SAOIRSE32

dannymorrison.ie

Bolstering the SDLP

by Danny Morrison

Last Sunday on BBC television Seamus Mallon accused members of Sinn Fein of murdering Short Strand man Robert McCartney, who was brutally stabbed some weeks earlier. He also said that Sinn Fein was “up to its neck” in criminality and the robbery on the Northern Bank two months ago.

It was an irrational but revealing outburst from a politician who has often been described as having “the sharpest mind” in northern Irish politics and of being “a tough nationalist” - views which have often brought a smile to my face.

What Mallon said showed that the former leader of the SDLP, on the eve of his retirement and smarting from his party having been eclipsed by Sinn Fein, had clearly lost the run of himself. In language akin to that used by two former secretary of states - one of whom, Merlyn Rees, referred to South Armagh as ‘bandit country’; and the other, Peter Brooke, who referred to nationalist people as ‘the terrorist community’ - Mallon astonishingly demonised even his own constituents who for almost twenty years had faithfully returned him to Westminster.

He said: “The people in South Armagh and West Belfast and West Tyrone and other parts don’t want policing, because if you have policing you don’t have criminality.”

Patently, that is untrue because nationalists, especially in urban areas where hoods and criminals are rife and don’t seem to be thoroughly pursued by the PSNI, have been crying out for a proper policing service. They thought one would be delivered to them through the recommendations which flowed from the Patten Commission only for the fundamentals to be undermined by the British government during the passage of the legislation and then accepted by the SDLP.

Nationalists may be desperate for a policing service but not that desperate to follow the SDLP’s ‘anything’s better than what we had before’ attitude. What is wrong with the PSNI can best be appreciated by the Bill Lowry episode. Lowry was the former head of the Special Branch in Belfast who was in charge of the raid on Sinn Fein’s offices in Stormont which led to the collapse of the power-sharing executive.

Although he subsequently resigned from the PSNI he has since appeared on a DUP platform – in fact, the same platform on the night from which Paisley issued his ‘sackcloth and ashes’ demand for republicans to be humiliated. The suspicion and perception is that there are many other Lowrys who hold sway within the PSNI.

On television Seamus Mallon said: “Never a week goes by when I don’t have a constituent, or constituents, telling me what is happening to them at the hands of the Republican Movement… On a daily basis, on an hourly basis,” people are being intimidated, he said. If that is true then where is the dossier of compiled cases? And why do a majority of nationalists continue to vote for Sinn Fein? Are they masochists?

Or, is it the case that in Sinn Fein nationalists feel they have a party which represents them locally and articulates their political aspirations?

Mallon accused Sinn Fein of having strangled the Belfast Agreement and its institutions and of having “thrown overboard” UUP leader, David Trimble. He omitted that after Trimble and he were elected as First and Deputy First Ministers Trimble poisoned the atmosphere by refusing to allow the nominations for the rest of the executive to proceed for another eighteen months. He omitted to mention that both Trimble and Tony Blair reneged on the October 2003 deal to re-establish the executive following the IRA’s third and largest act of decommissioning. He omitted to mention the IRA’s offer before Christmas to put all of its weapons beyond use by the end of 2004.

Do the feelings of republicans count? Are they allowed to feel angry about bad faith and breaches of trust – or is that something only the privileged members of the SDLP, Ulster Unionists and the establishment can feel?

In July 1999 Seamus Mallon unsuccessfully attempted to persuade Trimble to set up the all-party executive. He told Trimble that the SDLP would be the first to exclude Sinn Fein if it defaulted on its commitments (regarding the Mitchell Principles to work exclusively through peaceful means). He said: “I will be the first – our party will be the first – to have them removed from every vestige of the political process.”

Trimble believed that Mallon was bluffing and refused to act on that commitment. Recently, Mallon’s successor as deputy leader, Alasdair McDonnell, and Eddie McGrady, resurrected, not the offer per se, but at least the SDLP discussing the offer. That is, that the SDLP should consider entering a voluntary coalition with the DUP and support the exclusion of Sinn Fein (which would lead to nationalists being gerrymandered out of their full entitlement to executive portfolios).

What could be wrong with that? It is, in fact, the logical outworking of Seamus Mallon’s proposal. But it shows how far the SDLP candidates for South Belfast and South Down fear erosion in their vote and thus need to appeal to unionist voters for support. Their proposal was quickly given short shrift by SDLP leader Mark Durkan, who needs all the nationalist votes he can get in his battle against Mitchell McLaughlin for Foyle.

Durkan knows, as well as the majority of nationalists know, that what is wrong with this country cannot be so facilely, glibly, easily, dumped on Sinn Fein, even though the SDLP often succumbs to that temptation.

The next Westminster election will probably be held on May 5 th. Commenting on this BBC Northern Ireland’s political correspondent, Mark Devenport, said: “They won’t say it out loud, but both governments would like to bolster the SDLP in this election.”

