Posted by Jim on July 26, 2015
A number of events are planned to mark the centenary of the funeral of
Irish patriot Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa of the Irish Republican
Brotherhood. Sinn Fein are carrying out a re-enactment of the funeral as
their first event of their 2016 Centenary programme in Dublin.
The following is an account of his life, and the full text of the famous
oration delivered by Patrick Pearse at his graveside, one hundred years
ago this week.
Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1831 – 1915) was born to Irish tenant farmers
on September 11, 1831 in Rosscarbery, County Cork, Ireland. Described as
the last great peasantry of Europe, even the poorest denizens of London
were better off than the typical Irish farmer. When he was twelve years
old, the Act of Union was enacted in January 1801 which abolished the
Kingdom of Ireland with its independent parliament and created the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that linked the fortunes of
Ireland to England.
Ireland at that time was a land where absentee landlords controlled 90%
of the arable land, and the majority of crops and livestock produced by
the tenant farmers was being collected and sent across the channel in
lieu of rent. The natives were forced to subsist on little more than the
lowly potato, which provided the nutrients necessary to support life and
had the highest yield per acre. According to the 1841 census, land in
Ireland was divided into holdings among 825,000 people.
By 1845 two and a half million acres had been planted in Ireland with
lumpers, the poorest variety, and planted over and over until it was all
the easier for a disease to infect and destroy them. When the potato
crop failed that year, a good portion of the harvest was lost. It failed
again in 1846, and the crop failed totally in 1847. This year, known
forever after as “Black ’47”, was by far the worst, and spelled certain
death for those whose existence was linked to the tuber. At harvest
time, the potatoes were black when pulled out of the ground and turned
into mush when cooked. Literally millions of Irish men and women were
faced with an inability to pay their rent and subsequently, were cast
out of their rude dwellings. Help from across the channel was not
forthcoming and when it eventually came, it was inadequate. The nation
was suddenly deprived of its primary food source and its only means of
paying “the rint”. Thousands were evicted and crowded the workhouses
while thousands more wandered the roads aimlessly in search of food.
More than a million people chose to emigrate, while more than a million
others stayed and died. For those who remained and survived, the abject
poverty and hopelessness of their lives contrasted sharply with those of
their brethren abroad.
Rossa saw all of this and it left its mark on him. He was too young to
fully realise what a dire situation his family was in but he describes
their plight in a few words:
“I did not know how my father felt, I did not know how my mother felt; I
did not know how I felt myself. There were four of us children. The
potato crop had gone. The wheat crop had gone”.
In order to feed his family, Rossa’s father took a job building roads
and he caught famine fever and died in March 1847. To the end of his
life Rossa refused to acknowledge that the famine was an act of God,
considering it a blasphemy and an injustice to blame God. English
landlords were to blame, he held, and that they were worse than the
malign demons of Hell. It was this undying hatred and uncompromising
focus on Irish freedom that would have impact long after he was gone.
In 1856, he founded the Phoenix National and Literary Society ‘for the
liberation of Ireland by force of arms’. Rossa was still in Cork when
James Stephens, Thomas Clarke Luby, James Denieefe, Garret O Shaughnessy
and Peter Langan founded the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Dublin on
St. Patrick’s Day, 1858. Stephens himself came to Rosscarbery in 1858
and Rossa was one of his first recruits. In December 1858 Rossa was
arrested and jailed without trial until July 1859. Rossa was accused of
plotting a Fenian rising in 1865, tried for high treason and sentenced
to penal servitude for life due to his previous convictions.
He was imprisoned in Pentonville, Portland and Chatham Prisons in
England where, for eight years, he suffered inhumane and cruel treatment
at the hands of the prison authorities. He was fed on bread and water
for 28 days at a time. In Chatham, his hands were cuffed behind him
every morning at 6:45am and to be able to eat his food he had to get
down on all fours like a dog. This went on for more than thirty days. In
1869 he was elected to Parliament for Tipperary but his election was
declared void because he was imprisoned.
