4 days ago
Protest and policing concerns echo past bans
Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen's University Belfast BRIAN DOOLEY reports on a London symposium on human rights
Gareth Peirce (image by Martin Gavin)
AT A SOLD-OUT event in London, prominent human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce compared the recent crackdown on free speech over Palestine at Glastonbury with the banning of the 1988 Song Streets of Sorrow/The Birmingham Six.
Peirce's legal career has involved representing members of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four — all wrongly sentenced to long years in prison for IRA activity including terrorism — and was part of the legal team representing Kneecap's Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh who was charged under terrorism legislation for allegedly display a flag supporting Hezbollah. The charges were subsequently dropped
The event at St Ethelburga's Centre for Peace and Reconciliation also discussed the wider repression of protest in Britain, and the findings of an international panel of experts into British state impunity during the Northern Ireland conflict.
Dr Aoife Duffy, Senior Lecturer at the University of Essex and a member of the expert panel explained why, after examining hundreds of cases of killings, torture and collusion, we had concluded in our report Bitter Legacy that there had been 'widespread, systemic and systematic' impunity afforded to British security forces during the conflict.
Paul O'Connor of the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre, briefed on the Sean Brown case, and why holding a full independent public inquiry into the 1997 Loyalist paramilitary murder of the GAA man was now the only sensible option left to find out the truth about what happened. Daniel Holder of the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice provided context on latest efforts to reform and repeal the controversial Legacy Act, and why many families of the bereaved want the current mechanisms overhauled or scrapped, and replaced with better access to justice.
Human rights lawyer Rajiv Menon spoke about the fight for justice for the families of those killed in the Hillsborough football disaster, and emphasised how it was years of campaigning by bereaved relatives of those killed which finally achieved a measure of truth about what happened, a sentiment echoed by Deborah Coles, Executive Director of INQUEST in the context of her work on deaths in police custody in England and Wales.
The discussion provided a stark reminder that what happens in Britain has many echoes of the experience of Northern Ireland, in terms of a lack of police accountability, a dismissal of campaigns by bereaved families, and the long, slow struggle for justice.
Brian Dooley is a member of the independent panel of experts on British impunity, senior advisor at NGO Human Rights First, and Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen's University Belfast reports on a London event focused on truth and accountability
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