Savaging Sinn Fein, damaging the party’s electoral prospects in the South and bolstering the SDLP in the next election in the North explains the current anti-republican campaign being waged by both governments and the establishment media. They know the foolishness of explaining it in such terms which is why they choose to falsely denounce the IRA as being “the only obstacle” to peace and progress.

Danny Morrison’s play about the IRA in the 1980s, ‘The Wrong Man’, begins a three-week run in the Pleasance Theatre, London, from 12 March

BBC

City regeneration plans unveiled

The area around the cathedral is targeted for regeneration

Plans to develop Belfast’s city centre could result in 4,000 new jobs, the government has said.

The city could get two more department stores in a major redevelopment.

The government has unveiled two draft master plans for the Castlecourt and Cathedral areas which include retail developments, as well as housing and leisure facilities.

The government also announced that £14m is to be spent improving public spaces and footpaths.

Minister for Social Development John Spellar said on Monday that after decades of under performance, Belfast was “on the way back”.

“These proposals hold the potential to deliver at least 4,000 new jobs in addition to the 3,000 at Victoria Square,” he said.

“These jobs will provide career opportunities for our young people and the prospect of building a better life for those who live in deprived neighbourhoods.”

Development consultant Gerry Hughes of City Centre Development said this was a real opportunity for Belfast.

“It is light years behind cities like Manchester and Liverpool, even places like Preston, which are rediscovering their city centres and putting substantial investment in the form of new shopping back into their cities,” he said.

“Now is the opportunity for Belfast really to rise to the fore again. There is phenomenal spending power in the province.”

The question of how best to redevelop Belfast city centre has been under consideration since the 1990’s.

The first phase of work - in the shape of the new Victoria Centre - is already under way.

Plans have also been unveiled for the winding up of the Laganside corporation, which has overseen the development of land along the river for more than a decade.

The organisation has said that its job is largely done, with the private sector now needing no extra encouragement to look for opportunities in the city.

Castlecourt owners Westfield and Hermes welcomed the announcement.

“Westfield and Hermes are keen to progress their proposed expansion of Castlecourt shopping centre as soon as practicable and will therefore carefully review the North West Quarter masterplan and work to ensure that any new development meets or exceeds the objectives set out in the Belfast City Centre Regeneration Policy Framework,” it said.

“As a result, Westfield may revise its planning application for an extension to Castlecourt. If so, an announcement will be made in due course.”

Sinn Féin

Republicans reject Hunger Strike claims

Published: 28 February, 2005

Brendan McFarlane, the leader of the H-Block prisoners during the hunger strikes of 1981, has rejected any suggestion that a deal was rejected before the death of Joe McDonnell Brendan McFarlane responding to claims made by former prisoner, Richard O Rawe, in today’s Sunday Times, said,

“All of us, particularly the families of the men who died, carry the tragedy and trauma of the hunger strikes with us every day of our lives. It was an emotional and deeply distressing time for those of us who were in the H-Blocks and close to the hunger strikers. However, as the Officer Commanding in the prison at the time, I can say categorically that there was no outside intervention to prevent a deal. The only outside intervention was to try to prevent the hunger strike. Once the strike was underway, the only people in a position to agree a deal or call off the hunger strike were the prisoners, and particularly the hunger strikers themselves.

“The political responsibility for the hunger strike, and the deaths that resulted from it, both inside and outside the prison, lies with Margaret Thatcher, who reneged on the deal which ended the first hunger strike. This bad faith and duplicity lead directly to the deaths of our friends and comrades in 1981″.

Raymond McCartney, a former hunger striker and now Sinn Féin MLA for Foyle also commented on the claims,

“Richard’s recollection of events is not accurate or credible. The hunger strike was a response to Thatcher’s criminalisation campaign, now being revived by Michael McDowell. The move to hunger strike resulted from the prisoners’ decision to escalate the protest after 5 years of beating, starvation and deprivation. The leadership of the IRA and of Sinn Fein tried to persuade us not to embark on this course of action. At all times we, the prisoners, took the decisions.” ENDS

Belfast Telegraph

Troubles Museum Approved
Bogside site marks 30 years of violence

By Paddy McGuffin
28 February 2005

Planning chiefs in Derry have given the green light to a museum documenting the impact of the Troubles on the city.

The Museum of Free Derry project was launched as part of this year’s Bloody Sunday Commemorations in January.

It will exhibit artefacts from the past 30 years and attempt to document the chronology of the Troubles from Bloody Sunday and Operation Motorman through 30 turbulent years.

The Museum of Free Derry is to be sited in Glenfada Park in the heart of the Bogside and the scene of many of the deaths on Bloody Sunday.

The proposal to grant planning permission will be put before a committee meeting of Derry City Council tomorrow.

