Posted by Jim on August 19, 2017
With the prospects of Irish reunification appearing to grow in the
aftermath of the Brexit referendum, some elements within the 26 County
establishment have become increasingly nervous. Some reactionaries have
already called for the Good Friday peace Agreement to be rewritten in
the context of Britain’s departure from the European Union.
Last week, the former 26 County diplomatic figure Sean Donlon said
reunification should only take place with the support of unionists,
without seeing any inherent contradiction. Irish Times commentator
Fintan O’Toole this week also sought to move the goalposts, demanding a
higher but unspecified target beyond the requirement of a simple
majority for unification as outlined in the Good Friday Agreement.
The response comes amid efforts by Sinn Fein to encourage the
establishment parties to develop a coordinated approach on the issue.
Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly called on all nationalist parties across the
island to work together to deliver a united Ireland.
Delivering a speech in Ballina, County Mayo to commemorate the 1981
hunger strikes, Mr Kelly outlined his party’s vision of a “new, agreed
and United Ireland, upholding, protecting and respecting the rights of
all citizens” that would also uphold “the rights of citizens to be
British and Unionist”.
Speculation has grown that there is a growing belief in Fianna Fail they
the party should be open to a coalition government with Sinn Fein. Last
week, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said his party is “open to
negotiating with other parties to deliver a republican programme of
government”.
Mr Kelly threw dont the gauntlet to all the other parties in Ireland.
“I challenge the leaders of the SDLP, Fine Gael, and Fianna Fail to stop
hiding behind the mantra of now is not the time to discuss unity,” he
said.
“One hundred years on since 1916, as we face into Brexit, now is the
time not only to discuss unity, but to plan and deliver Irish Unity.”
“So Leo [Fine Gael leader and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar], Colm [SDLP leader
Colm Eastwood] and Micheal [Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin], this is
the time put aside your narrow party political interests, the time for
national leadership, the time to stand together to plan and deliver
Irish unity.
“That is the project that can define the coming political era. Sinn Fein
is willing to stand with all those in favour of unity.”
The north Belfast representative added: “Sinn Fein wants an Ireland that
is defined by hope, prosperity and opportunity for all citizens
irrespective of their age, gender, religious persuasion, cultural
identity, political affiliation, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.”
Posted by Jim on
By Shashi Tharoor
On August 15, 1947, India won independence: a moment of birth that was
also an abortion, since freedom came with the horrors of the partition,
when East and West Pakistan were hacked off the stooped shoulders of
India by the departing British.
Seventy years later, it is hard to look back without horror at the
savagery of the country’s vivisection, when rioting, rape and murder
scarred the land, millions were uprooted from their homes, and billions
of rupees worth of property were damaged and destroyed.
There was an intangible partition, too. Friendships were destroyed,
families ruined, geography hacked, history misread, tradition denied,
minds and hearts torn apart.
The creation and perpetuation of Hindu-Muslim antagonism was the most
significant accomplishment of British imperial policy: the colonial
project of “divide et impera” (divide and rule) fomented religious
antagonisms to facilitate continued imperial rule and reached its tragic
culmination in 1947.
The British liked drawing lines on maps of other countries; they had
done it in the Middle East after World War I, and they did it again in
India. Partition was the coda to the collapse of British authority in
India in 1947.
The killing and mass displacement worsened as people sought frantically
to be on the “right” side of the lines the British were to draw across
their homeland. More than a million people died in the savagery that
accompanied the freedom of India and Pakistan; some 17 million were
displaced, and countless properties destroyed and looted. Lines meant
lives.
In that last, mad, headlong rush to freedom and partition, the British
emerge with little credit. Before World War II, they had no intention of
devolving power so rapidly, or at all. The experience of the elected
governments in the last years of the British Raj confirmed that the
British had never been serious about their proclaimed project of
promoting the responsible governance of India by Indians.
When the elected ministries of the Indian National Congress quit office
in protest against the British declaring war against Germany on India’s
behalf without consulting them, the British thought little of appointing
unelected Muslim Leaguers in their place and, in many cases, assuming
direct control of functions that had supposedly been devolved to
Indians. They openly helped the Muslim League take advantage of this
unexpected opportunity to exercise influence and patronage that their
electoral support had not earned them and to build up support while
their principal opponents languished in jail.
This was all part of the policy of divide and rule, systematically
promoting political divisions between Hindus and Muslims, defined as the
monolithic communities they had never been before the British.
The British had been horrified, during the Revolt of 1857, to see Hindus
and Muslims fighting side by side and under each other’s command against
the foreign oppressor. They vowed this would not happen again. “Divide
et impera was an old Roman maxim, and it shall be ours”, wrote Lord
Elphinstone. A systematic policy of fomenting separate consciousness
among the two communities was launched, with overt British sponsorship.