In Ireland, Rossa served part of his sentence but was released in the
general amnesty of fenians in 1870 with the understanding that he did
not return. Given a choice, he weighed going to Australia, but settled
on America. O’Donovan Rossa arrived in New York City in January 1871
aboard the steamer SS Cuba with other released Fenian prisoners Charles
Underwood O’Connell, John Devoy, Henry Mulleda and John McClure. Of the
five, only Rossa and Devoy remained active, both joining the fledgling
Clan na Gael, founded by New York Herald scientific reporter Jerome J.
Collins in June, 1867 as a response to the feuding within the Fenian
Brotherhood. Upon his arrival, Rossa joined the Fenian Brotherhood and
edited the American edition of the United Irishman, and ran
unsuccessfully for political office against Tammany Hall’s William Marcy
“Boss” Tweed in 1871. In 1872 he leased The Northern Hotel near Chatham
Square in Manhattan’s notorious Five Points district.
On September 4, 1875 an anonymous letter appeared in Patrick Ford’s
Irish World, the premier Irish American newspaper of the day. The letter
called for militant action, which “does more to keep the faith alive
than a thousand sensible, prudent, wiseheaded patriots who crawl on
crutches…into forgotten graves.” The idea was not lost on Rossa. He
responded with a letter on December 5th and established what he called a
‘skirmishing fund’ to begin soliciting donations to send the war back to
England. He proposed the use of the newly invented dynamite as the
instrument of retribution. Although the like-minded Ford had
editorialised that there were enough Irishmen living in England to “give
London to flames and reduce Liverpool to disaster…spread through all
the emporia of England, terror, conflagration, and irretrievable
destruction”, he held the letter for three months before publishing it
in March, 1876. The fund was wildly successful, collecting $23,000 by
March 1877 from 30,000 contributors in the United States, Canada,
Ireland, England and Scotland. Rossa had accurately gauged the
temperment of the Irish Diaspora.
Rossa began writing a column in the Irish World and in it, he chastised
his old friend Devoy and Clan na Gael for embracing a policy of
co-operation with the constitutional movement. Rossa’s threats of
bombings horrified Clan na Gael. Secretly, they planned the very same
thing and Rossa’s bombast was calling undue attention to them. When the
fund reached $43,000 later in 1877, Clan na Gael seized control, but
left Rossa as secretary.
By the following March, the Northern Hotel had failed but Rossa
continued his anti-English vitriol. When he was seen going from one
tavern to another on Park Row near the Herald offices, Devoy seized the
opportunity and had him expelled from Clan na Gael, supposedly for his
drinking, but more so because of his influence among Irish and
Irish-Americans and his insistence on keeping the Fenian Brotherhood
alive contrary to the wishes of the clan. Devoy had him put in a convent
in Summit, NJ for rehabilitation. The Fenian Brotherhood, hopelessly
divided and powerless, elected Rossa the last “Head Centre” in 1877, but
by 1880 they had begun to disappear, and the group no longer had the
financial support or membership it had once enjoyed.
Rossa’s blustering was nothing more than that until January, 1881 when a
bomb exploded outside a military base in Salford, near Manchester
killing a 7 year old boy. In June 1881 two of Rossa’s men were arrested
in Liverpool with a cast iron pipe filled with explosives smuggled from
America. Two weeks later, six dynamite bombs, dubbed ‘infernal machines’
by the press were discovered aboard the SS Malta, docked in Liverpool
after arriving from America. The bombing campaign was underway and Rossa
had drawn blood.
Rossa, by now a celebrity of international proportions, was questioned
by reporters about the bombings and he admitted to supplying the money.
The British government began calling for his extradition. They found it
appalling that a civilised country such as the United States would allow
such activities against another, and now it has led to bloodshed. Rossa
himself found this strangely ironic as England had paid his passage to
America in 1871 with the condition being he could not return to England,
Scotland or Ireland for twenty years. Now they wanted him back.
When the reigns of Clan na Gael power passed from John Devoy in New York
to Alexander Sullivan of Chicago, the Skirmishing Fund came under the
control of The Triangle, an inner circle consisting of three members of
Clan na Gael who re-instituted Rossa’s original scheme and began in
earnest the “Dynamite War” against England.
