Posted by Jim on April 18, 2015
There has been a new spate of racist attacks across Belfast, with the
Polish community being particularly targeted by loyalists.
While anti-Catholic attacks have continued, the number of racist
incidents in Belfast jumped by 50% last year, with over 450 such
attacks. Polish nationals are often singled out by loyalist attackers
as most likely to be Catholic.
Late last month an elderly Polish couple were attacked and verbally
abused on a Belfast bus. Last week three homes belonging to Polish
citizens were attacked in north Belfast.
There was also a devastating arson attack this week on an east Belfast
business followed the appearance of anti-Polish graffiti on a nail
salon, although it is actually owned by a woman from Lithuania.
The Polish government has expressed its serious concern about the
escalation of racist attacks against its citizens living in the North,
while the PSNI police have shown little disinterested.
Honorary consul for the Six Counties, Jerome Mullen, said Polish people
faced an “intolerable situation”, adding “it cannot continue”.
“The Polish community is the largest ethnic community living in Northern
Ireland, they have come here to work hard, to earn a living and to make
a living for their families,” he said.
“To find themselves now at the centre of this particular recent
escalation of attacks on their homes is an appalling situation that has
to be stopped and must be stopped as quickly as possible.”
More than 100 anti-racism campaigners attended a rally in east Belfast
last night in support of the Lithuanian salon owner whose business was
destroyed in an arson attack. Asta Samaliute broke down in tears as
campaigners gathered outside her salon on Castlereagh Street.
Asta’s ‘Glam Factory’ was attacked shortly before midnight on Monday. A
loyalist paramilitary gang forced the shutters up, poured an accelerant
inside and then set it alight. No-one was inside at the time.
The arson attack came just days after graffiti saying “Polish out” was
daubed on the shop front.
Speaking from her salon, which has been extensively damaged by the fire
and smoke, she said she had been left devastated by the attack that may
also put her forthcoming wedding on hold.
“I am supposed to be getting married in four months in Greece, but that
might not go ahead now, I don’t know now,” she said.
“I have been planning my wedding for ages, all my savings went into this
salon and everything is gone. I don’t know now if we can go ahead with
the wedding.”
Asta said her business was a “multi-national salon”, where she employed
two Lithuanian women and another two from Belfast.
Asked what message she had for those responsible, she said: “They really
should be ashamed of themselves”.
“I am trying to make a business, I have worked so hard all my life, I
have put everything into this salon and now it’s all gone,” she said.
Posted by Jim on April 17, 2015
Martin Galvin with a fuller version of his letter which appeared in the Irish News on 8 April 2015. Martin Galvin is a US Attorney with a long history of campaigning on behalf of Irish republicanism and the rights of nationalists in the North of Ireland.
A chara,
“Britannia waives the rules” was a slogan frequently cited in justice campaigns. It was shorthand for Britain’s readiness to discard any binding pledges or legal rights they later found inconvenient. Reports that the British may prosecute six Republican recipients of written immunity certificates show this slogan still applies in the crown’s dealings with the Irish.
Terms for the release of Republican prisoners and closure for those Republicans, who the crown wanted to make prisoners for pre-1998 actions, were high on the agenda in negotiations. No less an authority than Tony Blair, the British leader in these negotiations, said the OTR issue was “absolutely critical”, “fundamental” and talks could have “collapsed” without a satisfactory settlement.
Negotiations on OTRs continued after the Belfast Agreement and were amplified in the Weston Park Accord of 2001.The British, in Paragraph 20, pledged to take such steps as were necessary to insure that prosecutions for pre-April 1998 actions against members of organizations on ceasefire were “no longer pursued”.
Administrative mechanisms were constructed to carry oral and later written immunity pledges. Top constabulary members were assigned to this agreed process. Republicans who had lived years outside the north returned home and lived openly.
No one would have trusted documents that meant only that the crown is not hunting you today but may hunt you tomorrow.
The British pocketed concessions in return then marked time until it was convenient to undercut OTR pledges. When Gerry McGeough was arrested at his vote count in 2007, campaigners said that if Britannia was allowed to waive the rules and jail him, others would surely pay the price. Seamus Kearney is paying the price in Maghaberry today. Ivor Bell is facing forty year old charges. The crown calculated that these respected Republicans would not get the full support they deserved because they were involved in political campaigns as Independent Republicans.
When John Downey was arrested, immunity certificate in hand, Republicans united. Pat Doherty and others are said to have spearheaded an angry reaction within Sinn Fein. The British accepted the setback, and then orchestrated committee hearings as a political pretext for gifting themselves a new set of rules to play by. Cameron thinks after bludgeoning through cuts in the Stormont House Agreement, he can break Blair’s OTR commitments without bother.
