members of Pax Christi USA and Christian church leaders. As the war got under way in the days that followed, Maguire described the invasion as an "ongoing and shameful slaughter." "Daily we sit, facing Mecca in solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters in Iraq, and we ask Allah for forgiveness," she said in a statement to the press on 31 March. Maguire would later remark that the media in the U.S. distorted news from Iraq and that the Iraq War was carried out in pursuit of American "economic and military interests." In February 2006 she expressed her belief that George W. Bush and Tony Blair "should be made accountable for illegally taking the world to war and for war crimes against humanity."

Criticism of President Barack Obama

Maguire expressed disappointment with the choice of U.S. President Barack Obama as winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. "They say this is for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples," she said, "and yet he continues the policy of militarism and occupation of Afghanistan, instead of dialogue and negotiations with all the parties to the conflict. [...] Giving this award to the leader of the most militarised country in the world, which has taken the human family against its will to war, will rightly be seen by many people around the world as a reward for his country’s aggression and domination."

After declining to meet with the Dalai Lama during his visit to the U.S. in 2008, citing conflicting travel schedules, Obama shirked a visit with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader again in 2009. Maguire condemned what she considered Obama's deliberate refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama, calling it "horrifying."

Speaking at the Carl von Ossietzky Medal Award Ceremony in Berlin in December 2010, Maguire imputed criminal accountability to President Obama for violation of international law. "When President Obama says he wants to see a world without nuclear weapons and says, in respect of Iran and their alleged nuclear weapons ambitions, that 'all option [sic] are on the table,' this is clearly a threat to use nuclear weapons, clearly a criminal threat against Iran, under the world court advisory opinion. The Nuremberg Charter of August 8, 1945 says the threat or use of nuclear weapons is criminal, so officials in all nine nuclear weapons states who maintain and use nuclear deterrence as a threat are committing crimes and breaking international law."

Confrontations with the law

Mairead Maguire was twice arrested in the United States. On 17 March 2003, Maguire was arrested outside the United Nations compound in New York City during a protest against the Iraq War. Later that month, on 27 March, she was one of 65 anti-war protesters briefly taken into custody by police after penetrating a security barricade near the White House.

In May 2009, following a visit to Guatemala, immigration authorities at the Houston Airport in Texas detained Maguire for a number of hours, during which time she was questioned, fingerprinted and photographed, and consequently missed her connection flight to Northern Ireland. "They insisted I must tick the box in the Immigration form admitting to criminal activities," she explained. In late July that same year, Maguire was again detained by immigration authorities, this time at the Dulles International Airport in Virginia, on her way from Ireland to New Mexico to meet with colleague Jody Williams. As in May, the delay resulted in Maguire missing her connection flight and she was forced to seek overnight accommodations in Washington.

Israel

Mairead Maguire first visited Israel at age 40. She came then as part of an interfaith initiative seeking forgiveness from Jews for years of persecution by Christians in Jesus' name. Her second visit was in June 2000, this time in response to invitations from Rabbis for Human Rights and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. The two groups had taken upon themselves to defend Ahmed Shamasneh in an Israeli military court against charges of illegally constructing his home in the West Bank town of Qatanna, and Maguire came to observe the court proceedings and support the Shamasneh family.

Maguire has at times been fiercely critical of the State of Israel, even calling for its membership in the United Nations to be revoked or suspended. She has accused the Israeli government of "carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians...in east Jerusalem" and supports boycott and divestment initiatives against Israel. Concomitantly, Maguire has also said that she loves Israel and that "to live in Israel for Jewish people, is to live in fear of suicide bombs and Kassam rockets."

Mordechai Vanunu advocacy

Mairead Maguire has been a vocal supporter of Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear defence program to the British press in 1986 and subsequently served 18 years in prison for treason. Maguire flew to Israel in April 2004 to greet Vanunu upon his release and has since flown to meet with him in Israel numerous times.

Maguire has described as "draconian" the terms of Vanunu's parole – including a special order prohibiting contact with foreign journalists and a refusal to allow him to leave Israel – and said he "remains a virtual prisoner." In an open letter addressed to the Israeli people in July 2010, after Vanunu was reincarcerated for violating the terms of his parole, Maguire urged Jews in Israel to petition their government for Vanunu's release and freedom. She praised Vanunu as "a man of peace," "a great visionary," "a true Gandhian spirit," and compared his actions to those of Alfred Nobel.

Remarks in reference to the Holocaust

At a joint press conference with Mordechai Vanunu in Jerusalem in December 2004, Maguire compared Israel's nuclear weapons to the Nazi gas chambers in Auschwitz. "When I think about nuclear weapons, I've been to Auschwitz concentration camp." She added, "Nuclear weapons are only gas chambers perfected ... and for a people who already know what gas chambers are, how can you even think of building perfect gas chambers."

In January 2006, close to Holocaust Memorial Day, Maguire asked that Mordechai Vanunu be remembered together with the Jews that perished in the Holocaust. "As we, with sorrow and sadness, remember the Holocaust Victims, we remember too those individuals of conscience who refused to be silenced in the face of danger and paid with their freedom and lives in defending their Jewish brothers and sisters, and we remember our brother Mordechai Vanunu – the lonely Israeli prisoner in his own country, who refused to be silent."

