The name Desmond Tutu resonates strongly with people all around the world. He is internationally respected as a "moral voice" to end poverty and human rights abuses.

In 1996, he was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body set-up to probe gross human rights violations during apartheid.
Tutu spoke in London on Thursday to mark the 75th anniversary of the British Council.


"I never imagined in my worst dreams that I would live to see the day when the United States would abrogate the rule of law and habeas corpus as has happened in the case of those described as "enemy combatants" incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay. Or that I would hear an American government and its apologists use exactly the same justification for detention without trial, as had been used by the apartheid government of South Africa - a practice that the United States at the time condemned roundly, as was so utterly right to have done."