SDLP councillor Pat Ramsey said he welcomed the project, which he said would not only be valuable in terms of documenting and commemorating the many victims of violence in the city but would be a major boost to tourism.

“I would welcome this project in a historical context but also in terms of tourism for the Bogside,” he said.

“I think the Free Derry Museum will complement the existing murals and Free Derry Corner and be a further boost for tourism in the area.

“I also think that its location in Glenfada Park in the heart of the Bogside is very important.

“So many people lost their lives their on Bloody Sunday. In addition to this, the area has seen a lot of vandalism and I believe the residents will welcome the arrival of the museum and the cleaning up of the area.”

Although intrinsically linked to the events of Bloody Sunday the museum will document all the victims of the Troubles from both communities.

This, says Mr Ramsey, is of great importance.

“The museum will not just deal with the history of the Bogside but the whole of the city and all the victims of violence.”

“I think it will be supported by all the parties,” he said.

Belfast Telegraph

Death of a democracy

Gangs of killers roam freely, rape is systematic and the poor eat mud to survive. In Port-au-Prince, Andrew Buncombe finds a people crushed by the dark hand of US foreign policy

28 February 2005

The mud biscuits sold in the markets and stacked high by the street vendors in the most desperate parts of Port-au-Prince are made in a part of the city known as Fort-Dimanche. There, close to the site of a former prison, once used by the dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier to lock up political prisoners, women combine clay, water, a little margarine and a scratch of salt. Sometimes they will crumble a foil-wrapped cube of bouillon into the mixture, which they stir, shape into discs the size of a saucer and leave to bake in the Caribbean sun.

In Haiti, these mud cakes are traditionally eaten by expectant mothers who believe they contain nutrients and minerals important to the health of a newborn child. But in recent months they have been sold increasingly to other people, who are too poor to afford anything else. “I have been selling more in the last year. People have less money,” says Mafie, the young woman sitting behind a pile of the pale brown mud cakes at Salamoun market.

In their own way, these biscuits, known in Creole simply as terre, tell a bigger story. One year after the enforced departure of Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country he was forced to flee, having been long undermined by the US authorities, is in a hellish state of affairs. Unstable, deadly, wracked by division and wrecked by a hurricane that tore through the country in September, many of the citizens who voted for the bespectacled former priest with a prayer that he might bring them hope and salvation are forced to fill their bellies with cakes fashioned from mud. Naturally enough, they taste like dirt.

Hunger is just one of Haiti’s many problems. Since Aristide was flown out of Port-au-Prince in the early hours of 29 February last year to his destination - the Central African Republic and then South Africa, where he now lives in exile - his supporters and members of his Lavalas political party have faced repression, violence, imprisonment and death.

While UN-mandated elections are scheduled for November, many of the senior members of Lavalas lie in Haiti’s fetid and overcrowded jails. To the outrage of human rights groups, few - if any - of the political prisoners locked up by the “interim government” installed by the US, France and Canada have been charged. Some of those jailed and subsequently released have revealed that they had no opportunity to make their case before a judge. Were it not for international pressure put on Gerard Latortue, the interim prime minister, many of them believe they would still be locked up.

At times, Haiti’s violence appears to be utterly out of control. Fights between rival gangs with political backing in the slums, or raids by the police who are accused of carrying out summary executions, result in corpses being left in the streets, gnawed at by dogs and pigs until someone comes to remove them.

Late last year, there were so many corpses arriving at the unrefrigerated morgue attached to the city’s main hospital, where they lay in piles and were rapidly devoured by maggots, that the authorities refused journalists permission to visit out of concern about the bad image that would be portrayed. Since September, more than 250 people have been killed in political violence in Port-au-Prince.

The Independent has also learned that, in the poorest areas of the city, rape is increasingly common as a tactic of political violence - a phenomenon that last occurred regularly during the early Nineties. Three Pakistani members of the UN peace-keeping force, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, have been accused of raping a woman in the city of Gonaives. An investigation is under way. And, as if that were not enough, a group of rebel soldiers of the supposedly disbanded army are refusing to lay down their guns.

Amid all of this violence and anguish hangs the ghostly presence of the undead. Though it is a year since Aristide left, in the poorer parts of town where his name is repeatedly invoked, it is clear he is never far from people’s thoughts.

Emanuel Exantes, an angry young man in a black T-shirt, who is also a trader at the busy Salamoun market, summed up what many people here believe. “It was wrong. It was not the Haitian people who made him go. It was the Americans. They want to kill Haiti. When Aristide was in power, they did not give him any money. Now, this new fucking person, they’re giving him money all the time. They give money to [the interim prime minister] because he is their man. Aristide was not theirs.” He added: “This whole market is waiting for Aristide. I’m for dialogue but I want to see Aristide come back to the country. He loves the people. Aristide was elected for five years but they never wanted him to finish his term. You could not do that in America.”

