Richard Wilson

Human Rights activities

        It is always hard to understand when amd how an imortant interest in one's lfe first developed.   In the early 1930s everyone joked that the twin problems of the western world were the "Red Menace" and the "Yellow Peril".   Indeed the Wilson family's car, a yellow Invicta touring car was dubbed the Yellow Peril.   But Richard Wilson had no real understanding of this for several years.   That the undue fear of the "Red Menace" led to Naziism and the rise of Adolph Hitler soon became apparent.   At school from 1936 onwards Richard Wilson had many Jewish friends, half of whom were refugees from Germany.  who described to him their experiences and those of their families.    Indeed as he left home on his bicycle on Seoptember 1st 1939 he did not expect that there would be a Jew alive in Germany at the end of the war.   His best friend at St Paul's School was Klaus Roth, from Breslau, who about 1955 was awarded the Fields medal for his work in number theory.   Richard Wilson's first memories of color prejudice were somewhat later.  On the mid 1949s Fernando Henriques from the West Indies was elected President of the Oxford Union  He went for tea in Brighton to an elegant hotel with a white skinned student companion from South Africa.  "Excuse me sir" said the waiter to Fernando being all ready to deny service.    "Are you not an African?"    "No."  replied Fernando truthfully.   "But he is".   This story went the rounds and seeemd to mark the end of a color bar which upper class English hotels had created.   But then it became clear that the color bar was worse elsewhere.   A black American soldier in Cornwall was court martialled for raping a young girl in Cornwall and sentenced to death.   The whole country (England) was outraged because such a sentence would not have been given to a soldier with a white, or even yellow, skin.  It was Richard Wilson's  first year at Oxford and a group of students sent in a petition.  Fortunately the victim, and her mother, also appealed for clemency, and there was a unanimous appeal from the UK parliament.   Later Richard Wilson  got to know the electrical engineer at the Cambridge Elecron Accelerator, William (Bill) Jones with whom he co-authored a book 'Energy, Ecology and the Environment" and Bill  told him his many stories of discrimination and how he ovwercame them.  

        Although Richard Wilson has always been interested in helping the poor and disadvantaged, his specific involvement began about 1968 stimulated by Andrei Sakharov's famous article printed in the New York Times in mid July 1968: "Reflections on Peace, Progress and Intellectual Freedom".   Up until that time he had left reactions to the experts and those more senior.   Not being a member of the US National Academy of Sciences he brought Sakharov's article to the attention of many friends who were.  Not being a mmber of the Pugwash committee he brought it to the attention of his friend Professor Bernard Feld who was.   But  their reaction was slow and the occupation of Prague by the Soviet Army in mid Augst intervened.   Andrei Sakharov's brave stand told him that there are many times to just stand up and say "No!"  But Richard Wilson was inactve.  In 1969 while at a Fermilab summer study he protested about the behavior of the mayor of Aspen, owner of an esablishment called Hugo's, in jailing hitchhikers, forcing his resignation on the day after his letter to the newspaper was published. One Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell Mann, spontaneously remarked "Please try it on Brezhnev next". This challenge was accepted as an aim although it was a more difficult task in which he later became involved whenever the opportunity arose.   It was the combination of these two events that taught him to look for a special situation where his experience as a physicist gave him either especial understanding of a human rights issue or an unusual opportunity to bring the issue to the attention of the body politic. Many occasions have since arisen where a physicist's point of view is of especial interest.

        Richard Wilson was a founding member of "Scientists for Orlov and Sharansky" in 1974. We all knew of Yuri Orlov's fine work in accelerator physics.  Richard Wilson had met him in the Dubna meeting on high energy physics in 1964, and later in Yerevan in 1965.  Wilson organized other scientists to protest their incarceration.   His research grroup at FERMILAB (all the authors of publication 217 )  unanimously sent a telegram to Secretary Brezhnev within a day of their conviction pleading that they be released to serve the nation.   He attempted to use International Postal regulations to get the big US bureaucracy- the Post Office - fighting the big USSR bureaucracy- the KGB. The idea, suggested by Andrei Sakharov is simple. Send a registered letter to Yuri Orlov at his Permsk 'Prison camp. When the receipt came back, the signature would not be Orlov's (of course) so then complaint. It was then the duty of the US Post Office to refund the postage, and collect that back from the USSR. He had hoped to get all 200 members of an accelerator physics conference to join in sending such letters, but few took the trouble. He also failed to get the US Post Office, or liberal senators and representatives to make their complaints. But certainly the KGB received the letters and as Andrei Sakharov realized when he made the suggestion, they were the intended recipients.