In a speech delivered in February 2006 before the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, California, Maguire again invoked a comparison of Israel to the Nazis. "Last April some of us protested at Dimona Nuclear Plant, in Israel, calling for it to be open to UN Inspection, and bombs to be destroyed. Israeli Jets flew overhead, and a train passed into the Dimona Nuclear site. This brought back to me vivid memories of my visit to Auschwitz concentration camp, with its rail tracks, trains, destruction and death."

Maguire firmly denied comparing Israel to Nazi Germany in an interview with Tal Schneider of Lady Globes in November 2010. "I have for years been speaking out against nuclear weapons. I am actively opposed to nuclear weapons in Britain, in the United States, in Israel, in any any country, because nuclear weapons are the ultimate destruction of humankind. But I have never said that Israel is like Nazi Germany, and I don't know why I am quoted like that in Israel. I also never compared Gaza to an extermination camp. I visited the death camps in Austria, with Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, and I think it is terrible that people did not try to stop the genocide of the Jewish people."

Palestinian activism

On 20 April 2007, Maguire participated in a protest against the construction of Israel's security fence outside the Arab settlement of Bil'in. Being that the protest was in a no-access military zone, Israeli forces used tear-gas grenades and rubber-coated bullets in an effort to disperse the protesters, while the protesters hurled rocks at Israel's troops, injuring two Border Guard policemen. One rubber bullet hit Maguire in the leg, whereupon she was transferred to an Israeli hospital for treatment. She was also reported to have inhaled large quantities of tear gas.

In October 2008, Maguire arrived in Gaza aboard the SS Dignity. Although Israel had insisted that the yacht would not be permitted to approach Gaza, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ultimately capitulated and allowed the ship to sail to its destination without incident. During her stay in Gaza, Maguire met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. She was photographed accepting an honorary golden plate depicting the Palestinian flag draped over all of Israel and the disputed territories.

In March 2009 Mairead Maguire joined a campaign for the immediate and unconditional removal of Hamas from the European Union list of proscribed terrorist organisations.

Huwaida Arraf and Maguire, 2009

On 30 June 2009, Maguire was taken into custody by the Israeli military along with twenty others, including former U.S. Congress member Cynthia McKinney. She was on board a small ferry, the MV Spirit of Humanity (formerly the Arion), said to be carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, when Israel intercepted the vessel off the coast of Gaza. From an Israeli prison, she gave a lengthy interview with Democracy Now! using her cell phone, and was deported on 7 July 2009 to Dublin.

In May–June 2010, Maguire was a passenger on board the MV Rachel Corrie, one of seven vessels that were part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists that attempted to bust the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip. In an interview with BBC Radio Ulster while still at sea, Maguire called the blockade an "inhumane, illegal siege." Having been delayed due to mechanical problems, the Rachel Corrie did not actually sail with the flotilla and only approached the Gazan coast several days after the main flotilla did. In contrast with the violence that characterised the arrival of the first six ships, Israel's takeover of the Rachel Corrie was met only with passive resistance. Israeli naval forces were even lowered a ladder by the passengers to assist their ascent onto the deck. After the incident, Maguire said she did not feel her life was in danger as the ship's captain, Derek Graham, had been in touch with the Israeli navy to assure them that there would be no violent resistance.

On 28 September 2010, Maguire landed in Israel as part of a delegation of the Nobel Women's Initiative. She was refused an entry visa by Israeli authorities, citing that she had twice in the past tried to run Israel's naval embargo of the Gaza Strip and that a 10-year deportation order was in effect against her. A legal team filed a petition against the order with the Central District Court on Maguire's behalf, but the court pronounced that the deportation order was valid. Maguire then appealed to Israel's Supreme Court. Initially, the Court proposed that Maguire be allowed to remain in the country for a few days on bail despite the deportation order; however, the state rejected the proposal, arguing that Maguire knew prior to her arrival she was barred from entering Israel and that her conduct amounted to taking the law into her own hands. A three-judge panel accepted the state's position and upheld the ruling of the Central District Court. At one point during the hearing, Maguire reportedly burst out and declared that Israel must stop "its apartheid policy and the siege on Gaza." One of the judges scolded her and rejoined, "This is no place for propaganda." Mairead Corrigan-Maguire was flown to the UK the following morning, 5 October 2010.

Personal philosophy and vision

Gandhi taught that nonviolence does not mean passivity. No. It is the most daring, creative, and courageous way of living, and it is the only hope for our world. Nonviolence is an active way of life which always rejects violence and killing, and instead applies the force of love and truth as a means to transform conflict and the root causes of conflict. Nonviolence demands creativity. It pursues dialogue, seeks reconciliation, listens to the truth in our opponents, rejects militarism, and allows God's spirit to transform us socially and politically.