Aristide never wanted to leave the country. In the early hours of that Sunday morning one year ago, when loosely co-ordinated rebel forces were marching towards the capital, and after leaders of the opposition told Washington they would not agree to a political compromise that did not involve Aristide’s departure, the president was given a choice. “Come with or stay,” he was told by Luis Moreno, the deputy chief of the US embassy, who arrived with a group of heavily armed marines to take Aristide to the airport. “Live or die”.

Even at that point, the Americans could have preserved Aristide’s presidency with just a few hundred well-armed US Marines. They had, after all, done it before. Following a 1991 CIA-backed coup that ended his first term of office, Aristide was returned to power in October 1994 by President Bill Clinton, who ordered 20,000 Marines to clear the way for his return.

But in 10 years, a lot had changed. Annoyed at Lavalas’s refusal to abide by the economic “reforms” set out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States had started to look into freezing economic aid to Haiti. In 2000, after Aristide’s re-election, his opponents in Washington seized on a dispute surrounding the vote for the national assembly to block a total of $500m (£260m) in relief to the avowedly Socialist leader.

At the same time, right-wing elements in Washington were actively funding and courting Aristide’s opponents. The International Republican Institute, a body that receives much of its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, was arranging conferences in the neighbouring Dominican Republic for Aristide’s opponents to meet those from Washington who shared similar political views.

Throughout this time, leaders of business-backed opposition coalitions in Haiti such as Group 184, led by the millionaire industrialist Andy Apaid, and the National Convergence, were receiving a clear message that there was little international support for Aristide or his brand of liberation theology.

By this time, Aristide was increasingly resorting to violence. Rather than reaching out to groups such as students, who should have been his natural supporters, he used armed gangs known as les chimères to break up their demonstrations and attack them. Groups such as Amnesty International detailed how, by late 2003, the tactics of Aristide increasingly matched those of the Haitian dictators he had so opposed and campaigned against. During this period, said Amnesty, there was “almost total impunity for the perpetrators of human rights violations”.

Even at the best of times, Port-au-Prince is a chaotic place. If you stay in the city itself, rather than in one of the plush hotels used by diplomats up on the hillside in the suburb of Petionville, you are awoken at dawn by the crowing of roosters and the noise of a city already on the move - the narrow roads are clogged with battered cars and colourful “tap tap” taxis belching exhaust fumes, the pavements thronged with schoolchildren and street vendors. An an estimated two-thirds of the population have no formal employment, but it seems that everyone is trying to get somewhere.

There is little security. Though the UN force has more than 6,000 soldiers and 1,400 police officers, it has a limited ability to maintain order and an apparently limited desire to intervene. Many Haitians complain that the UN representatives stand by while the police raid properties or attack people indiscriminately. A report by the International Crisis Group said: “Of particular concern are charges of summary executions in populous neighbourhoods - including the murder of street children [by police].” Last weekend, an armed ganged broke into the city’s main prison and released more than 500 prisoners, including Yvon Neptune, a former Lavalas prime minister, and Jocelerme Privert, a former interior minister. Both had been locked up for months without charge.

Outside the peeling blue-and-white prison, pervaded by a foul smell, visitors were being kept at a distance by snarling policemen, some in regular uniform, some clad in black, wearing helmets, dark glasses and carrying semi-automatic rifles.

A young woman called Josiane, who owns a drinks shop opposite the prison, had been outside the previous afternoon when a gang of armed men arrived. She pointed to six bullet holes on the wall of her shop. “They just came and started shooting,” she said. “I ran into the back room and climbed under the bed. When I came out 10 minutes later, there were people running out of the jail.” In the street outside her store, she had seen a dead prison guard, the only victim of the incident. She had covered him with a sheet and tried to wash away the blood. That next morning, the place where he had died was still stained red.

Exactly what had happened and who had been responsible was unclear. In a country where there are few reliable sources of information and where rumours spread at the pace of a galloping horse, it was possible to hear five different versions within 20 minutes. It was Aristide’s supporters, said one, it was a drug gang, said another, a third a stage-managed raid by the government to make Aristide’s supporters look bad.

It later emerged that Neptune and Privert had been returned to prison the day of the break-out, having apparently given themselves up. At the time of writing, 481 other prisoners remain unaccounted for. Meanwhile, Claude Theodat, the director of the prison, has been fired.

The worst of Haiti’s violence is concentrated in its no-go slums, which bear such misguidedly beguiling names as Cite Soleil, Bel Air and La Saline. In these areas, virtually cut off from the outside world, rival gangs terrorise the population. Human rights investigators say that Lavalas-backed gangs commit as much violence as those backed by their opponents. The influential businessman Apaid, who declined several requests for an interview, is said to support an anti-Lavalas gang in the “Boston” area of Cite Soleil, headed by a man called Thomas Robinson who prefers to go by the name of Labanye. A recent report by the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Miami quoted Apaid as saying he directed police “not to arrest [Labanye] but to work with him”.

