Republican News · Thursday 25 March 1999

[An Phoblacht]

London meeting remembers Rosemary

Le Fern Lane

There was a tangible sense of loss and genuine grief at a packed meeting in London to pay tribute to murdered human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson. Gathered together were Gareth Pierce, Suresh Grover of the Stephen Lawrence Campaign, Martin McGovern of Sinn Fein's London office and many others who were united in their admiration for Rosemary's selfless courage and professionalism in defending the human rights of her clients.

The meeting, which was sponsored by the London-based Independent Institute of Peace Studies, called for an International inquiry into the killing and for the disbandment of the RUC as the only appropriate and credible response to the allegations of collusion by the force in this murder and others.

Martin McGovern said, ``the RUC is 93% Protestant, 97% male and 100% Unionist. It cannot be reformed. Rosemary Nelson knew this and did certain things, very simple things. She defended people they said shouldn't be defended, she defended people on the Garvaghy Road. This is why she was killed.''

Lawyer Gareth Pierce spoke about the true nature of the RUC, saying, ``we know there is a police force that is militarised, that is quite extraordinarily strong, that is in fact a standing army. In the course of the conflict it was considered impolitic to have a vast standing army - that would be too grotesque, too obvious. So if you don't want to do that, what do you do? You transform the police into the equivalent of an army and say they are simply policing.''

``It isn't a representative police force and so it isn't a police force for the people or of the people. But, if it is allowing people to be killed then it's far worse than something which is just distorted in its composition.''

Suresh Grover of the Stephen Lawrence made an impassioned plea for black and Irish people to come together to fight for their collective civil and human rights. He reminded the audience of Rosemary's visit to Conway Hall last August to raise awareness of Robert Hamill's case and its similarities with the Stephen Lawrence murder.

``It's an absolute tragedy that we can sit in a meeting with Rosemary and discuss these murders, just let the time pass and then six months later meet again to discuss her death. It's absolutely unacceptable. How can we live like this? How can we allow this to continue?''

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