Meanwhile the one-sided secretive scheme of undeclared immunity or impunity for members of the British Army or constabulary who committed or colluded in sanctioned murders is unbroken.
If Britannia gets away with waiving the OTR rules, we must ask who and how many will be next? Why do the British bother if we were really getting closer to a united Ireland?
Sincerely
Martin Galvin
Posted by Jim on
JUSTICE FOR THE CRAIGAVON 2
In addressing the continued miscarriage of justice by the Diplock Courts of the British government, the National FFAI Co-Chairmen of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America are requesting the help and support of all of our Brothers, Sisters and supporters of Freedom For All Ireland in bringing closure to the unjust conviction of John Paul Wooten and Brendan McConville in the 2009 murder of PSNI Constable Steven Carroll in Craigavon, Co. Armagh.
Both men have maintained their innocence since the day of their arrest. Despite the fact that the state legal team, charged with handling this case, has failed to prove the charges against Mr. Wooten and Mr. McConville, these men remain prisoners due to an unjust and biased legal system. Their arrest 5 years ago and continued imprisonment was reliant on the word of a very dubious witness, which was proven contradictory and finally discredited by forensic evidence.
Further compounding this case is the fact that the state, for reasons that can only be politically motivated, has refused to afford both men a fair trial. Had the case against John Paul Wooten and Brendan McConville been brought before an American or European court, both men would have been acquitted.
Important Facts that caused the state case against these two men to fail are listed below:
- The witness, mentioned above, did not come forward for 11 months.
- This witness was intoxicated when he contacted the PSNI (the Police Service of Northern Ireland).
- This witness was found to have continuously lied under oath.
- This witness’s statements were at times contradictory to what was stated earlier.
- One of this witness’s statements was proven to have been medically impossible.
- This witness’s identity was hidden from Mr. Wooten’s and Mr. McConville’s legal defense team to prevent proper cross-examination.
- This witness benefited financially from this involvement in the case.
- A covert British army unit was found to have been involved in evidence tampering.A tracking device fitted to John Paul Wootton’s car shows that his vehicle at no time went anywhere near the housing estate where the AK47 used in the shooting was later discovered.
- Data from the tracking device was mysteriously wiped out whilst in the hands of the army. No plausible explanation was given as to why this happened.
- When the AK47 that was used in the shooting was discovered, a partial fingerprint was found on the internal spring mechanism of the magazine. This fingerprint was checked against the fingerprints of Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton. No matches were found.
These are just some of the facts of this case. Mr. McConville was sentenced to 25 years, while Mr. Wooten (17 years of age at the time of his arrest) was sentenced to 14 years. The continued imprisonment of these men, despite the failure of the state and its legal team to prove their case against them, is indeed an ongoing miscarriage of justice.
John Paul Wooten, Brendan McConville, with their families and many supporters would be greatly appreciative of any assistance our AOH Brothers, Sisters, and friends feel is appropriate in helping to bring this miscarriage of justice and false imprisonment to a final closure.
Posted by Jim on April 14, 2015
The burning of west Belfast’s Bombay Street on in August 1969 marked a pivotal moment in the history of the Troubles. It heralded the deployment of the British …Army onto the streets of Belfast, Almost all of the houses on Bombay street were burned by the loyalists the RUCand the Ulster B specials,many others were burned on Kashmir Road and Cupar Street some of the most extensive destruction of property during the riots
Remains of Bombay Street after being torched by loyalists
Posted by Jim on
Patrick Pearse’s Graveside Oration for O’Donovan Rossa
1 August 1915 at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin
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.
Nine months later, Pearse led the Easter Rising and was among the first executed by the British army. At his court martial, he said this:
When I was a child of ten I went down on my knees by my bedside one night and promised God that I should devote my life to an effort to free my country. I have kept that promise. First among all earthly things, as a boy and as a man, I have worked for Irish freedom. I have helped to organize, to arm, to train, and to discipline my fellow countrymen to the sole end that, when the time came, they might fight for Irish freedom. The time, as it seemed to me, did come and we went into the fight. I am glad that we did, we seem to have lost, we have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose, to fight is to win, we have kept faith with the past, and handed a tradition to the future… I assume I am speaking to Englishmen who value their own freedom, and who profess to be fighting for the freedom of Belgium and Serbia. Believe that we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more desirable than anything else in the world. If you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom; if our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom then our children will win it by a better deed.
