GFA prisoners still facing discrimination

Posted by Jim on April 21, 2018

 

Twenty years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, republicans
who were jailed for activities related to the conflict have said they
are still facing barriers to employment and travel.

Representatives for Coiste na n-Iarchimi, an organisation that works on
behalf of former political prisoners jailed during the conflict for
their involvement in the Provisional IRA’s armed struggle spoke this
past week to the committee on the implementation of the Good Friday
Agreement at the Dublin parliament.

They said former republican prisoners are even discriminated against
when it comes to accessing psychological treatment.

Former PoW Michael Culbert told committee members that very little has
changed for these former prisoners since they were freed under the terms
of the agreement.

The agreement contains a section that states the governments will
recognise the importance of measures to facilitate the reintegration of
prisoners into the community by providing support.

“Unfortunately for us, people are denied access to university
programmes, denied access to work to which they are well qualified, we
are denied freedom for travel for many, many countries,” he said.

“Most recently four people were deported from Mexico on orders from the
American government. That was according to the Mexican authorities. The
problem is we don’t know where this will end twenty years after the
peace agreement.”

His colleague Kevin Mulgrew said there has been some progress recently
on the travel issue, but it is slow and countries like Canada and the
United States are “a no-go”.

“The Australian embassy I suppose given their history have the best
attitude, we’ve had some success getting people in,” he told the
committee.

“I think we a bit flippantly said that if the criteria the Australians
were using now were used in the original times they wouldn’t have got
into Australia, you know. So they took that and they actually have been
very progressive with us since then.”

Mr Mulgrew said there are issues in particular in the north of Ireland
because of British legislation which denies certain rights for
ex-prisoners.

This impacts on their access to psychiatric assistance.

“A lot of people are traumatised. Under the legislation, professionals
cannot treat somebody in privacy, it’s almost unbelievable. If the
person hears something from a client or patient relevant to the conflict
and doesn’t report it even today the person who is the professional can
be charged with withholding information,” he explained.

Members of the committee expressed concern about the lack of progress,
with independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan describing it as “nearly
incredulous at times”.