Who are the men and women changing the world for the better? The NS invites you to nominate your hero. In our fourth and final week, four more familiar names offer their thoughts – but it’s up to you.
or use the form attached and give a brief explanation if you wish. We will publish some citations with our final list of 50 in May.
Our definition: a man or woman whose actions have been in the service of the greater good and whose influence is national or international: someone who is prepared to act in pursuit of a freer, more equitable and more democratic future without resorting to violence.
Jon Snow nominates
Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate
I nominate Amartya Sen for his profound impact on the global understanding of the economics of poverty. A Nobel prizewinner, he is also an example of someone who broke out of his familial and economic circumstances to come to study in Britain – studies that in turn have changed people’s lives. His fame and success have never divorced him from his roots; he remains an accessible and exceptional humanitarian. He is a polymath whose expertise ranges from the origins of Indian cuisine, through gender studies, public health and moral philosophy, and beyond to the economics of peace and war. Top 50? Amartya Sen is in my global top ten.
Jonathan Freedland nominates
Uri Avnery, peace campaigner
Uri Avnery’s life spans the Jewish story of the past century. A refugee from Hitler’s Germany, he fled to Palestine, where he became a fighter with the far-right Irgun: “I was a terrorist,” he says. From there, he embarked on an extraordinary journey leftward. A former member of the Knesset and editor for 40 years of the fearless magazine Haolam Hazeh, he is now, aged 82, a full-time agitator for peace, usually found alongside Palestinians protesting against some new violation of their rights.
Age has not mellowed him; he regularly shows great physical and moral courage, brushing off death threats. He is a rare breed in understanding both peoples.
Clive Stafford Smith nominates
Moazzam Begg, Guantanamo detainee
Some heroes are invited to Buckingham Palace where honours are heaped upon them. Moazzam Begg can expect to be hounded by people with power for the rest of his life. He is British, and was held in Guantanamo Bay for two years before being released without charge, but the Bush administration’s PR machine is still intent on proving he is an Islamic extremist. On his return to the UK, the government took his passport, based on what the US military tortured out of him.
As so often of late, George Bush and Tony Blair are wrong. Moazzam is an extremist all right – he believes passionately in charity and justice for all. In 2001, he wanted to help the destitute in Afghanistan. Before 9/11, this would have been admirable. Instead, it earned him a cage in Bagram. He spent almost two years in an isolation cell the size of your toilet, in Guantanamo, where I first met him. He lives his beliefs, and made friends with his guards, so that those taught to despise him ended up sharing their e-mail addresses. Moazzam refuses to hate even those who tortured him.
Glenys Kinnock nominates
Aung San Suu Kyi, peace campaigner
Aung San Suu Kyi is an international symbol of peaceful resistance. She has enormous grace, serenity and humanity, and her determination never to leave her country until democracy is restored earns her the respect of all those who believe that the human spirit can overcome evil.
In 1990 the Burmese people voted, by an overwhelming majority, for a government led by her and her party, but it has never been allowed to take office. She has spent more than 3,500 days in captivity and her house arrest is more restrictive than ever. Yet she puts her personal suffering, which has included being refused the right to see her children and denied the chance to see her husband before he died, secondary to the need to alert people to as tyrannical and secretive a regime as the modern world has known.
When I visited her at her ramshackle home in Rangoon, her composure and dignity affected me deeply; her courage and heroism are simply breathtaking.
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