The Rossa aspect and the Clan na Gael portion of the entire affair is
lumped together, but the devices used by Rossa’s men were crude and
caused little damage. The explosives used by the clan bombers were far
more deadly and created far more havoc, but it was Rossa’s mastery of
propaganda, more so than his actions that put fear in English hearts.
Due to his campaign, nearly every branch of the nationalist movement
shunned him, and it also nearly cost him his life.
“ENGLAND’S BULLET — A HIRED BRITISH ASSASSIN ATTEMPTS TO MURDER
O’DONOVAN ROSSA — ENGLAND WILD WITH REJOICING”, declared the Irish
World headline in February 1885. An Englishwoman named Yseult Dudley met
Rossa near Broadway on the pretext of making a contribution to his
skirmishing fund and shot him several times. The incident caused a
sensation in New York as Rossa and even some of his detractors declared
Dudley to be an agent of the English government. England claimed that
she was a mentally unstable woman acting on her own delusions. Rossa
never believed it.
Rossa settled on Staten Island and would tell of his experiences in his
1874 book Prison Life (re-released as Irish Rebels in English Prisons in
1882) and Rossa’s Recollections 1838-1898. For the remainder of his life
he remained the most visible Irish exile in America and an outspoken
critic of the British occupation of Ireland. He appeared at speaking
engagements all over the country relating his prison experiences,
performing readings of his books and giving accounts of his involvement
in the Fenian Brotherhood and his fight against the British. No longer a
political pariah, he visited Ireland in 1894 and was given a patriot’s
welcome. He visited again in 1904 when he was made a freeman of Cork
City. In Dublin, a memorial to Rossa stands on Grafton Street corner and
Richmond Bridge was renamed O’Donovan Rossa Bridge in his honour.
Skibbereen is home to the O’Donovan Rossa memorial park.
On his deathbed at age 83 years, he sent “Rocky Mountain” O’Brien to get
old friends John Devoy and Ricard O’Sullivan Burke and bring them to his
bedside. He died a tired old warrior on June 29,1915 in St. Vincent’s
Hospital on Staten Island after a two year illness. Devoy, aware that
when Young Irelander Terrence Bellew McManus had died in San Francisco
in 1866 the funeral procession became a massive propaganda coup, he
contacted Tom Clarke in Ireland, himself a Clan na Gael member, and
Rossa’s remains were sent home.
His funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery on August 1st, 1915 was a huge affair,
garnering substantial publicity for the Irish Volunteers and the IRB at
the time when a rebellion (later to emerge as the Easter Rising) was
being planned. The eulogy, given by Padraig Pearse, remains one of the
most famous speeches of the Republican Movement. It ended with the
lines: “They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they
have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think
that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided
against everything; but, the fools, the fools, the fools! — They have
left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland
unfree shall never be at peace.”
The following is the full text of that oration, with translations.
A Ghaedheala,
[Irish People,]
Do hiarradh orm-sa labhairt indiu ar son a bhfuil cruinnighthe ar an
lathair so agus ar son a bhfuil beo de Chlannaibh Gaedheal, ag moladh an
leomhain do leagamar i gcre annso agus ag griosadh meanman na gcarad ata
go bronach ina dhiaidh.
[I was asked to speak on behalf of those gathered at this place and of
all who are alive of the Irish Family, to praise the lion we lay in the
soil today and to offer encouragement to those who are sad because he is
gone.]
A chairde, na biodh bron ar einne ata ina sheasamh ag an uaigh so, acht
biodh buidheachas againn inar gcroidhthibh do Dhia na ngras do
chruthuigh anam uasal aluinn Dhiarmuda Ui Dhonnabhain Rosa agus thug se
fhada dho ar an saoghal so.
[Friends, let nobody standing at this grave be sad, but give heartfelt
thanks to the God of Graces who created the noble beautiful soul of
Diarmuid O Donnabhain Rosa and who gave him such a long life.]
Ba chalma an fear thu, a Dhiarmuid. Is threan d’fhearais cath ar son
cirt do chine, is ni beag ar fhuilingis; agus ni dheanfaidh Gaedhil
dearmad ort go brath na breithe.