In a white-tiled, second-floor office, three women from the extremely poor Martissant neighbourhood explain how gangs are increasingly using rape against political opponents. The women, Malia Villard, Esamithe Delva and Ruth Jean Pierre, were all attacked in the early Nineties and later formed a group called the Commission of Women Victims for Women. Supported by the US-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, the group offers support and access to doctors. They declined to talk about their own specific experiences.

“At times when there is no security and the country has no control. These people can do what they want,” said Villard. “Each time there is instability there is an upsurge [in attacks]. When it is quiet the problem is less because people know they could be arrested.”

The women said victims were often attacked because of their family’s political affiliations. In many cases, the victims’ husbands had been killed and there was no one to protect them. Other reports suggest that, in rural areas, a similar campaign of rape is being carried out by rebel soldiers. The risk of Aids and unwanted pregnancies was ever present, Villard said, and there were no longer any free hospitals. “If you are lucky, you are not dead. If you are lucky, you are not sick.”

Aristide is not returning to Haiti, at least not to be its president. Despite what some may wish and what the radio stations may claim, it would take a political miracle for him to make a comeback. Unlike 10 years ago, he cannot constitutionally serve another full term. Furthermore, although some organisations still recognise him as their legitimate leader, there is little international clamouring to reinstate him. More importantly, he no longer has many friends in Washington.

In the political vacuum created by his absence, an intense debate is going on inside Lavalas to determine whether the party should select another leader and start campaigning, or whether it should boycott the November elections. One of those who recommends a boycott is Father Gerard Jean Juste, a close friend of Aristide and a Catholic priest. He recently returned from visiting the exiled former president in South Africa and some observers believe he may be the man Aristide has anointed as his successor.

The Independent found the priest in a high-walled compound on the edge of Port-au-Prince, where twice a week he provides meals for the poor as part of a project funded by a San Diego-based group called the What If Foundation. Tall, likeable, surrounded by happy, screaming children and with a populist rhetoric that he has polished in the pulpit, he was recently held in prison for 48 days. He was arrested two hours after speaking to Aristide on the telephone, and told he was being arrested for disturbing the peace.

“It must be recognised that Aristide was elected and then we must prepare for his return,” he said. “You are going to have to deal with the election anyway. We are not going to participate [without Aristide]. It’s going to be like the election in Iraq. It will be futile.” To what extent the priest was sticking to the party line was unclear. If he has been selected as Aristide’s successor - at least by Aristide himself - he may feel obliged to talk of a possible return. But when asked if Aristide actually wanted to return to Haiti, he deflected the question. When asked a second time, there was a brief but noticeable pause before he said he believed Aristide did.

The following day, sitting on the breezy terrace of hillside hotel, the muffled noise of the city in the background, another Lavalas leader said he believed that it was vital for the party to begin election preparations. Yvon Feuille, a popular senator from the city of Port Salut, another political prisoner who was released after international pressure, said that the interim government, for all its talk of opening a national dialogue, was doing everything it could to prevent Lavalas from getting itself organised. “That is the debate within Lavalas at the moment - whether to boycott the election or take part. The problem is that, if the people boycott, they don’t have a chance,” he said. “At the same time, I say to the international community that we have to have the same rights as the other political parties.”

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. The average income per capita may be as little as £800 a year. Given its seemingly persistent instability and poverty, many commentators have been tempted to simply write it off as a failed state, doomed to political disaster. But as Feuille and others point out, its problems have not all taken place in a vacuum; the country that became the first black republic in 1804 has suffered from a fatal mixture of economic neglect and political interference.

Even now, with a supposedly “acceptable” interim government installed, the attitude of wealthier nations appears at best ambivalent. Washington, which has recently spent many millions of dollars upgrading its embassy in Port-au-Prince, seems more driven by concern about a new batch of refugees washing up on its Florida beaches than about Haiti itself.

Two weeks ago, the World Bank announced it would release $73m in cash to Haiti’s government but only after Haiti paid $52m in arrears. Canada “helped” by giving Haiti another loan of $13m to help pay off its debt. More than half of the $1.2bn in “aid” for Haiti, announced at a donors’ conference in Washington last summer, is made up of loans that must be repaid.

To get a different perspective on why things do not have to be like this, to get a sense of Haiti’s genuine potential, one needs only to take a three-hour drive across the mountains to the coastal city of Jacmel, the country’s former capital. While it is a bustling place, there is none of the chaos of Port-au-Prince and little of the violence. It is a calm, likeable place next to the sea and yet the one thing lacking is tourism. There have been barely any foreign tourists to Haiti since the end of the Duvalier regime, but Jacmel had always been popular with the Haitian elite and its small middle class. In the 12 months since Aristide’s departure, all that has changed.

Eric Danies owns the Jacmelienne Hotel by the beach. Certainly by Haitian standards, Danies is a very wealthy man and, according to the usual analysis, one might expect him to have supported Aristide’s ousting. Instead, he says that in the past year he has watched business plunge.

