The Campaign for the Right to Truth
Oral Submissions to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, Father Raymond Murray, Dublin Castle, April 1995
A Chathaoirligh, a dhaoine uaisle, is mór an phribhléid dúinne, lucht feachtais um lorg fírinne agus gaolta ar son na cóire bheith i láthair ag an bhFóram agus bheirmid buíochas daoibh as an fhaill seo a thabhairt dúinn labhairt.
Madam Chairperson and members of the Forum, Thank you for the privilege of addressing the Forum as Chairperson of Relatives For Justice and Chairperson of the Campaign for the Right to Truth. This Campaign is an umbrella group of eight organisations. There are six speakers on this panel and there are some 30 members present at the Forum. You will meet many of them informally and hear their stories. We are happy that you are willing to listen to poor, humble and vulnerable people who have suffered at the hands of the state in the past 25 years. You will have heard, and doubtlessly will hear more testimonies from victims and their relatives who have suffered grievously at the hands of the paramilitaries. We sympathise with these victims and encourage you to do all you can for them. Today we are focusing narrowly on a section of people, victims and their relatives who feel they have been neglected and ignored. The ghetto poor have to a great extent been a voiceless people—although they can be eloquent—voiceless because they are without power. Government officials, religious people and academics were not always willing to listen to them, and so their lack of human rights and civil rights and justice went unredressed. They found it difficult to get their story told.
The people represented here, Madam Chairperson, have been the victims of the corruption of law. Such a problem is worldwide. We are focusing here on Northern Ireland and Britain but we have also a speaker here to challenge governments and politicians in the Republic of Ireland whose silence on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings is as deafening as the explosions themselves. The agents of the law in Northern Ireland and Britain, people in charge of the law, have violated the law to use it as a weapon to torture men in interrogation centres, to send some innocent people to jail for life, to kill and injure civilians with plastic bullets, to shoot citizens with army guns, to act in collusion over 25 years with the murderous intents of the loyalist paramilitaries. A second hurt, added to the injuries, is that the law has provided no adequate remedy for proper investigation, no truth or justice for the Relatives for Justice. Hence the appreciation of our groups to have a voice here today.
The British Government does not hold the high moral ground. Like the paramilitaries it should also acknowledge and repent for its crimes, the deaths and suffering of innocent people it has caused. Truth helps a peace process and has healing effects. Justice and charity flow from it. Our submission to the Forum outlined 16 classifications of the violations of human rights.
The headings are:
- Murder and unjust killings by the security forces. 148 members of paramilitary organisations and 138 innocent civilians have been killed by the RUC and the British Army; some of these can be classified as murder and some as unjust killings. Prosecution and conviction of members of the security forces has been avoided in most cases.
- Collusion of the British intelligence system, members of the UDR and RIR, members of the RUC, with loyalist paramilitaries leading to the murders of hundreds of Catholics.
- Widespread and deadly use of rubber and plastic bullets resulting in severe injuries and the deaths of 17 people, of whom 8 were children and one was a woman.
- Internment of 2000 Catholic men and 30 women under special powers and the cruel ill-treatment of same.
- Inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in Hollywood and Girdwood Barracks, Belfast 1971-2.
- Torture of 14 hooded men by sensory deprivation in Ballykelly Barracks in 1971.
- Duress: Arrested people in the 1970s were forced to sign statements admitting crimes the police wanted to connect them with. Corrupt courts for many years accepted these statements.
- Harassment: For 20 years nationalists were subjected to arbitrary house searches, house-wrecking, beatings, verbal harassment, census taking by security forces.
- Ill-treatment of arrested persons in RUC stations 1972-75.
- Ill-treatment of arrested persons in the interrogation centres at Castlereagh and Gough Barracks 1976-77.
- Alleged verbal statements of accused given out by the police were accepted on their word in the Diplock Courts; beating, thumping and kicking prisoners and interrogating them for long periods and putting them in positions of stress, were not accepted as cruel and degrading treatment and statements taken after these forms of ill-treatment were accepted in court. There followed great disparity in sentences and some of the sentences were inhuman. After the Bennet Report in 1979 ill-treatment centred on beatings designed not to leave marks, on psychological torture and threats, blackmail and the use of supergrasses.
- Severe punishments were inflicted on prisoners who refused to do prison work and wear prison clothes in the 1976-81 period.
- Degrading stripping naked of the women prisoners in Armagh prison 1982-86.
- 18 innocent Irish people were imprisoned for long years by police action and judicial procedures in Britain which were contrary to human rights.
- Some Irish political prisoners in British prisons were treated with cruelty.
- The Prevention of Terrorism Act brought great suffering to many thousands of Irish in Britain. When those charged with upholding the law appear to violate it with impunity in this way, the foundations of respect for law and order disappear. The question is: will the new northern Ireland with a radically restructured police force, with strict regulations re appointment of judges, magistrates and coroners avoid political prejudice, guarantee the human and civil rights of all citizens, provide independent modes of investigation of police and legal abuse? And will citizens in positions of power show concern for justice regarding security, legal justice and social justice? We hope so.
Murray was accused of sectarianism
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Friday, 28 December 2012
Repulican prisoners' representive Father Raymond Murray was criticised by the Northern Ireland Office, 1981 papers have revealed
Northern Ireland Office (NIO) officials accused republican prisoners' representative Father Raymond Murray of sectarianism during heated exchanges over the hunger strikes, the archives have revealed.
Fr Murray voiced criticism of alleged lack of work or education opportunities in Armagh women's prison.
An NIO official said his letter written in December 1981 was disappointing and predictably negative. "It is narrow, sectarian and gratuitously offensive to the prison administration," he said.
Fr Murray said: "Your government's attitude to the hunger strike was barbarous in its cruelty, not only to the prisoners and their relatives but to the Catholic community as a whole. We find your attitude not helpful in the political sphere. Your continued intransigence helps the IRA. More humanity and compassion would help us to remove relatives from the influence of paramilitaries."
A separate NIO briefing document would appear to support this, warning a new generation of children had been infected with rampant Anglophobia following the hunger strikes.
It said some believed public morale was at an all-time low, with new recruits for the IRA and people becoming more anti-British.
"New heroes and myths have been created and new wounds opened which will take years to heal," the document said. "For their part, Protestants will never easily forgive or forget Sands' election or the trimming statements by the Catholic leaders, lay and clerical."
In a separate report, officials expressed forthright views on another of the key republican go-betweens.
Monsignor Denis Faul was an "unguided moral missile" and a "considerable thorn in our flesh", an NIO analysis of the clergyman said during the dispute.
An official from the department said the priest was sympathetic to the aims of republicans but had come to believe the hunger strikes were hopeless and tried to persuade their relatives to help end the protests. "He was largely responsible for the revolt of the relatives in July that led to pressure being put on Gerry Adams to order the prisoners off their fast," said the NIO civil servant.
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