PSNI receive Dolours Price interviews

Posted by Jim on July 10, 2013

Confidential interviews with senior IRA figure Dolours Price have been  handed over to British security forces, it has been confirmed.    The PSNI police in the north of Ireland said two detectives had e  travelled to Boston to take possession of materials authorised by the  United States Supreme Court.    “The officers will return to Northern Ireland to assess the material and  continue with their inquiries,” a spokesman added.    It is thought the interviews may contain information which might be used  by the PSNI against a number of republicans, including senior Sinn Fein  figures.    Dolours was a former republican hunger-striker who became a bitter critic  of Sinn Fein when the party encouraged the IRA to give up its weapons  and joined a local devolved administration under British rule.    She clashed with party leader Gerry Adams in recent years over his  denials that he had never been a member of the IRA.    The 62-year-old consistently had claimed that Mr Adams, now a Louth TD,  had played a significant role in IRA actions, including the  controversial killing of alleged informer Jean McConville.    She who died in January amid a trans-Atlantic legal battle over her  interviews and after a long battle with post-traumatic stress disorder  and depression.    The allegations are among those believed to be contained in an interview  with Irish ‘researchers’ Anthony McIntyre and Ed Moloney, who were hired  for the purpose by the American university.    The recordings were started in 2001 and were made on the condition that  confidentiality would be guaranteed until after the death of the  republicans and loyalists who took part.    McIntyre and Moloney failed to block the release of the tapes after the  PSNI launched a high profile legal challenge to obtain the testimony.   However, they said the eleven interviews which were ordered to be  released to the PSNI are of limited value, and significantly reduced  from a previous demand for 85 interviews.    The PSNI’s move to take possession of the tapes this weekend appeared  designed to pre-empt a new legal challenge based on an internal British  police report which found bias in the handling of historical cases by  the PSNI’s  Historical Enquiries Team (HET).    The Policing Board in the North has said it has no confidence in the  leadership of the HET Team on foot of the damning report, which found  British soldiers had received preferential treatment from investigators.    In a statement on Saturday, Moloney and McIntyre urged the Dublin and  London governments “to suspend all criminal and non-criminal inquiries  into the past until agreement has been reached by all parties on a  credible way forward and a mechanism to deal with the past has been  created in such a way that it commands widespread confidence and  support”.

Twelfth Parade past Ardoyne rerouted

Posted by Jim on

A decision by the Parades Commission that a return parade by the Orange Order should not pass the Ardoyne shop fronts in north Belfast on the Twelfth of July has been widely welcomed. The Parades Commission issued its determination in the absence of any agreement between the Orange Order and local nationalist residents. The less contentious morning (‘outward’) feeder parade will be allowed to proceed, although with restrictions. Hundreds of marches are set to take place on Friday on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, an event long marked by Protestants in the north of Ireland with large displays of sectarian triumphalism. The Parades Commission was set up in 1998 to adjudicate on the routes and other aspects of sectarian parades. The annual evening feeder parade through a number of nationalist areas in north Belfast has caused intense violence and hundreds of arrests in recent years. Unlike other restrictions, such as those placed on the number of marchers or their permitted behaviour in nationalist areas, decisions on routes are normally enforced by the police. Following its breakthrough determination last night, unionists immediately demanded its abolition. On Tuesday night, the Parades Commission said it was time to move beyond the “pain and blame cycle that has dogged parading disputes”. It was also revealed on Tuesday that 630 police from Britain who were used for the G8 Summit have been retained for this year’s marching season. Last minute talks this year between a small Sinn Fein group CARA (Crumlin and Ardoyne Residents Association) and the Orange Order had failed to make any progress. Local Sinn Fein Assembly member Gerry Kelly welcomed the decision by the Parades Commission. “It has created the space for talking to continue,” he said. “That decision to begin the talks was a brave one by both the residents group CARA and the Orange Order. Both have agreed to resume the talks and that is to be welcomed. “A peaceful 12th will give those talks a good foundation in which a local resolution can be found to this parading issue.” North Belfast DUP politicians Nigel Dodds and Nelson McCausland called for the removal of the Parades Commission. “This ruling has placed the Ligoniel Orange Lodges in an impossible position,” they said in a joint statement. “They are being denied the right to return home peacefully and with dignity along the main road they have traversed for decades. “The only answer is the removal of the Parades Commission. This relic of direct rule is outdated and out of control. It is unaccountable and has no democratic basis or mandate.” The Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective (GARC), a more hardline Ardoyne nationalist residents’ association which was not invited to hold parade talks, said the decision was overdue. Earlier on Tuesday, it held a whiteline protest in opposition to Friday’s parade, which it said was a “hate-filled display of sectarian coat-trailing bigotry”. “The constant pressure by GARC and the community of Ardoyne has forced the Parades Commission to capitulate from their position of facilitating unwanted outdated provocative acts of sectarian triumphalism,” they said. They described CARA as “an unrepresentative micro-group with a discredited agenda” and expressed satisfaction at the collapse of talks which they said amounted to “a facilitation process”. “The residents of Ardoyne will only except one genuine settlement, which is that all Loyal Order marches through our area must cease forthwith and our community be allowed to live in peace free from unwanted sectarian parades. “The people of Ardoyne have shown by their resilience that they will not be beaten or brutalised into submission as our proud community has shown it can defend its self against any adversity.”

A tale of two enclaves

Posted by admin on July 7, 2013

 By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)

 For understandable reasons most of the publicity about petrol bombs  flying over interface fencing is focused on east Belfast’s Short  Strand. It’s not the only place where there is tension, of course. A  couple of weeks ago someone threw a petrol bomb into the small  Protestant enclave at Suffolk in west Belfast. In some respects that  enclave is a mirror image of the Short Strand but in important ways it  is completely different. It’s a tiny orange blob in a vast sea of green  facing Lenadoon and Andersonstown across the Stewartstown Road.

