La politica es la politica: June 2019

Monday 3 June 2019

Jamilah Taib Murray continues campaign against Swiss NGO

Back in February of this year a Swiss court ordered the Malaysian-Canadian entrepreneur Jamilah Taib Murray and her Canadian husband Sean Murray to pay C$220,000 in damages, as well as C$26,000 in court costs, to the Swiss NGO Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF), which campaigns on behalf of rainforests and the people who live in them.

Jamilah Taib Murray

The initial ruling was upheld at the end of May, with the Court of Appeal ordering payment of an additional C$18,000 in damages and $C13,500 in court costs.

But this battle is far from over. Directly after the loss of the appeal, Thomas Weibel, the Swiss lawyer for Jamilah Taib Murray and Sean Murray, confirmed that the defamation lawsuit against BMF and its Executive Director, Lukas Straumann, was continuing.

As with the initial attempt at an injunction, the claim is that BMF and Straumann have engaged in a multi-year campaign of unfounded allegations against the Taib Murrays. On the Canadian front, the Taib Murrays' Canadian lawyers at noticia LLP, via the website TheFactsMatter.ca, have said that the "full legal attention" of the complainants will now be directed at resolving the defamation suit.

Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel

Bicultural and transgender, detective Ernesto Sánchez seeks a missing Canadian woman on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Moving uneasily in a world where benign tourism co-exists with extreme violence, he becomes a pawn in a shadowy power-play between corrupt police and drug cartels. Forced to make hard choices – desperate, wounded, and friendless – Sánchez takes refuge in the lawless mountains of Oaxaca. And discovers his fate.

Praise for Mezcalero:

“Wilson’s Mezcalero is a real-pager turner…While the milieu of Wilson’s novel is reminiscent of the hard-boiled tradition, his creation of P.I. Ernesto Sánchez is original, and helps Wilson push the boundaries with respect to genre. Sánchez is a hard-hitting private eye, but Wilson also depicts him as struggling with many of the issues that transgender individuals typically face; in this manner, Wilson creates both a riveting mystery and timely story about navigating life as a gender nonconforming individual.”

Heather Duerre Humann, author of Gender Bending Detective Fiction: A Critical Analysis of Selected Works.

“Mezcalero is a remarkable read, with sustained suspense, surprise explosions of poetry and violence, and some new answers to old questions...Wilson understands something about violence and gender that I have never encountered before: that women’s violence is perhaps the most feared. Sanchez’s womanly violence in his manly body is a mystery revealed, a truth told that we suspected all along. This is a profoundly feminist book. The women in the book are the power brokers, the activators of action; even the most oppressed empleada is a container of her own complete power. Mezcalero is deftly plotted, and deploys an acrobatic narrative that is, frankly, exhilarating. Sanchez has a lot to teach us. Wilson, too.”

Janette Platana, author of A Token of My Affliction (2015 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize; 2016 English Language Trilium Book Award finalist).

“T.E. Wilson’s Mezcalero is, as a novel, a tacit consequence of the author’s real-world work as a reporter/journalist in Mexico. His work is rich in essence, and rich in detail, of how widespread organized crime and corruption permeate Mexican society. Highly recommended. This is great, well-grounded fiction.”

Dr. Edgardo Buscaglia, Senior Research Scholar in Law and Economics, Columbia University, and President of the Citizens’ Action Institute (Instituto de Acción Ciudadana).

“T.E. Wilson has crafted a terrific, terrifying and yet sensationally witty portrait of modern Mexico. Detective Sánchez is irresistible. You won’t soon forget his journey through that unpredictable jungle that is Mexico today.”

León Krauze, Mexican journalist, author and news anchor.

You can order a paper copy here, and the Kindle edition here. To find out more, go to DetectiveSanchez.com.