[You were a fine stalwart man Diarmuid. Your strong manly struggle for
the rights of your race and you suffered much; and the Irish will never
ever forget you.]
Acht, a chairde, na biodh bron orainn, acht biodh misneach inar
gcroidhthibh agus biodh neart inar gcuirleannaibh, oir cuimhnighimis
nach mbionn aon bhas ann nach mbionn aiseirghe ina dhiaidh, agus gurab
as an uaigh so agus as na huaghannaibh ata inar dtimcheall eireochas
saoirse Gheadheal.
[But friends, let us not be sorrowful but rather let us have courage in
our hearts and let ius have strength in our limbs, as we remember that
no death occurs that is not followed by a resurection, and that out of
this grave and from the graves surrounding us will Irish freedom rise.]
It has seemed right, before we turn away from this place in which we
have laid the mortal remains of O’Donovan Rossa, that one among us
should, in the name of all, speak the praise of that valiant man, and
endeavour to formulate the thought and the hope that are in us as we
stand around his grave. And if there is anything that makes it fitting
that I, rather than some other, rather than one of the grey-haired men
who were young with him and shared in his labour and in his suffering,
should speak here, it is perhaps that I may be taken as speaking on
behalf of a new generation that has been re-baptised in the Fenian
faith, and that has accepted the responsibility of carrying out the
Fenian programme. I propose to you then that, here by the grave of this
unrepentant Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave
of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, each one for
himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage, such
unbreakable strength of soul as belonged to O’Donovan Rossa.
Deliberately here we avow ourselves, as he avowed himself in the dock,
Irishmen of one allegiance only. We of the Irish Volunteers, and you
others who are associated with us in to-day’s task and duty, are bound
together and must stand together henceforth in brotherly union for the
achievement of the freedom of Ireland. And we know only one definition
of freedom: it is Tone’s definition, it is Mitchel’s definition, it is
Rossa’s definition. Let no man blaspheme the cause that the dead
generations of Ireland served by giving it any other name and definition
than their name and their definition.
We stand at Rossa’s grave not in sadness but rather in exaltation of
spirit that it has been given to us to come thus into so close a
communion with that brave and splendid Gael. Splendid and holy causes
are served by men who are themselves splendid and holy. O’Donovan Rossa
was splendid in the proud manhood of him, splendid in the heroic grace
of him, splendid in the Gaelic strength and clarity and truth of him.
And all that splendour and pride and strength was compatible with a
humility and a simplicity of devotion to Ireland, to all that was olden
and beautiful and Gaelic in Ireland, the holiness and simplicity of
patriotism of a Michael O’Clery or of an Eoghan O’Growney. The clear
true eyes of this man almost alone in his day visioned Ireland as we of
to-day would surely have her: not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not
Gaelic merely, but free as well.
In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever before or perhaps
ever again, in a spiritual communion with those of his day, living and
dead, who suffered with him in English prisons, in communion of spirit
too with our own dear comrades who suffer in English prisons to-day, and
speaking on their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to Ireland our
love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate.
This is a place of peace, sacred to the dead, where men should speak
with all charity and with all restraint; but I hold it a Christian
thing, as O’Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to
hate oppression, and, hating them, to strive to overthrow them. Our foes
are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are,
they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young
men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the
seeds sown by the young men of ’65 and ’67 are coming to their
miraculous ripening to-day. Rulers and Defenders of Realms had need to
be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from
death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living
nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in
the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that
they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They
think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided
against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! — they have
left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland
unfree shall never be at peace.
Posted by Jim on
Neighborhood Joint
By EDNA ISHAYIK NY Times
Blazing summertime glory barely penetrated Irish Haven’s darkness. The air inside was sudsy — that classic dive-bar tang of decades of beers sloshed around wood paneling and century-old tile floors.
Each time the door opened, heads turned in unison. It was 4 in the afternoon, and few entered, but none were strangers to the patrons clustered at the elbow of the oak bar. They have lived in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, for decades — since immigrating from Ireland, or since birth — and this watering hole on the corner of Fourth Avenue and 58th Street has served as their neighborhood hub since 1964.
Among the bar’s regulars, stories unwind over hours, weaving from present to past and back again.