 Middle-class Catholic housing around Black’s Road completes the  encirclement. Fewer than 750 Protestants remain in the district. The  Short Strand is much larger, with over 3,000 people hemmed in against  the River Lagan by the more than 60,000 in overwhelmingly unionist east  Belfast. Both enclaves are cut off from their ethnic soul mates.

 There the similarities end. In the case of Suffolk, Sinn Fein people  have worked hard to reach out the hand of friendship and develop links  across the two communities. It hasn’t always been successful. After all  there was that recent petrol-bomb attack. However, immediately  afterwards Sinn Fein councillor Gerard O’Neill issued a statement

 saying: “Whoever was behind the attack and for whatever motive, it is a  disgrace and will not stop the good work continuing between the  communities of Suffolk and Lenadoon areas. If it is sectarian then the  people of the Suffolk estate should know that those that carried it out  do not represent their neighbours in Lenadoon. Sectarianism from  whatever guise is a cancer in our society and needs treated as such.”

 Of course it was sectarian but apart from that flaw in his remarks  O’Neill made an effort to reassure the people in Suffolk.

 On the other hand it’s rare to hear similar condemnation of their own  side from unionist representatives in east Belfast. Yes, it does happen  but almost invariably only after someone in the media has called to ask  for a reaction. There’s almost never a spontaneous and unequivocal  rejection of sectarianism. The Short Strand’s Niall O Donnghaile last  month appealed to unionists to “show leadership”. He’s wasting his  breath. Maybe he’s being ironic. Why does he assume that unionists  disagree with the antics of Orangemen and the loyalist bands they hire  prancing past St Matthew’s? Virtually every elected unionist in Belfast  (including the one who occasionally dons the mantle of first minister)  signed the notorious letter last year defying the Parades Commission’s  statutory role. Unionist politicians march along behind bands that  breach Parades Commission determinations. None of them has ever  condemned misbehaviour during marches. On the contrary they have  justified and excused it. By asking unionists to show leadership  presumably Sinn Fein politicians, for it’s not only O Donnghaile,  expect them to make speeches castigating misbehaviour. Why would they  when they agree with what is being done? That’s why they justify and  excuse it.

 Yes, it is worthwhile for Sinn Fein to talk of reconciliation and try  to find ways to reach out to unionists but the party needs to realise  that most unionist public representatives oppose equality and disagree  with the Good Friday Agreement and its principles. Most DUP politicians  didn’t even agree with the St Andrews fig leaf and have since reneged  on what they agreed. Peter Robinson was faced with a revolt at  Hillsborough in February 2010 when Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen  compelled him to subscribe to devolved policing and justice.

 Has any politician of note from any mainstream unionist party made a  speech supporting the concept of partnership in northern society? The  sad fact is that most unionists who vote, though admittedly we’re  approaching the stage where most don’t vote, vote for a party that  disagrees fundamentally with the political arrangements they’re  operating and look forward to ‘a return to normality’ and you know what  that means. So when Sinn Fein appeals to them to show leadership,  unionists must be puzzled because the truth is that they are showing  leadership. It’s a fallacy to think they’re looking over their  shoulders at more hardline rivals. Sinn Fein doesn’t even need to  review the DUP’s performance during the ‘fleg protests’. Just consider  the idiotic remarks of Paul Girvan about burning tricolours.

Why this July 4th brings hope for the 50,000 undocumented Irish in the U.S

Posted by Jim on July 5, 2013

FR. MC MANUS JOINS IN CALL FOR DISSOLUTION OF HET – Backs Relatives For Justice

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CAPITOL HILL. Thursday, July 4, 2013

Fr. Sean Mc Manus — President of the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus  has backed the demand by Relatives For Justice ( Belfast) that HET be dissolved.
Speaking shortly after he called for a Congressional Hearing into HET’s cover-up of State-killings, Fr. Mc Manus said: ” I fully support Mark Thompson’s call for the dissolution of HET. We will be disseminating his statement [see below] on behalf of Relative For Relatives to Members of Congress. Mark graphically raised the whole issue of the HET when he  testified before Congress in 2012.And Irish-Americans will be working for another Congressional Hearing on this whole issue. British Government cover-up continues to be a cancer at the heart of Northern Ireland. It is  nonsense to claim, as the Northern Ireland Government does,  that the peace-process is “solid” when there is such cancerous growth.”
END
 
                                               STATEMENT BY RELATIVES FOR JUSTICE
 
Speaking in response to today’s news that the Policing Board has no confidence in the leadership of the HET in light of yesterday’s damning report by HMIC, Relatives for Justice has issued the following statement;
 
‘Removing the HET Director and senior staff, even removing the Chief Constable will not suffice in addressing the fundamental and systemic problems that lie at the very heart of the HET.
 
‘Such actions would be superficial and cosmetic as the real problem rests with the leadership and intelligence section of the PSNI that in effect created, oversaw and covered the illegal policy practice of the HET in respect of killings by the British Army.
 
‘The facts are that this policy was overseen by the Chief Constable even though he was aware of this illegal practice since coming into office. His Assistant Chief Constables were aware of it since at least 2009.
 
‘Such disregard for the rule of law on the part of new policing at the highest levels has clearly demonstrated to families that the PSNI cannot be allowed to reinvestigate these killings. They cannot be trusted.
 
‘Transferring British Army killings to the PSNI will result in similar tactics aimed at protecting soldiers from prosecution with the continued practice of state impunity for state actions.
 
‘In order that the British government meet their investigative obligations they must create an independent body similar to the Police Ombudsman to examine British Army killings.