“Since Aristide’s departure we have seen our occupancy rate fall from 75 per cent to 10 per cent,” he said. “The insecurity has increased for ordinary Haitians. They used to hold a lot of seminars here. Groups used to come to the provinces. Those groups are getting rarer and rarer. People are being told not to venture out of Port-au-Prince. The Haitian diaspora used to come here to visit their families. They have not been doing that.”

From where Danies was sitting at the bar, one looks straight out across a gleaming blue sea and over an almost empty beach. The proprietor gestured to the view in front of him and reflected that this was a perfect location for tourists, a place to come and unwind. “This is what we have been trying to promote,” he sighed. “And it’s not the only thing that Haiti has to offer. The skills of the people here have never been fully exploited.”

THE BLOODY YEARS

1957

François Duvalier (Papa Doc) elected president after seizing power in a military coup.

1986

In response to widespread protests, Papa Doc’s successor, his son Jean-Claude, flees the island.

1990

Jean-Bertrand Aristide elected as president.

1991

Aristide overthrown in a coup led by General Raoul Cedras.

1993

The Haitian military refuses to agree on an accord allowing Aristide to resume the presidency. Failure to sign forces the UN to impose sanctions.

1994

The US threatens to invade Haiti and the military regime quickly surrenders power.

1995

René Préval elected president.

1999

Préval terminates parliament and rules by decree.

2000

Aristide elected president.

2001

July: Three separate attacks kill four police officers. Former army officers are accused of plotting a coup.

December: 12 people are killed in a raid on the National Palace.

2002

Haiti becomes a member of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) trade bloc.

2004

January/February: Violent rebel protests against President Aristide disrupt celebrations of Haiti’s independence. Aristide is forced into exile.

May: More than 2,000 are reported to have been killed following devastating floods in the south.

September: A tropical storm brings more flooding, this time in the north. Almost 3,000 are killed.

November: Violence erupts in the capital and armed gangs supporting Aristide are reportedly responsible for several deaths.

Belfast Telegraph

UDA chief’s family slams death probe
Police inquiry ‘left a lot to be desired’

By Debra Douglas
28 February 2005

The family of murdered UDA commander John Gregg today criticised the police investigation into his death.

Gregg (45), from the Rathcoole Estate in Newtownabbey, was shot dead as he sat in a taxi in the Docks area of Belfast in February 2003 during the feud between Johnny Adair’s C company and mainstream UDA units.

Another man, Robert Carson (33), also from Rathcoole, also died in the attack, which was carried out as they were returning from a Glasgow Rangers football match.

At an inquest today, the families of the murdered men said the police investigation into the slayings “left a lot to be desired”.

In a statement given by local councillor Tommy Kirkham, they said: “We would wish to point out that the PSNI investigation leaves a lot to be desired. No-one has ever been charged with the murders, yet most people know who the killers were.

“We were extremely concerned that CCTV footage did not provide sufficient evidence and the absence of security in the area of the docks on that Saturday evening would not be normal.

“The fact remains that we have lost loved ones who will never be replaced. The inquest is now over and we seriously hope the investigation continues until these murderers are brought before the court.”

During the inquest DCI Stephen Maxwell said the murders were the culmination of a number of incidents between the UDA’s Lower Shankill C company and other members of the UDA.

He said the deaths resulted in a number of Johnny Adair’s associate fleeing to Bolton.

The court heard that a Belfast newsroom received an anonymous call the following day which claimed the Red Hand Defenders were behind the murders.

The inquest also heard that Gregg had expressed concerns for his safety, particularly after comments made by John White about him on a television programme.

DCI Maxwell said that 15 people had been arrested in connection with the double murder but that no-one had been charged.

He said that the CCTV footage of the night in question had been ruined due to technical faults.

Gregg’s son Stuart was in the taxi with his father when they were attacked. He said he heard gunshots and saw flashing and realised that they had come under attack.

Taxi driver William “Rab” McKnight said he had been concerned about taking John Gregg in his taxi because he was “a high-ranking paramilitary” but had collected them from the terminal.

He said that when they stopped at traffic lights in the docks area, shots were fired from a car that had pulled up beside them but he could not see who it was.

Mr McKnight was seriously injured and spent 12 days in the intensive care unit at the Royal.

After hearing the evidence the coroner for Greater Belfast, John Leckey, said he hoped people would come forward with enough information to help the police convict those who they believed were responsible for the murders. He said: “I hope the murderers are apprehended and brought to justice.”

He also said he was interested to learn that only John Gregg was the intended target that night.

He said the fact Robert Carson was killed and others were injured showed “the indiscriminate nature of the murders”.

CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1985

Thursday 28 February 1985

Nine RUC Officers Killed

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out a home-made mortar attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station in Newry, County Down, and killed nine RUC officers and injured 30 others. [This incident represented the greatest loss of life for the RUC in a single incident. The number of deaths was high because most of those killed were inside temporary dwellings within the RUC base.]

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Daily Ireland

Sort it now

Former civil rights leader Eamon McCann told a Belfast rally yesterday that the killers of Robert McCartney had brought themselves down to the level of the paratroopers who shot dead 13 people in Derry on Bloody Sunday.
“They carried out another Bloody Sunday in Belfast,” he told several hundred people who had gathered in the Short Strand in support of the McCartney family.
Mr McCann said those who killed the father-of-two outside Magennis’s bar on January 30 had earlier marched in the Bloody Sunday anniversary parade in Derry.
“How dare they march on Bloody Sunday,” he said.
While Bloody Sunday in Derry had been a terrible injustice, the cover-up was equally unjust and it had taken the people of Derry 33 years to get to the truth of the killings because of a government cover-up, he added.
No similar cover-up should be tolerated in the killing of Robert McCartney.
“This killing must not become another long saga of coming and going, of to-ing and fro-ing. Sort it now. Give up the perpetrators. Give justice to the family of Robert McCartney.”
He also called for paramilitary groups on all sides to call it a day.
“Whatever justification they once had for their existence they can have none now,” he added.
On Saturday, the McCartney family gave a partial welcome to the IRA statement announcing that three members had been expelled. However, the family say the statement doesn’t go far enough. Yesterday, Robert’s sister Paul told the rally that his killers should do “the patriotic thing” and hand themselves in.

Killers should do the patriotic thing and come forward

The family of Robert McCartney, the man murdered outside a Belfast bar four weeks ago, yesterday told a rally that his killers should do the “patriotic thing” and hand themselves in.
Members of the McCartney family spoke to a crowd of around 1,000 people in the Short Strand area of the city.
The rally followed a statement on Friday evening by the IRA which said it had expelled three members who had a role in the father-of-two’s murder.
The McCartney family said they welcomed the move, but claimed it didn’t go far enough.
Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey was among those who applauded the family and urged people to support their campaign.
Paula McCartney said her brother’s killers should do the “patriotic thing” and hand themselves over.
“Despite intimidation and a whispering campaign people have come out to support us from a deep sense of injustice,” she said.
“People are sickened by Robert’s murder. People in the Short Strand have endured RUC brutality and loyalist aggression.
“Many IRA volunteers have gone to jail and died over the years.
“These qualities have been lacking in the men who stabbed Robert. They are not the kind of people the Short Strand regard as one of their own.
“Those responsible should do the patriotic thing and hand themselves over.”
On Saturday, a man who presented himself to the PSNI in relation to the murder was unconditionally released from custody.
Derry-based civil rights activist Eamonn McCann also spoke at the rally.
He said the murder occurred on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday and had been carried out by people who had been in Derry to commemorate the 13 civil rights protesters shot dead on 30 January 1972.
“The biggest insult I could give these people is that they will have stooped to the level of the British army who organised a cover-up of that day.
“We can’t allow another Bloody Sunday to occur in Belfast by people who came not as aliens but from inside our community.
“How dare the people who murdered Robert McCartney march on Bloody Sunday,” he said.
Mr McCann also said that the campaign was not against any one party nor was it divisive.
Mr McCartney’s niece Laura made a tearful appeal for anyone with information to come forward.
She said the family had only photographs and memories to remember her uncle who had been “brutally taken away at the hands of evil people”.
Sinn Féin MLA Alex Maskey was confronted by an uncle of Robert McCartney shortly before the rally got underway.
He told Mr Maskey that those who “butchered” his nephew should be handed over to the PSNI.
Mr Maskey said he fully supported the McCartney family’s campaign.
“The family say they want justice through the courts. I support that.
“I represent people in the community and I will do that to the best of my ability.
“There has been a media onslaught against republicans in the past number of weeks and people will make their own judgments on that.
“I am here to support the McCartney family in their campaign.”
Also among the 1,000 strong crowd was Brendan Devine, a friend of Robert McCartney, who was injured in the same incident outside Magennis’s Bar in Belfast city centre.

BBC

Restorative justice in spotlight

Schemes can see offenders meet victims

Restorative Justice groups from republican areas of Northern Ireland have declined to attend a conference organised by the police.

Loyalist representatives will be among 200 delegates at the international meeting in Belfast on Monday.

Restorative justice can involve perpetrators meeting their victims.

Provisional figures from a NI pilot scheme suggest a quarter of cases which could be prosecuted, could be dealt with through restorative justice.

Chief Inspector Nigel Grimshaw, of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said restorative justice was about “respect”.

“It is about bringing people together who have been affected by crime and conflict through a process which encourages taking respect and showing respect for other people,” he said.

Inspector Grimshaw said this was no “soft option” for offenders.