Linda McDonagh, 63, sat on her usual stool recounting teenage nights of barhopping from the Rainbow on 39thStreet to the Rainbow on 62nd Street but always ending at Irish Haven.
“This is all that’s left,” said Ms. McDonagh, her County Meath lilt detectable, though she left when she was 7. “All the other bars are gone.”
In his boggy brogue, Martin Pryce, 74, told a tale of a Norwegian dockworker shipwrecked in the harbor for two days. The gang nodded along — they remembered the man and they knew the story.
Only if Jimmy Gillick, 66, is bartending will Millie Rodman turn up, sipping vodkas with Coca-Cola from dainty Georgian Irish coffee glasses. Refusing to disclose her age, she said she was old enough to remember Sunset Park, now home to Hispanic and Chinese immigrants, when it was primarily Irish and Scandinavian and the pubs kept legions of stevedores and carpenters in drink and good company.
Brooklyn’s longshoreman trade has thinned, but construction jobs abound. At quitting time, six workers filed in, each choosing a stool. Not one spoke a word except to Mr. Gillick. For Scott Ventre, 53, of East Bedford-Stuyvesant, it’s the same every day: two Guinness and two shots.
“When I leave the job and get to the corner, I say, ‘There’s the subway, and there’s the bar. What do I want to do?’ So I’ll have a beer.”
John Fitzgerald, 53, a contractor, lives a few blocks away and has been drinking at the Haven since moving to New York in 1984.
“I know a lot of people who used to come here,” he said.
“Their ghosts are still floating around. The neighborhood, it’s become hipsterized,” he added, but he doesn’t mind the change. “You need new blood. It’s a culture shock for the old-timers, but not for me. I’m not that old.”
In 2011, Irish Haven almost went under, destined for a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise, but Matt Hogan stepped in and leased the bar from the original family owners. “They were going to cook the doughnuts here and sell them in the satellite ones, like a gas station or 7-Eleven,” Mr. Hogan said.
He changed little: a Facebook page, two functioning air-conditioning units and a trivia night. When bar stool vinyl cracked, he paid a premium to special-order a comparable vintage. Raising the price of a Guinness from $4 to $5 exposed a downside to regulars with long memories. “Some people are still mad,” Mr. Hogan said. “They used to pay $3.50.”
Before leaving, Ms. McDonagh and Mr. Pryce contemplated where they would go if the Haven shuttered.
“The Leif would be the next stop,” Ms. McDonagh said of another of the last remaining neighborhood Irish bars.
Mr. Pryce raised an eyebrow. “That or the cemetery,” he said. “We’d go in the ground.”
Posted by Jim on July 25, 2015
A new effort is underway to have the name of Derry city officially
recognised by the British government and internationally.
A majority of Derry City and Strabane District Council has backed a
motion by Sinn Fein Councillor Eric McGinley to seek information on how
to go about trying to change the city’s name, which officially remains
‘Londonderry’.
Derry’s name has been contentious since the Plantation of Ulster when
the prefix -London was attached for Protestant settlers from the city.
Prior to the arrival of the Planters, the city was recorded as ‘Derry’,
‘Daire’ or ‘Doire’ meaning Oak Grove in Irish and had been an important
trading port and ecclesiastical centre of learning during the Middle
Ages.
The council took a fresh vote after being told that a request had been
received for a public vote on recognising the ‘Derry’ name by way of an
internet campaign.
An online petition, which was launched in May, has to date achieved
support from over 2,700 people.
Previous attempts for an official name change have failed. In 1984 the
council changed its name from ‘Londonderry’ to Derry but the city
continues to be called ‘Londonderry’ by many government agencies.
Speaking on the matter, Councillor McGinley said it was the policy of
the previous Derry City Council to change the name of the city back to
Derry.
He said the proposal was not about airbrushing London from the history
of the city but rather creating “a clear brand, one single name, one
single identity” to promote it.
“Sinn Fein’s position hasn’t changed since March,” he added. “We would
propose today that Derry City and Strabane District Council seeks to
change the name of the city back to Derry and in that context writes to
the DoE [Department of the Environment at Stormont] seeking clarity of
the process that will allow that to proceed.”
