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OCTOBER 2002
PEACE PROCESS ON HOLD ONCE AGAIN
On 14th October at
midnight the Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended for the fourth time in the
peace process. There cannot be any
doubt that it was the unionists who brought this about with their demand for the
IRA to disband, a call that can only be seen as unrealistic in light of loyalist
levels of violence. Nevertheless,
the charging of a number of Sinn Féin members with collecting information
useful to terrorists provided the perfect smokescreen for those who do not want
the peace process to succeed to hide behind.
Sinn Féin’s cries of “foul!” failed to disguise their refusal to
answer straight questions about what exactly their members had been doing.
The new Chief Constable Hugh Orde has apologised for the heavy handed
nature of the unprecedented raid on Sinn Féin’s offices in Stormont, which
undoubtedly assisted unionist spin doctors to shift the blame for the
Assembly’s collapse on the republicans, and did nothing to increase
nationalists’ confidence in the PSNI. And
so the over-choreographed danse macabre goes on.
In the meantime, on the day before the suspension, 22 year old Alexander
McKinley died in hospital six days after being shot in the loyalist feud, having
known nothing but conflict all his life. There
has to be something better than this, for everyone in Northern Ireland.
That is why, through thick or thin, we will continue to work for proper
respect for human rights in Northern Ireland.
Human rights cannot cure all the ills in that troubled place, but they
can create the space for dialogue, for accommodation, and for mutual trust and
respect, without which no democracy can function, let alone survive.
We urge the British government, now responsible once again for Northern
Ireland under direct rule, to put real commitment to human rights at the heart
of their policies, instead of allowing human rights to be political footballs.
They might be pleasantly surprised to find that there are no losers from
such a strategy.
congress calls for reports on
landmark murders
The US Congress has called in an
Authorization Bill for reports from the State Department within two months on,
among other matters, progress towards independent judicial inquiries into the
deaths of Patrick Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, and Robert Hamill.
BIRW has sent the State Department detailed briefings on all three cases.
un calls for ban on plastic bullets
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has called on the
United Kingdom to ban plastic bullets as a means of riot control because of the
injuries and deaths they have caused among children in Northern Ireland.
We sincerely hope that the UK will now reconsider its use of this lethal
weapon, which is now available to a number of police forces across the UK.
meeting with independent asseSor of
military complaints
On 29th October I met Jim McDonald, the Independent Assessor of Military Complaints, to discuss his review of the use of plastic bullets by the army. The army has recently published its guidelines for the use of plastic bullets, which raise a number of issues, particularly as they appear to authorise the shooting of perceived ringleaders, even if they are not threatening anyone. I reiterated BIRW’s policy that plastic bullets should be banned altogether, and also expressed reservations about some of the alternative “less lethal” means of crowd control.
PSNI
CONFERENCE ON RACISM
I attended the PSNI’S conference on racism in Belfast on 21st and 22nd October. While it was good to see racism, which has all too frequently been masked by the conflict in Northern Ireland, openly discussed, there was a marked absence of any discussion of sectarianism. While sectarianism and racism are not the same thing, they manifest themselves in very similar ways, and in Northern Ireland it is not possible for the police service to aspire to being anti-racist if it does not also aspire to being anti-sectarian. It is disappointing, therefore, that in fact those who spoke on behalf of the PSNI consistently failed to discuss sectarianism or the links between it and racism, and it was left to black speakers such as Imran Kahn to make the connection. The fact that the Chief Constable chose not to respond to Imran Kahn’s invitation to declare the PSNI to be an institutionally racist organisation, nor to apologise for the way they handled the sectarian murder of Robert Hamill, suggests that the PSNI has a long way to go before it can attain its goals of providing an effective service to everyone in Northern Ireland. I have written to the PSNI at some length expressing these views, and hope that the conference will mark the beginning of a meaningful dialogue.
SOLDIER 027 TESTIFIES BEFORE THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY
This month saw four days’ testimony at the Bloody Sunday Tribunal from Soldier 027, a radio operator with I Para who himself fired no shots on Bloody Sunday. He testified that fellow soldiers fired into the crowd repeatedly even though he saw no-one firing at them or throwing petrol or nail bombs, and that some of 1 Para continued to fire even after an order to cease firing. I know Soldier 027 because he came to BIRW for help when his life was threatened for speaking out, and I know that he found it very difficult to testify against his former comrades. I admire his courage, and hope that some other former soldiers will follow his example and tell the truth about what happened on that terrible day. Soldier 027 has paid a high price for his bravery. He has had to leave his homeland and adopt a new identity. I wish him well in the future.
video recording
of police interviews
We have responded
to a consultation document from the Northern Ireland Office about proposed
changes to the arrangements for video-recording police interviews.
Northern Ireland
PRISON SERVICE VICTIMS SCHEME
We have also
responded to a consultation document from the Northern Ireland Prison Service
about proposals to keep those victims of crime who so wish informed about
prisoners’ release dates.
Jane Winter,
Director,
31st October 2002.
For Peace Justice & Human Rights
