Republican News · Thursday 14 November 2002

Fisk to deliver Bloody Sunday Memorial Lecture

Robert Fisk, currently Middle East correspondent for The Independent, is to deliver the Bloody Sunday 30th Anniversary Memorial Lecture.

This year's lecture, titled "Crimes without Punishment", will be delivered by the acclaimed author and journalist in the Calgach Centre, Derry, at 8pm on Monday 25 November and will be introduced and chaired by Christine Bell, Professor of Public International Law, University of Ulster.

The annual Memorial Lecture marks the close of a year of events to mark the 30th anniversary year of Bloody Sunday, under the theme 'One World Many Struggles' by reflecting both on the continuing campaign for justice for Bloody Sunday and the significance of the issue internationally.

For over 30 years Robert Fisk has been consistent in his commitment to truth and justice. His coverage of wars in Ireland, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and more recently Afghanistan as well as the ongoing Palestinian/Israeli conflict have won him many of journalism's most prestigious awards. In the Middle East he has witnessed many of the murderous slaughters perpetrated against the peoples of this region or seen at first hand the aftermath. His is one of the few voices prepared to cut to the "Why?" offering us a context for the events played out there. He was living in Beirut during the Israeli siege, he entered the Sabra and Chatila camps in 1982 on the day the massacre ended, observed the destruction of the US marine headquarters in 1983 by a massive suicide car bomb. He also witnessed the carnage perpetrated by allied forces on Iraqi soldiers fleeing Kuwait City at the end of the Gulf war, the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and more recently the aftermath of suicide bomb attacks within Israel itself.

Fisk will look back on Bloody Sunday and its aftermath as a journalist who directly witnessed what he describes as the 'Bloody Sunday of Lebanon', the massacre of 1700 Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatila, ten years after Bloody Sunday. As such 'Crimes without Punishment' will compare and contrast the peace processes in the North and the Middle East and examine the bias and wordplay with which mainstream journalism reports such war crimes. In particular it will explore the circumstances and forces at play that have dictated that while a second inquiry into Bloody Sunday was won, many of the victims of the crimes of Sabre and Chatila continue to lay in unmarked graves.