Unionists opposed the change, pointing out that it had been blocked
previously. DUP Councillor David Ramsey said the issue was one of
equality and that a previous ‘Equality Impact Assessment’ was negative,
meaning the council could not make the change.
“London stone masons built the city, full stop,” he said.
When the issue was raised previously, a judge ruled that it was only the
English queen’s ‘Privy Council’ or special legislation which could
change the name. Councillor McGinley said he had wanted the council to
write to the Privy Council.
A recorded vote on Cllr McGinley’s proposal was taken at the council
meeting, with 28 Councillors voting to seek advice on how to change the
name, and nine voting against.
The petition to assert the Derry name can be signed here:
https://www.change.org/p/john-kelpie-change-the-name-of-derry
Posted by Jim on July 22, 2015
In regards Seamus Daly on his arrest and prosecution in relation to his alleged involvement in the Omagh Bombing 15th August 1998 and the attempted bombings of Lisburn on 30th April 1998. We maintain that the PSNI case being brought against him is flawed and his continued prosecution in this matter violates his human rights.
We maintain that the case against him, being brought by the PSNI contains serious inconsistencies which are contributing to the denial by the State of his right to a fair trial in relation to these offences and consequently his right to liberty.
We maintain that the prosecution has insufficient evidence to satisfy the criminal law standard of proof of guilt ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’. The PSNI accepted under a cross examination at the first bail application brought on behalf of Seamus Daly on 11th April 2014 that no new evidence has been found over a period of 14 years since the Omagh Bombing of 1998. These charges are therefore being brought on a review of available evidence rather than any new material.
Senior Prosecutors working on the case in 1999 would have examined whether there was a reasonable prospect of a conviction against Seamus Daly but the fact that no proceedings were initiated at the time demonstrates that the prosecution came to the conclusion that there was no prospect of a successful conviction at that time. This conclusion, therefore, continues to exist now, consequently, we consider that there is no evidential basis to support the charges being brought against Seamus Daly then or now. Why was he not arrested before if evidence was available?
Furthermore the prosecution case relates to the PSNI failure to locate him before the 7th of April 2014. The PSNI claimed that they had difficulty locating Seamus Daly before he was detained. However, statements obtained from neighbours of Seamus in Jonesborough, Newry, confirm that Seamus Daly has been living there openly for the last number of years. These witnesses include the school crossing-warden for Jonesborough Primary School, who saw Seamus Daly and his wife passing her every morning, and the parish priest Father Dermot Maloney who ‘would have met Seamus regularly about the area’. Father Maloney celebrated Seamus Daly’s wedding in 2012 and confirms his attendance at his son’s confirmation the year previous.
Seamus Daly has now been detained for over 15 months. He has yet to have a committal hearing. This failure to advance a prosecution against him violates his right to a fair trial within a reasonable period under Article 6 of the ECHR. It also violates his right to liberty under Article 5 of the ECHR. If custody time limits were binding in the North of Ireland as they are in England and Wales, Seamus Daly would have been released at least five times over by now. In the case of McFarlane v. Ireland (2010), the ECtHR held that legal proceedings of excessive length constituted a breach of the ‘reasonable time’ requirement under the ECHR. This undue delay in bringing the case against Seamus Daly to trial is a breach of his right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the ECHR and his right to liberty under Article 5.
Seamus Daly understood that at his initial bail application his committal hearing would occur in July 2014. This timetable has not been adhered to. There is now supposedly a committal date, which set for the 18th August 2015.
The gravity of a criminal act should not undermine the human rights of an individual. This balance must be respected and guaranteed in a society that respects the rights of an individual and wants to up hold the Rule of Law whilst protecting the victims of crime.
Further to this we believe that this case has been subject to a trial by media before it has been tried in a court. This does little to reinforce the principle of Justice “innocent until proven guilty”. Perversely certain elements of the media have presented a case of “guilty until proven innocent”. What we have seen is the media conduct a separate investigation and build public opinion even before the court takes cognisance of the case. While this continues, it is incumbent upon this committee to continue presenting information to the Public. Just as the media have a right to investigate and publish articles on the case, so too do we have a right of reply.