When restricted franchise was grudgingly granted to Indians, the British
created separate communal electorates, so that Muslim voters could vote
for Muslim candidates for Muslim seats. The seeds of division were sown,
to prevent a unified nationalist movement that could overthrow the
British.
No one in any responsible position in Britain as late as 1940 had any
serious intention whatsoever of relinquishing the Empire or surrendering
the jewel in His Majesty’s Crown to a rabble of nationalist Indians clad
in homespun. But the devastation of World War II meant that only
one-half of the phrase could survive: bled, bombed and battered for six
years, Britain could divide, but it could no longer rule.
The British – terrorised by German bombing, demoralised by various
defeats and large numbers of their soldiers taken prisoner, shaken by
the desertion of Indian soldiers and the mutiny of Indian sailors,
shivering in the record cold of the winter of 1945-46, crippled by power
cuts and factory closures resulting from a post-war coal shortage – were
exhausted and in no mood to focus on a distant Empire when their own
needs at home were so pressing.
They were also more or less broke: American loans had kept the economy
afloat and needed to be repaid, and even India was owed a sizeable debt.
Overseas commitments were no longer sustainable or particularly popular.
Exit was the only viable option: the question was what they would leave
behind – one India, two or several fragments?
Britain’s own tactics before and during the war ensured that by the time
departure came, the Muslim League had been strengthened enough to
sustain its demand for a separate homeland for Muslims, and the
prospects of a united India surviving a British exit had essentially
faded. Divide et impera had worked too well: a device meant to
perpetuate British rule in India ensured a united India could not
survive without the British. Two countries was what it would be.
The task of dividing the two nations was assigned to Sir Cyril
Radcliffe, a lawyer who had never been to India before and knew nothing
of its history, society or traditions. Radcliffe, perspiring profusely
in the unfamiliar heat, drew up his maps in less than five weeks,
dividing provinces, districts, villages, homes and hearts – and promptly
scuttled to Britain, never to return to India. The British Empire simply
crumbled in disorder. The British were heedless of the lives that would
be lost in their headlong rush to the exits.
The scars of the partition have lasted 70 years, even though India has
emerged as a thriving pluralist democracy while Pakistan – splitting
into two with the secession of the East as Bangladesh in 1971 – and
Bangladesh have encountered difficulties in maintaining democracy. But
India’s flourishing democracy of seven decades is no tribute to British
rule. It is a bit rich for the British to suppress, exploit, imprison,
torture and maim people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that
they are a democracy at the end of it.
If Britain’s greatest accomplishment was the creation of a single
political unit called India, fulfilling the aspirations of visionary
Indian emperors from Ashoka to Akbar, then its greatest failure must be
the shambles of that original Brexit – cutting and running from the land
they had claimed to rule for its betterment, leaving behind a million
dead, 17 million displaced, billions of rupees of property destroyed,
and the flames of communal hatred blazing hotly across the ravaged land.
There is no greater indictment of the failures of British rule in India
than the tragic manner of its ending.
* Shashi Tharoor is an elected member of India’s parliament and chairs
its Foreign Affairs Committee. He is the prize-winning author of 16
books, including, most recently, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did
To India.
Posted by Jim on
Claims by the British government that they wish to impose no additional
border reinforcements in Ireland following their departure from the
European Union are being greeted with scepticism.
After months of contradictory and confused statements and stances, two
documents emerged this week which offered the prospect of setting out
the British position on key issues such as customs and immigration
controls.
However, the claim that the British government will make no effort to
prevent immigrants arriving to Britain via Ireland on foot of their
racially-motivated Brexit has already been widely ridiculed. A bizarre
‘do-nothing’ fudge on customs controls in the north of Ireland has been
greeted similarly.
The Irish border currently has 275 border crossings, more than twice the
number the EU has along its entire frontier with eastern Europe. Despite
detailed plans being advanced for weeks, suggestions to use advanced spy
cameras and electromagnetic scanning on the border to impose controls
appear to have been shelved for now.
However, fears remains that the documents could form the first gambit in
a blame game over moves which could ultimately return the Irish border
to its status as the most militarised frontier in western Europe.
The hardline unionist DUP said it had persuaded the British government
to “rule out” any Brexit that would involve a border between the two
islands. They said they had convinced London to reject the treatment of
the Six Counties as a separate entity, subject to separate rules, or for
it to remain part of the EU customs union or single market.
The current British position puts the onus on the Dublin government and
the EU to impose border restrictions to prevent illegal immigration and
trade controls. British officials claimed that their hands-off proposals
could be open to “fraud” but that this could be “managed”.
However, former UKIP leader and prominent Brexiteer Nigel Farage said it
was “of concern” that EU citizens would still be able to move freely
across the Irish border without any immigration checks. The Liberal
Democrats said the latest proposal “has more holes in it than a
colander” as it admitted Britain would not reclaim control of its
borders.
