Johan and Irene Galtung
On August 6, Hiroshima Day, 2024, I published a long, very well-documented article by Irene Galtung, the daughter of peace research professor Johan Galtung, about the tragic circumstances surrounding his last months alive and the human rights violations they both had to endure. What is left of that publication now is only my foreword below. As the editor and publisher of The Transnational, I have decided under threat to delete it, and I owe our readers to explain how I came to that decision.
The reason is that her mother and Johan’s wife, Fumiko Nishimura Galtung, her two half-brothers, Andreas Galtung and Harald Eide Galtung and her brother Fredrik Galtung, had turned to lawyer Jon Wessel-Aas at the Glitterlind Law Firm in Oslo, asking him to demand that it be deleted in its entirety. The reason behind that demand and warning was that they considered that text constituted violations of their constitutional right to privacy and amounted to defamation.
Thus, according to the lawyer’s letter to me, the whole family stood behind the demand to take down the article.
The threat accompanying the demand was that, if it were not taken down, TFF would be charged in court. At some point in the lengthy correspondence between the law firm and myself since October, the demand was also made through lawyer Wessel-Aas that, already after the first couple of emails, TFF would be required to pay Norwegian kronor 70 000 – or US $ 6.150 – and more as the process went along – to cover “parts” of the family’s costs for having sought the lawyer’s assistance. (I did suggest they go to some crowdfunding site if they cannot pay for the costs of hiring a lawyer against me).
While it is true that the family members and their behaviour vis-a-vis Irene and Johan Galtung were mentioned in Irene Galtung’s article, I had – exactly for that reason – asked Irene to produce documentation/proofs, of what she wrote on concrete matters. I had checked it all before it was published.
Every bit of her history and criticism of family members and the Norwegian authorities were based on unusual and systematic documentation – email copies, photos, videos, copies of official documents, Johan Galtung’s written, signed and publically stamped wishes.
I think readers here know that TFF, since being established in 1986, has never published fake materials or, for that matter slander or defamation. We have also never been requested, or forced, to delete any post before.
My reason for publishing the article was – as written below in my foreword – my deep sympathy with the suffering of Johan Galtung (based on Irene Galtungs account of substance). A clear case can be made, namely that the basic human rights of them both have been grossly violated. Additionally, both the lawyer, family members and Norwegian authorities accused Irene Galtung of things that are overwhelmingly documented not to be true – something that is often termed slander or defamation.
Furthermore, Johan Galtung wanted the story about the violation of his human rights to be made public.
That said, I – not TFF as a foundation – would be the person to fight legally against the injustice and de facto censorship incurred by the family via the lawyer on me. TFF, which is based exclusively on people’s donations, cannot and should not pay for such costs. Furthermore, I have no wish to go through a multi-year time-wasting court procedure – I have more important things to do at 74 – or pay soon-to-be absurdly high and accumulating lawyer costs, neither to the family’s lawyer nor to a lawyer I would have to hire.
Galtung’s family members – through their lawyer – have decided that this story shall not be displayed in daylight. They have shown no interest in finding a compromise. I offered them the opportunity to publish their version of the story and that I would not change a word or write a rejoinder. It was all in vain; the entire article should be taken down, or else…
They see it as a family story, and I see it as a story about crystal clear human rights violations that I, as a publisher, consider overwhelmingly well-documented and deserve to be known to a wider public.
As a matter of fact, it would be reasonable to expect that family members would support Irene Galtung’s in taking on the huge job of documenting the whole case in her account of how Norwegian health authorities mistreated their husband and father until his last day. It would, further, have been ethically appropriate of the family to appreciate that the heart-breaking human rights violations of a dying old man of 93 were told by one of his friends and colleague on a homepage that carries hundreds of Galtung’s articles over four decades.
But none of these – normal – expectations have been met. Instead, the family has strategised to suppress what their sister consider the truth about the case and, in the process, violated my right to publish her account. This lawyer-supported attack on the freedom of expression is particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that they also declined to practise their self-evident – and by me repeatedly offered – right to respond to that account without a single word being changed.
In summary, for reasons the readers can only speculate about, it must have been extremely important for Johan Galtung’s wife and male children to silence the whole thing and do so via a lawyer with demands, earnings and threats – and not in direct contact with their daughter/sister and with me.
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The story of this tragedy hitting my mentor and dear friend over 50 years and TFF Associate since 1986, lived on this homepage from August 6, 2024, to January 16, 2025 (and has also been taken down from my personal blog).
I can only hope that those who read it during those months and cared for Johan Galtung – will never forget him and the story of his suffering. I encourage them to take action in support of Irene, who is forced to fight a number of legal battles for her and her father’s rights in years to come and accumulate enormous debts to lawyers. Please support Irene Galtung here – which is also an expression of your appreciation of and solidarity with Johan Galtung.
Most people worldwide who met him, worked with and admired Johan have kept silent afterwards – despite all their beautiful words on social and other media at his death. It is, of course, a very unpleasant and heart-breaking story, I understand that. But I find it anyhow rather disappointing in light of human solidarity and rights. Why?
Because Johan Galtung was as important in his field as Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Munch in theirs (see below).
