Analysis: Civil rights reversed

Posted by Jim on January 25, 2014

 

By Padraic Mac Oitir

 

Without any doubt, the release from prison of Lurgan man Martin Corey

will be welcomed by all persons with an interest in justice.

 Martin Corey has spent almost four years in Maghaberry prison. At no

time during that period was he ever questioned about or charged with any

offence. He was held on the basis of secret evidence – if such evidence

ever even existed – which his own legal team was never allowed to see,

let alone challenge.

 In short, Martin Corey was effectively interned without charge and

without trial for almost four years.

 Despite his release from prison, Martin Corey is now subject to

conditions comparable to those which first saw the light of day under

the draconian Special Powers Acts introduced by the Unionist regime at

Stormont in 1922.

 He has been ordered not to reside at his home in Lurgan or to enter the

Lurgan area.

 He has also been ordered not to speak to the media about his case.

 Internment without charge or without trial was a feature of the Special

Powers Act.

Another of the Special Powers Act regulations allowed the then Minister

of Home affairs to prohibit any person from entering all or parts of the

Six Counties or to grant permission for a person to reside under certain

stipulated conditions. This was later condemned by the Commission of

Inquiry into the Special Powers Act held by the National Council for

Civil Liberties in 1936.

 Section 25 of the Special Powers Act amounted to censorship of the

rights to freedom of speech and political opinion. It prohibited any

person “by word of mouth, or in writing, or in any newspaper,

periodical, book, circular, or other printed publication” from making

statements likely to cause “disaffection to His Majesty” or statements

critical of the policing and justice system.

 The repeal of the Special Powers Act was one of the core demands of the

Civil Rights movement. Although it was repealed in 1973, it has been

incrementally replaced over the past forty years by harsher, if not more

draconian, legislation.

 The legislation which allowed Martin Corey to be imprisoned for four

years without charge and without trial, and the conditions imposed upon

his release, resemble those of the Special Powers Act against which the

Civil Rights movement campaigned.

 Martin Corey is not unique.

 Other persons have been arrested under dubious circumstances and

spurious evidence, and have yet to face trial – as such they are

innocent until proven guilty. A number of these are being granted bail

on conditions which prevent them living in their family homes and from

entering their home towns.

 Like Martin Corey, they are faced with internal exclusion within the Six

County state – not unlike the internal exclusion practiced by the

Pinochet regime in Chile.

 The ‘old’ Stormont with its bad, old laws is long since gone – at least

that’s what constitutional nationalist parties in the ‘new’ Stormont

keep publicly repeating.

 To all intents and purposes, those same politicians who clamoured for a

return of justice and policing powers to Stormont appear to be

comfortable with, if not complicit in, the special powers enacted and

enforced under their watch.

 Slowly but surely, the old Stormont ways are being resurrected.