        When Ruichard Wilson  and his wife Andree visited the USSR in 1979, they especially visited refusniks, took them journals which they could not otherwise see, and offered help. Although attempts were made to keep these visits separate from the "official" visit, he was informed by his host, with understanding, that they were known. On their visit a few days later to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, Andrei noted as Richard and Andree entered the apartment that he assumed that everything said in the apartment was recorded They prudently left by the next airplane carrying with them, not only a letter for the US press, but alos the scientific papers of a refusenik who was  leaving Leningrad the next week, and his wife's jewelry. Although any FBI file on Richard Wilson can now be made available, it would be especially fascinating to see the KGB file.   

        Then and later, Richard and his wife Andree Wilson welcomed several refuseniks and scientists who left the Soviet Union helping them to find positions in the USA and otherwise helping then to adjust to a new country with a different culture. In one case this led to an publication , ("Is There a Large Risk of Radiation? A Critical Review of Pessimistic Claims"    by A. Shihab-Eldin, A. Shlyakhter, R. Wilson. Environmental International, 18, 117-151 (1992)).   where amusingly 3 authors had 6 possible allegiances - respectively Palestinian Kuwaiti, Jewish Russian and English American.

        About 1976 Richard Wilson became a member of Amnesty International's "Urgent Action"group writing several hundred letters to various governmental officials throughout the world to release persons unjustly detained. In particular he wrote letters asking that scientists in trouble in Pakistan, Palestine, USSR, various African countries and Middle Eastern countries, be released. When on scientific visits to those countries he personally brought up the specific issues to the highest leaders which he met so that thy would not be ignored.. For example when visiting Pakistan in 1982 as a guest of the Minister of Education, Dr Mahomed Afzal, he brought up the issue of a couple of dissident professors. Noteworthy was bringing to Amnesty's attention in 1978 the plight of nuclear chemist Dr. Hussein Shahristani, now Iraqi oil minister, tortured and jailed in solitary confinement for 12 years by Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately his attempt in 1982, while on a visit in Iraq, to visit Shahristani in jail was turned down, according to the Chairman of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, "at the highest level". Of the persons in the jail in Baghdad with Shahristani no others have been known to survive - a fact some will attribute to Amnesty's intervention.

        Richard Wilson has not been silent when considering the oppressed even in controversial situations. In the mid 1980s Richard Wilson became aware of the plight of Palestinian physicists on the West Bank of the Jordan river. When the Chairman of the Physics Department of the University in Nablus wanted to accept a Fulbight award to go on Sabbatical leave in the USA he was denied an exit visa, with concomitant ability to return to the west bank at the end of his leave, he had to abandon the award. Wilson made an appeal supported by many US scientists, including the President of APS Professor RR Wilson and also by the Israeli Physical society. When an appropriate exit and reentry visa was issued a year later. Richard Wilson found alternative funding for the scientist (Islamic Development Bank of Jeddah) and ensured his acceptance in a US University (SUNY) and the research group on colliding beams (CLEO). In a letter to Physics Today ("Tayseer Aruri - Birzeit University") Richard Wilson, Physics Today (letter), May 1989, p. 118 - he brought the attention of the physics community to the plight of Dr Tayseer Aruri who was teaching at Bir Zeit University but expelled by the occupying country for reasons not publicly disclosed. Other distinguished scientists, Edward Witten, and Freeman Dyson also wrote to Physics Today in general support.   Wilson was delighted when in 2002 the Arab League unaimously agreed, at long last, to accept a division of biblical Palestine into two states,  and in a letter to "the Guardian" (alas no copy easily available) has called on all Israeli leaders to publicly respond in some way to this historic change, so far with little success.

        When fighting broke out in 1991 between militias of Armenia and Azerbaijan, he volunteered to join a team from the first International Sakharov conference in Moscow to the troubled area ending by facing down armed Azeri militia (led by Baroness Caroline Cox ccox@ertnet.demon.co.uk) and reporting thereon in person to both Marshal Yazov, defense minister of the USSR, and the Chairman of the USSR Supreme Soviet. His report was presented a few days later to the First International Sakharov Conference on Physics in Moscow, and approved by that conference, and was submitted both to Secretary Gorbachev and President George Bush who are both known to have read the report. It is publicly available on the world wide web.

        In other activities that are less directly connected with human rights he has always been on the side of the poor underprivileged and unrepresented. For example, in his work for the Atlantic Legal Foundation, where his primary function has been to argue for reliable science in the court rooms, and to oppose scientific nonsense, he has constantly stressed the plight of the poor. In discussing temporary storage of nuclear waste he organized a distinguished group to support the Skull Valley band of Goshutes, in their desire to have nuclear waste in their reservation. Although this was approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after a multi year hearing, it has been blocked by the Governor and senior Senator of the State of Utah who disliked the idea of Indians doing business independently of the state in spite of the 150 year old treaty between the Federal Government and the tribe..