Nuala O’Loan‘People may have died because their paramilitary killers were allowed to go on killing’, writes Nuala O’Loan
There has been much self-congratulation by the British and Irish governments and by the two main political parties in Northern Ireland following the publication of the latest political agreement. It is called A Fresh Start, The Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan. However, what has actually happened is that the people who most need a fresh start, those living with the legacy of the Troubles, have been forgotten yet again. There are no grounds for self-congratulation.
The legacy of the Troubles takes different forms for different victims. They may be suffering from ongoing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which makes life so very difficult and which sometimes strikes decades after the original event. People may seem to have recovered and to be ‘getting on with it’. Then something may happen to them which is traumatic and which triggers again the trauma of their Troubles experience with devastating consequences.
They may, because of the injuries which they suffered, have been unable to work and set aside money for retirement and old age – an old age which will in so many cases be made physically much more difficult because of the combined effects of injury and ageing.
Suffering
They may be little children suffering the trans-generational effects of the Troubles – living perhaps with those whose lives have been irreparably damaged and who suffer from depression, pain and perhaps alcoholism or drug dependency, making them very difficult and unpredictable for those who live with them.
They may be the carers for such people, for the little children and the injured. They may be people who require special aids or adaptations to allow them to live independently, or they may be people who require pain relief clinics, counselling or physiotherapy. Help in all these situations is scarce because the necessary resources are quite simply not there.
Those are some of the issues which affect the living. They must just try to find ways to live with their injuries, their trauma, their pain.
For those who survived, but who lost loved ones, the need is often to find out how and why they died; to know who decided that they should die; to know whether there was any state involvement in the deaths or the failure to bring those responsible to justice.
There is the terrible question for those from the communities in which paramilitaries were totally dominant, of whether their loved ones died at the hands of people they may have seen as protectors. There may be questions about whether people were sacrificed, whether they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and whether kangaroo courts led to the deaths of innocent people at the hands of organisations like the IRA and UDA.
People may have died because their paramilitary killers were allowed to go on killing to protect them as high level informants.
It was stated by the Victims Commissioner that there are 500,000 victims in Northern Ireland. In the previous agreement, the Stormont House Agreement, published less than a year ago on December 23, 2014 significant work was to be done to provide for victims, and to deal with the terrible legacy of Northern Ireland’s past. The proposals included an oral history archive to tell the stories of the Troubles; a factual historical timeline and statistical analysis of the Troubles; high quality services, respecting the principles of choice and need, for victims and survivors; a comprehensive mental health service; work to seek an acceptable way forward on a pension for severely physically injured victims in Northern Ireland; an independent Historical Investigations Unit (HIU) to investigate and report on outstanding cases from the Troubles, and an Independent Commission on Information Retrieval (ICIR), to enable victims and survivors to seek and privately receive information about the Troubles-related deaths of their next of kin. All this was to be achieved with up to £150m (€213m) over five years. It was not enough, but it was something.
The Stormont House Agreement, if implemented, would have given Northern Ireland’s victims some of the critical services which are generally agreed to be necessary after conflict of the type which Northern Ireland has experienced. One of the reasons why these issues have not been dealt with is that it will require disclosure of wrongdoing right across the spectrum of actors in the conflict. That seems to be a bridge too far, though we could learn so much from the mistakes of the past.
Victims
Sandra Peake, the CEO of the biggest and very effective victims’ organisation WAVE, said: “The two governments and political parties have said that dealing with the suffering of victims and survivors is central to Northern Ireland moving forward. They can no longer say that with any credibility… they have abandoned and betrayed victims and survivors who have repeatedly been promised that there would be an inclusive and comprehensive way found to deal with the legacy of the past.
“Victims and survivors were told to wait for Eames/Bradley but they got nothing. They were told to wait for Haass/O’Sullivan and got nothing. They were told to wait for Stormont House and got nothing. Now they have been given a document that with absolutely no hint of irony is being called a ‘Fresh Start’ and there is nothing beyond a vague reference to continuing to ‘reflect’. Where is the ‘fresh start’ for them?” she asks.
The SDLP, the Alliance Party and the UUP seriously criticised the latest agreement which was presented to them by the DUP and Sinn Féin just an hour before it was finalised. None of them have signed up to it.
Northern Ireland’s victims, the survivors and families of those injured and killed during the Troubles have been waiting far too long for the provision of proper services in a country which is still, in some places, fraught with tension and violent paramilitary activity.
People think we are at peace, but there is another story to be told. In the year ending March 31, 2015 PSNI statistics demonstrate that there were three deaths due to the security situation, 94 shootings and assaults by paramilitaries of which 48 were by loyalists and 46 by republicans. There were 73 shooting incidents and 26 bombing incidents. Fifty eight firearms were recovered, 22.94kg of explosives and 4,569 rounds of ammunitions were recovered. There were 227 people arrested under the Terrorism Act and 35 people were charged. During 2013-2014 government statistics show that 18 people were convicted under terrorism legislation and 88 charges were made.
We need to invest in the healing of pain, in reconciliation, in the mending of the broken systems and processes of our country.
It will take courage but it is the only way to real peace