The 26 County Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said
significant questions remained unanswered, but accepted the British
papers as a negotiating stance.
He joined in warnings about delivery, but welcomed stated commitments to
upholding the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the Common Travel Area, as
well as EU-related funding for the border area.
Referring to the paper on future customs arrangements published on
Tuesday, Mr Coveney said he welcomed language he had not heard before
about a ‘customs union partnership’ which, it was argued, would negate
the need for customs checks. However, he said some proposals were
“unworkable.. in the context of smuggling and so on”.
Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill rubbished the plans, describing them as
“big on aspiration and light on clarity”, “big on rhetoric but thin on
actual commitments”.
She said the proposals on customs had been dismissed within hours as
deluded, untested and unrealistic.
“What the British government are doing is treating us as collateral
damage,” she said. “They are very interested in the needs of the British
people but not of the needs of the people here who voted to remain
within the European Union.
“I think we could be forgiven for thinking that the British government
in this latest document are using us and our unique circumstances here
to try to put pressure on the European Union.”
Labour MP Conor McGinn, who grew up in the North of Ireland, accused
Theresa May’s government of “vagueness and posturing.”
“These proposals on a light touch border are lighter still on detail,”
Mr McGinn said.
Sinn Fein’s Brexit spokesperson David Cullinane aid today that the
British proposals for a “bespoke” customs union after March 2019 show
that the Tories “have not quite grasped the reality of the situation
that Britain finds itself in”.
However, he welcomed the fact that the London government had
acknowledged that a full and complete break from the customs union and
the single market would not be possible by March 2019.
“Furthermore, the proposal to extend article 50 requires the agreement
of all 27 states, including the Irish government.
“The Irish government should stand up for the national interest and
should only agree to an extension that is in our interests, that is, the
economy, trade, the rights of citizens, and the protection of the Good
Friday Agreement, in all of its aspects.
“The British government’s policy of Brexit is bad for our economy, trade
and agreements.
“The best solution is for the whole island of Ireland to remain within
the EU; the single market, customs union, and common travel area
together. This can be achieved through designated special status for the
North within the EU, avoiding any economic border, and retaining the
free movement of people, goods, and services.”
Sinn Fein MEP Martina Anderson said the current Tory Brexit agenda is an
attack on the human rights of the people of the north.
“The fact that the proposals published this week by the British
government on dealing with Brexit and the north is totally silent on the
human rights, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights, and
continued access the courts over breaches to human rights legislation is
very concerning.
“The Tories talk about being committed to the Good Friday Agreement in
all of its parts but appear to have ignored their human rights
obligations under the agreement.
“The entirety of the Good Friday Agreement, including the human rights
it safeguards, must be protected in the Brexit negotiations.
“The best way to protect our rights is for the north to secure
designated special status within the EU.”
There are also concerns that Britain’s new diplomatic offensive amounts
to little more than covering propaganda for aggressive actions down the
line. Notably, after months of encouragement in the British right-wing
media for Ireland to leave the EU as the solution to the border problem,
traditional anti-Irish rhetoric has returned.
An openly racist piece for Country Squire Magazine, headlined ‘Get
Stuffed, Eire’, has attracted widespread indignation.
In a long rant claiming the “best things in Eire are all British”,
author Jim Browne labelled Ireland a country “where the burglars from
Britain – with surnames like Kettle and Rafferty – return to build
eyesore ‘palaces’ in ratholes like Rathkeale (a small Irish town swollen
by the proceeds of crime)”.
Posted by Jim on August 17, 2017
Dr Féilim Ó hAdhmaill says he suffered ‘waterboarding’ after arrest in Belfast in 1978
Freya McClements. Irish Times. Dublin. Monday, August 14, 2017
A university lecturer who alleges he suffered “waterboarding” after he was arrested in Belfast in 1978 has said he believes torture “was the norm, rather than the exception” in the North in the 1970s.
Dr Féilim Ó hAdhmaill – who was then a 20-year-old student at Queen’s University, Belfast – said he believed he was going to die when water was poured over his mouth and nose.
“The sensation was that of drowning, you felt you were drowning because you couldn’t breathe in air, all you were breathing in was water.
“I remember thinking, how far are they going to go? Are they going to kill me?”
A 1978 statement by Dr. Ó hAdhmaill, who was then known as Phelim Hamill, is one of a number of documents uncovered by Derry-based human rights organization the Pat Finucane Centre which contain allegations of what is now known as “waterboarding”.
It involves temporarily filling a victim’s nose, sinuses, mouth and throat with water so that he or she has the sensation of drowning.
The statements given by Dr. Ó hAdhmaill and others are to be publicly read in Derry on Monday as part of an exhibition on the legacy of colonialism.
