Relatives struggle for justice and recognition
In Pilot's Row Community Centre a carefully assembled photograph
montage of some of those killed by the State, from priests to small,
chubby-faced children and from IRA volunteers to young girls,
attracted thousands of visitors - many of whom stared intently at
each of the faces in turn as they smiled back out from treasured
family photographs and mass cards.
As someone commented, it reminded one of the photographs of the
`disappeared' victims of the Chilean and Argentinian military
dictatorships. And although there were hundreds of photographs, each
with immeasurable grief attached to it, one of the organisers told
visitors that it represented, at most, around half of the victims of
state violence. A decision had been made to use photogaphs only in
those cases where the families concerned had been contacted and had
given their permission.
During a meeting on Saturday afternoon at which the families of
victims of state violence discussed the best way to move their
campaigns for justice forward, Roisín Kelly whose brother Patrick was
killed by the SAS at Loughgall was deeply critical of Security
Minister Adam Ingram after their meeting last week. Her meeting with
him seems to have confirmed what many nationalists already know
through bitter experience: that the British state assumes for itself
the right to bestow or withhold the status of `victim' according to
its political aims and that the hierarchy of death has effectively
been institutionalised by the Northern Ireland Office. Ingram told
Rosin Kelly, to her obvious distress, that the loss of her brother to
his family was not comparable to the loss of the Omagh victims to
theirs.
The subject of state violence was discussed further on Saturday
evening when a panel of guests gathered in Pilot's Row to speak about
the consequences of state violence. Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn - who had
flown straight in from the London Bloody Sunday March - talked
amongst other things of his role in the efforts to ensure General
Pinochet is brought to justice for crimes against humanity.
Alice O'Brien and Derek Byrne of the Dublin/Monaghan Campaign both
spoke of the difficulties they have faced in just getting their
campaign off the ground and of the indifference, even hostility,
shown by successive Irish governments when responding to requests to
reinvestigate the atrocity.
Derek Byrne also described the horrific injuries he suffered as a
result of the bombing; he was so badly hurt that he was prounounced
dead on his arrival at hospital, regaining consciousness some time
later in the hospital morgue.
The reverend Stephen Kingsnorth, a Methodist minister from the
Warrington Reconcilliation Group spoke of the different ``versions of
history'' to which he as an Englishman, a Methodist, and as the
husband of an Irish Protestant had been subjected. He talked of a
personal sense of guilt when he considered the role of England in
Ireland throughout history and told his audience that the week he had
spent in Derry shortly after the Warrington bomb was ``the best time
of my life''. After a question and answer session, he commented that
he had his eyes opened ``yet again'' by what he had heard during the
course of the discussion.
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