— Mairead Maguire, Santa Clara University

Mairead Maguire is a proponent of the belief that violence is a disease that humans develop but are not born with. She believes humankind is moving away from a mindset of violence and war and evolving to a higher consciousness of nonviolence and love. Among the figures she considers spiritual prophets in this regard are Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Fr. John L. McKenzie, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Maguire rejects violence in all its forms. "As a pacifist I believe that violence is never justified, and there are always alternatives to force and threat of force. We must challenge the society that tells us there is no such alternative. In all areas of our lives we should adopt nonviolence, in our lifestyles, our education, our commerce, our defence, and our governance." Maguire has called for the abolition of all armies and the establishment of a multi-national community of unarmed peacekeepers in their stead.

Awards and honours

Maguire has received numerous awards and honours in recognition of her work. Yale University awarded Maguire an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1977. The College of New Rochelle followed suit in 1978, awarding her an honorary degree, as well. In 1998 Maguire received an honorary degree from the Roman Catholic Jesuit Regis University in Denver, Colorado. The University of Rhode Island awarded her an honorary degree in 2000. She was presented with the Science and Peace Gold Medal by the Albert Schweitzer International University in 2006, for meaningfully contributing to the spread of culture and the defence of world peace.

In 1990 she was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award, named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. The Davenport Catholic Interracial Council extolled Maguire for her peace efforts in Northern Ireland and for being "a global force against violence in the name of religion." Pacem in Terris is Latin for "Peace on Earth."

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation honoured Maguire with the Distinguished Peace Leadership Award in 1992, "for her moral leadership and steadfast commitment to social justice and nonviolence."

Criticism

Nobel Prize decision and Peace People movement

Referring to the decision to award Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize, journalist Michael Binyon of The Times commented, "The Nobel committee has made controversial awards before. Some have appeared to reward hope rather than achievement." He described as sadly "negligible" the two women's contribution to bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Alex Maskey of Sinn Fein charged that at the time of the Troubles, the Peace People movement was hijacked by the British government and used to turn public opinion against Irish republicanism. "For me and others, the Peace People and their good intentions were quickly exploited and absorbed into British state policy," Maskey opined.

Belfast correspondent for The Guardian Derek Brown wrote that Maguire and Betty Williams were "both formidably articulate and, in the best possible sense, utterly naive." He described their call for an end to violence in response to the will of the people as an "awesomely impractical demand."

In his extensive study of the Peace People movement, Rob Fairmichael found that the Peace People were seen by some as being "more anti-IRA than anti-UDA," i.e. less loyal to republican factions than to loyalist ones. "Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan were beaten up numerous times and at times the leaders were threatened by a hostile crowd," Fairmichael noted, as examples of forms that some of the extreme negative reactions took.

Prize money controversy

While most Nobel Prize laureates do keep their prize money, it is not uncommon for prize winners to donate prize money to scientific, cultural or humanitarian causes. Upon announcing their intention to keep their prize funds, Maguire and Williams were severely criticised. The move angered many people, including members of the Peace People, and fuelled unpleasant rumours about the two women. Rob Fairmichael writes of “gossip of fur coats” and concludes that the prize money controversy was perceived by the public, in the context of the Peace People’s eventual decline, as specifically problematic.

Jewish and Israeli reactions

In the wake of the 2009 Gaza flotilla, popular columnist Ben-Dror Yemini, of the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, observed that Maguire was obsessed with Israel. "There is a lunatic coalition that does not concern itself with the slaughtered in Sri Lanka or with the oppressed Tibetans. They see only the struggle against the Israeli Satan." He further charged that Maguire chose to identify with a population that elected an openly anti-semitic movement to lead it – one whose raison d'etre is the destruction of the Jewish state.

Deputy head of the Israeli foreign mission to Canada, Eliaz Luf, has argued that Maguire's activism plays into the hands of Hamas and other terrorist organisations in Gaza.

Chairman of the Canada-Israel Committee Pacific Region, Michael Elterman, warned that Maguire's actions, though probably motivated by good intentions of endeavouring to help the Palestinian people, have been promoting an agenda of hatred and anti-semitism.

In an October 2010 editorial, the Jerusalem Post called Maguire's comparison of Israel's nuclear weapons to the gas chambers of Auschwitz "outrageous." Maguire was accused of "undertaking actions that undermine Israel's ability to defend itself" and of trying "to exploit charges of a 'humanitarian crisis' in Gaza in order to empower Hamas terrorists."

However, Jewish and Israeli opinion is not all negative. Following the June 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was careful to distinguish between Mairead Maguire's nonviolent resistance aboard the Rachel Corrie, which he referred to as "a flotilla of peace activists – with whom we disagree, but whose right to a different opinion we respect," and the conduct of the activists aboard the other six vessels, which he described as "a flotilla of hate, organised by violent, terrorism-supporting extremists." Gideon Levy strongly defended Mairéad Maguire in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in October 2010, calling her "the victim of state terror" after Israel refused to allow her to enter the country and kept her detained for several days.

See also

• List of female Nobel laureates

External links

• Peace People
• Mairead Corrigan Maguire Peace People
• Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Peace Heroes
• Mairead Corrigan – Curriculum Vitae Nobel Prize
• Irish Nobel Prize winners The Best Question
• Nobel Women's Initiative