In his statement, to the Association for Legal Justice (ALJ), Dr. Ó hAdhmaill said he had been arrested and beaten by about 20 detectives.
“My arms and legs were pinned down and a light-coloured towel was put over my head, obstructing my vision.
“They tied the towel around my neck and choked me. Whilst the towel was tied around my face a cup of water was poured down my throat and nose giving me a drowning feeling.”
A British government spokesperson said the UK “considers torture or inhuman treatment to be an abhorrent violation of human rights and human dignity”.
“It consistently and unreservedly condemns the practice,” the spokesperson said.
Sign admission
Dr. Ó hAdhmaill said the RUC wanted him to admit involvement in the murder of a police officer. “I was held for a number of days, during which I was badly beaten.
“The main aim was to get me to sign a statement of admission of involvement in the IRA and involvement in the killing of a member of the RUC who worked in Castlereagh. A number of people were rounded up and brought in, and I was one of them.
“During that particular period it was the norm and I thought my treatment was severe, but it wasn’t unusual.
“It was only really when things came out about waterboarding in Iraq that people started to revisit some of the stuff that took place in the North and my case was one of a number of cases where it was alleged that what we went through was waterboarding.
“I had never heard the term waterboarding until Iraq, so I would never have used the term waterboarding.”
In a statement, the PSNI’s Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said that as he had not seen the documentation referred to he was unable to provide any substantive comment on its substance at this time.
“Where people have a complaint regarding the actions of army personnel, they should contact the police.
“Anyone with a complaint about the actions of police should contact the office of the Police Ombudsman,” he said.
Prison term
In 1994 Dr. Ó hAdhmaill was convicted of conspiring to cause explosions in England and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He was released under the Good Friday Agreement, and is now a lecturer in social policy at University College, Cork.
“The thing that I’m most concerned about today is peace, and it seems to me that we’re not going to get peace until we have some sort of release for people who have gone through all sorts of things.
“That includes people who have been damaged by the IRA, people who have been damaged by loyalists but also people who have been damaged by the state.
“Rather than saying no, we didn’t use torture, I think the British government needs to come out and say yes, we did this as part of a number of different attempts to deal with what we thought was an emergency situation
“At the end of the day the British soldiers and the RUC, regardless of what I personally feel about them, they were the cannon fodder, they were the foot-soldiers, they did what they were told.
“You have to look at the people who were behind the policy. You have to look at the state.”
Posted by Jim on August 12, 2017
Over a thousand people took part in an anti-internment parade through
Belfast which was banned from the city centre last weekend, while two
tiny loyalist and fascist events were allowed to take place there.
The well-marshalled parade organised by the Anti-internment League (AIL)
passed off quietly and ended in a rally at a PSNI barrier of Land Rovers
and riot police.
It had earlier travelled from Ardoyne to North Queen Street through the
Cliftonville Road, Antrim Road and New Lodge districts, but was
prevented from carrying through to West Belfast.
The rally was chaired by AIL spokesman Dee Fennell and included an
address by Lorraine Taylor whose husband Tony is currently interned in
jail without charge.
Mrs Taylor said the jailing of her husband has “devastated” her entire
family.
Former political prisoner Tony Taylor was summarily returned to prison
last March by then British Direct Ruler Theresa Villiers. Parole chiefs
recently rejected a bid by him to be released from Maghaberry Prison.
Mrs Taylor told those attending that her husband has told her he is
“committed to the process of the transition to a peaceful society”.
“And that view was clearly shared by the numerous people who spoke up
for him in his parole hearing recently – including clergy, politicians,
community and trade union mediators and human rights organisations ,”
she said.
“The decision not to let him out was at best underhand.
“It was based on a secret submission to the hearing by the secret
services, a submission that Tony could neither hear not challenge.”
In an unusual joint statement, the SDLP’s Mark H Durkan, Sinn Fein MP
Elisha McCallion and MEP Martina Anderson aid Mr Taylor’s detention
violated his human rights.
“The British government’s continued use of this unjust power to revoke
someone’s license while providing no evidence of any wrongdoing is an
affront to justice and human rights,” they said.
“As political leaders in this city and district we have raised Tony
Taylor’s case at every level and supported the campaign for his
release.”
They said Mr Taylor should either be brought before a court or released.
“If evidence exists to suggest he is a risk to the public it should be
put before him and his legal team in open court so it can be
challenged,” they said.
There was also strong condemnation of the burning of stolen campaign
posters for Mr Taylor on loyalist bonfires in the Nelson Drive and
Tullyally areas of Derry.
Ms McCallion said the placing of posters on the bonfires was a hate
crime. Lorraine Taylor also expressed her disgust and said she would be
reporting the incident to the PSNI.
“What would [DUP MP] Gregory Campbell have to say about this, he called
my husband a terrorist, will he support the burning of his image on the
bonfire?” she said.