History shows that whenever protracted conflicts end, bereaved families are invariably left with questions. “Who shot my father?” “Why did my mother die?” “Why did it start?” and “Who was to blame?”
Communities emerging from bitter conflict also want and need to understand how to prevent it recurring. How can a divided community look to the future if it cannot agree at all about its past?
Those questions are vital to sustaining any deal, anywhere, that brings warring parties together to reach agreement. Resolving, or trying to resolve, the legacy of conflict is an integral part of peace-making.
‘A wall of silence’
In what is often called “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, more than 3,500 people died between 1969 and the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement peace accord between the Catholic community, who mainly wish for an independent, united Ireland; the Protestant community, who mainly wish to remain part of the United Kingdom; and British state forces.
London’s rule in Northern Ireland continues but, although all parties to the conflict are on record as wishing victims’ questions answered, the British government has unilaterally decided to dispense with any post-conflict search for truth.
The proposal for British state impunity continues a pattern and mirrors this year’s “Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act” that has blocked investigations into alleged British human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Like that Act, the latest plan amounts to a sweeping amnesty for London’s own military and security services who, some would argue, have most questions to answer (as do paramilitaries from both camps).
The proposals would close down all current and future inquiries including:
Inquests ordered by the attorney general for Northern Ireland on the basis of new evidence
- Civil actions for compensation against the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI, as legal inheritors of liability for the Royal Ulster Constabulary), the British Ministry of Defence and the Northern Ireland Office
- Prosecutions where the independent Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland has deemed charges are in the public interest and a conviction is possible
- Investigations by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, even where there is “grave and exceptional” evidence of wrong-doing
- Investigations passed to the Legacy Investigation Branch of the PSNI (which would be abolished under the proposals)
- The people who would be affected are, for example, the family of Sean Brown, a 61-year-old father of six children, who was abducted on the evening of May 12, 1997. The Police Ombudsman recommended a new inquest and, since 2014, the British Ministry of Defence and Police Service of Northern Ireland have refused to disclose documents related to the murder although the family has evidence of collusion with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
And the family of Kathleen Thompson, a 47-year-old mother of six, shot dead by a British soldier while standing in her garden. A new inquest into her death began in 2018 but has been frustrated by a “wall of silence”. The proposed legislation will end all inquests.
Or the families of six men, shot dead in 1973 by British soldiers in the New Lodge Road area of Belfast. A new investigation was ordered after the original was ruled inadequate. This investigation is also now at the mercy of the proposed legislation.
Potentially, it could even include the Reavey family who the Police Ombudsman informed, just this week, that a file on a former serving RUC man with evidence of his involvement has been sent to the Public Prosecutor. The three young Reavey brothers, Brian, John-Martin and Anthony, were gunned down in January 1976 as they watched TV in their modest home in County Armagh.
Having waited nearly 50 years for justice, they too could find it snatched from their hands.
A ‘betrayal of victims’
The British proposals have prompted unanimous condemnation from all sides, in a rare show of political unanimity, both in Ireland and internationally – leaving London isolated as the proposals’ sole defender.
The British government has lauded its own approach as “conciliatory” – but no group involved in the conflict; no political party represented at the power-sharing assembly in Belfast, no victims’ group and no human rights organisation agrees. Neither does the Irish government.