But in Olso, there is no street named after Johan Galtung, no memorial park (like in Spain, where he also lived), and no memorial. No person speaking on behalf of Norway found it appropriate to honour him – one of the greatest Norwegians since 1945 and internationally renowned, innovative and productive in a class of his own in social science. There was no funeral for him and his ashes were spread behind the back of Irene. And – predictably in US-submissive NATO Norway – he was not considered worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize (which has never been awarded to a scholar). Article 1 of the UN Charter – that he, many other peace researchers and TFF work for and which states that “peace shall be established by peaceful means” – would only serve as painful and shameful reminders of their own intellectual, moral and international law failures.
His final months became a living and dying hell to him, so much so that he went on hunger strike because Irene Galtung, for a period, was barred from visiting him. He was given morphine against his expressed wish and not treated the way everyone has a right to be treated at a hospice (where he also expressly did not want to end his life). He wanted to be with his daughter and only her till he died. For years, she had cared beautifully for both her parents and did more for him the last six months he was alive than anybody else.
Only future legal processes will prove that the human rights of Johan and Irene Galtung were violated. That is, if Norway is a legal state with an independent judiciary.
Finally, let me round this off by announcing that before the first anniversary of Johan Galtung’s death on February 17, 2025, I will post the first bits and pieces of a Memorial site – as I did for my other mentor and Johan’s friend, Håkan Wiberg – and take it from there when I have the time.
TFF and I will not let Johan Galtung’s lifelong, incredible, intellectually and politically magnificent work for true peace be killed, forgotten or diminished by acts of lesser minds. We’ll therefore also continue to regularly publish his articles within the themes, which are also TFF’s ongoing themes. And you may find so many more at the organisation he founded, Transcend Media Service, TMS.
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This is the story about the heart-breaking circumstances under which our TFF Associate and friend of over 50 years, Professor Johan Galtung, died – as told by his daughter, Dr. Irene Galtung, a lawyer for the right to food and safe drinking water. Dr Dag Poleszynski, Norway, and I have given advice and commented on Irene Galtung’s writing of this very complex story with its immense documentation, but the text is exclusively hers.
Norwegian-born Johan Galtung (1930-2024) – a mathematician, sociologist and peace and future researcher – was, beyond any doubt, one of the most important social scientists of our time and perhaps the most creative, productive and visionary. Many consider him the father of academic peace and conflict research and a pioneer in future studies but, of course, a new science has more fathers and mothers.
Galtung published over 150 books, taught at universities around the world, and lived with his Japanese wife, Fumiko Nishimura Galtung, in – among other countries – the US, Japan, Norway, Yugoslavia, and Spain. He was the driving force in establishing the Peace Research Institute Oslo, PRIO, in the late 1950s and the online university and peace journalism network Transcend. He earned honorary degrees from more than a dozen universities in different parts of the world.
Galtung – Johan since he was one of my two mentors, the other being Håkan Wiberg – was not only a theoretician with new conceptualisations of violence, peace and social science methodology – and a pioneer in explaining China to the West. He also mediated in countless conflicts and was invited to develop possible peace plans – for instance, for North and South Korea. His peace model for the Palestine-Israel conflict within a larger Middle Eastern peace structure is still unique about 50 years after it was published.
His development with Dietrich Fischer and myself of human security and alternative defensive defence would, if implemented by countries, have secured a much safer world at much lower levels of violence and with weapons of mass destruction gone forever.
Galtung – who was in his mid-20es when, in prison as a conscientious objector, he wrote a pathbreaking book together with his friend, Arne Næss, about Gandhi’s political ethics – was faithful all through his life to the principles of non-violence and, if you will, the Pancsheel – the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence among nations.
He was also considered ’controversial’ – mostly by lesser minds, for instance, those at the Nobel ’Peace’ Committee who did not deem his 70-years long academic, political and practical work for everything Alfred Nobel wanted to reward and the UN norm of making peace by peaceful means worthy of their prize.
As co-founder with my wife, Christina Spannar, and director of TFF, I am grateful for the opportunity to honour Johan Galtung’s lifelong commitment to true peace. Indeed, as Kenneth Boulding once said, it is difficult to imagine that all this came from one single human being. It did. But did the world understand it? I have my sincere doubts; war criminal Kissinger’s death was all over the international mainstream media; peacemaker Galtung’s nowhere. But I am sure that the Norwegian NATO-loyal world did not understand a thing.
And shamefully, it caused him indescribably pain towards the end – so much so that he even went on a hunger strike in protest against the authorities.
No human being – particularly not at 93 – should ever be forced to endure what Johan suffered. Neither should Irene Galtung, who lovingly did more for him than anyone else.
TFF makes the tragic story of Galtung’s death public in the hope that he may get some redress for the suffering he had to endure. That suffering caused by state authorities and individuals ought be unthinkable in any type of society and state.
Honoured be his memory. Since 1986, TFF has published hundreds of articles and videos by Galtung. We will continue to do so now and then. The troubled world we live in deserves to know his thoughts better and be inspired by his lifelong achievements for and devotion to true peace.
