No Justice, No Peace
Posted by Jim on May 28, 2015
THE LAST OBSCENITY?
Maghaberry is an injustice that undermines the very fabric of our society, no man or woman should be subject to what goes on in this hideous place. It should be an international outrage but instead is for the most part ignored by those with the power to effect change, those who have bought into the new establishment in Ireland.
Whether for good or bad, whether for right or wrong, they’ve bought into it all. And the ‘all’ in question does not just equate to power-sharing, the equality agenda or any other positive relating to the ‘new dispensation’, it also involves internment, secret evidence, political policing and the torturing of Irish political prisoners – prisoners such as Gavin Coyle, who has recently entered his fourth year in solitary confinement. By any definition that amounts to torture.
As such there is a responsibility on those who participate in this system, and legitimise it by their presence at the heart of its institutions, to ensure the brutality ongoing at Maghaberry is given no place or quarter in this society, the beatings, the abuse, the horror has to stop. It has no place in our country today – it never had.
If what goes on behind those gates were carried out in some dictatorship no doubt we’d hear the great and the good speak out, it would be condemned vociferously and rightly so. But not here, not in our own country, not when it is done to and on our own. Why do we never hear this alluded to by our politicians, why is this brushed under the carpet, why do they not want us to know what is being done in our name?
The time for action is long past, those in positions of authority, who have achieved high office on the back of a mandate given them by the Irish people, can no longer sit back as though this were not happening. They can no longer watch on through covered eyes in the hope this will just go away. And they have to start taking some responsibility for the situation, why else have they been elected if not to do so?
Whether we agree or not with the politics of those held in this gaol there is a basic onus, common to us all, as right-thinking men and women, that abuse of human rights not be tolerated. Human rights are sacrosanct. Toleration equates to association and facilitation. Who would honestly want to facilitate and be associated with this?