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Letter to The Independent
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02 January 2001 The Editor Dear Mr Kelner, Villain Tony Blair For NATO's 'humanitarian' bombing of Serbia and the sustained murder of thousands of innocent people (mainly children) in Iraq. My contribution was published on December 26 but the name 'Tony Blair' was omitted. This was done without any reference to me. The text you published read as follows: Villain NATO, for their humanitarian bombing of Serbia and the murder of thousands of innocent people (mainly children) in Iraq. I wrote to your newspaper pointing out that, apart from anything else, the omission of 'Tony Blair' made nonsense of the second part of the sentence. NATO is not bombing Iraq nor is it behind the sanctions. My letter ended with the following question: 'How can the Independent justify this act of censorship?' The Independent published my letter on December 28 but omitted that question. So, within three days, The Independent 'edited' both my contribution and my letter. Your Letters Editor tells me that the omission of 'Tony Blair' was 'a mistake' and therefore since no censorship was involved he felt the removal of my question justified. A quick look at the change of punctuation in The Independent version makes the case for 'a mistake' very shaky. It is also significant that the quotation marks around the word 'humanitarian' disappeared. 'Humanitarian' in quotation marks is ironic. Humanitarian - without quotation marks - is not. By omitting my question about 'censorship' The Independent cleverly avoided explaining publicly how the original omission came about. Its contention that it was 'a mistake' was never substantiated. Nor was any apology offered. I intend to put an account of this matter onto my website
www.haroldpinter.org. You may be assured that both on my website and in my speech I shall report you accurately. Yours sincerely,
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