New victims group guilty of hidden agenda
A new victims' umbrella group, `Northern Ireland' Terrorist Victims
Together (NITVT), has been accused of reinforcing divisions in the
status of the dead of the last 30 years of conflict in the Six
Counties. By failing to contact many of the victims/survivors groups
in the nationalist community prior to its launch on Friday, 16 April,
at the La Mon House Hotel, NITVT sent a clear message that the only
innocent victims are those who are victims of republican violence.
NITVT failed to contact groups such as the Relatives for Justice
(RfJ), Bloody Sunday Justice Group, the Pat Finucane Centre, Cúnamh,
United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets, Loughall Truth and Justice
Campaign, the Fermanagh based Voice, Dublin/Monaghan Bombings
Forgotten Victims group, the Robert Hamill Campaign or the Survivors
of Trauma. They also failed to contact individuals such as Jean
McBride or Kate Duffy, who have established public profiles through
their campaigns to highlight the deaths of their sons at the hands of
the crown forces.
The difference between these groups and the 11 groups under the NITVT
umbrella, such as Lisburn-based FACT (Families Against Crime by
Terrorism), fronted by Ulster Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson, FAIR
(Families Acting for Innocent Relatives) or SLANT (Survivors Left
After Nationalist Terror) is that the former mostly represent victims
of state violence.
Despite expressing the desire to remain non-political and
non-sectarian, at the NITVT launch a spokesperson claimed to know of
no group representing innocent Catholics killed as a result of the
war.
Relatives for Justice spokesperson, Mark Thompson, told An Phoblacht:
``We accept the obvious hurt, pain and anger felt by these people but
they need to come and sit down with the different communities in the
North and accept that everyone has the right to grieve but at the
same time respect the grief of others.''
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