“Having to sit down, face to face, potentially, with the victim of your crime and listen to their story and the consequences of your actions is a very emotional and dynamic thing.”

He added that the police had been keen to engage those working in republican areas in the conference.

“Restorative justice is an inclusive process. Those working in restorative justice schemes in republican areas clearly have a stake,” he said.

However, Inspector Grimshaw said an array of speakers had been brought together for the two-day event which, he hoped, would provoke “real thought and debate”.

The provisional figures are from the Public Prosecution Service pilot scheme which is operating in south Belfast, Fermanagh, Tyrone and all youth courts in Belfast.

The chief inspector said that in the Belfast court area, approximately one in four young people were currently undergoing a restorative process in terms of offending behaviour.

On Monday, delegates will explore advances in restorative justice within Northern Ireland and, on Tuesday, the focus will shift to examine community approaches to restorative justice.

BreakingNews.ie

One third believe health service has worsened under Harney

28/02/2005 - 09:25:53

Almost one third of voters believe the health service has deteriorated since Mary Harney took over as Health Minister five months ago, according to an opinion poll published this morning.

Thirty-one per cent of respondents to the Irish Independent poll said they believed the service had worsened under Ms Harney, while just 14% said they believed it had improved.

A further 49% said they believed the health service had remained the same, despite the abolition of Ireland’s health boards and the establishment of the Health Service Executive.

Guardian

How pub brawl turned into republican crisis

Angelique Chrisafis, Ireland correspondent
Monday February 28, 2005
The Guardian

Who will be next? said the placard carried by the McCartney family yesterday as they were clapped and cheered to a makeshift platform outside the Short Strand shops in east Belfast.

The IRA were once the respected protectors of this small nationalist enclave in the city, where 3,000 Catholics are still protected by “peace” walls from the 60,000 Protestants surrounding them.

But yesterday afternoon, as 1,000 people gathered in protest at the murder of Robert McCartney at a bar last month, apparently by members of the IRA, trust in the organisation had run out.

A movement once known as the Ra was being called the “Rafia” - the lies it has told about the killing compared to those the British army “continue to tell about Bloody Sunday” said some locals, and the local IRA commander was angrily confronted to give his men up.

For republicans to kill an innocent man and one of their own community was shock enough. But the cover-up, intimidation and lies which residents said continued this weekend, despite an IRA statement expelling three of those involved, had badly damaged their standing.

People once proud of republicans for fighting for justice for all, were uniting against what they said was the reality of “peacetime” paramilitarism: a local “Goodfellas gang” which residents said has been out of control for years, involved in paedophilia, attempted rape and domestic violence - in one case branding a woman on her breast with a steam iron.

The murder of Robert McCartney was the last straw. Yet despite Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams’ calls for republicans to go to court to testify and the three expulsions, the guilty men were still being sheltered.

In the front room of a terrace house, Robert McCartney’s five sisters and fiancée sat trying to keep his two confused sons, aged two and four, from overhearing the grim details of what happened a month ago in Magennis’s bar.

They are unlikely folk heroes. The family have always voted Sinn Féin, and yesterday again paid tribute to the sacrifices IRA members and “true republicans” had made to protect their community from loyalists, the old RUC and the British army. Yet they vowed they would not give up until the IRA “came clean” and made sure the dozen of its members they believe to be involved in the killing are tried.

The sisters have not slept for several nights. Paula McCartney, 40, a women’s studies student, who is considering standing as an independent councillor in Short Strand, said she has not yet cried. “We can’t afford sentiment at the minute,” she said. If grief was allowed to take its natural course, the whole campaign would collapse.

The sisters have a clear view of the sequence of events told to them by witnesses while their brother lay in hospital - a version which they say the IRA has tried to muddy with a whispering campaign and its own highly selective version of events released on Friday night.

It was a Sunday night. Robert McCartney, 33, a forklift driver, was having a drink with an old friend. A number of IRA men who had come from the Bloody Sunday commemorations in Derry were drinking at the bar.

According to the McCartney family, a senior IRA man accused Mr McCartney of making a rude gesture to his wife. He denied this, but his friend, Brendan Devine, offered to buy the women and her friends a drink to apologise. This wasn’t enough for the senior republican, who asked McCartney: “Do you know who I am?”

McCartney, who also worked part-time as a bouncer to save for his wedding, was described locally as a diplomat, a diffuser of rows. He knew exactly who the man was, but did not apologise, saying he hadn’t done anything wrong. A row ensued. A bottle was smashed, and used to slash Brendan Devine’s throat.

McCartney and Devine stumbled out of the pub. Devine told his friend to run but he wouldn’t leave him. At this point, a friend of Mr McCartney’s called his mobile. He heard smashing glass, Devine shouting “I never touched anyone” and a woman begging the attackers to stop.

The family believe around 15 people followed the two men out of the pub. McCartney and Devine were beaten with plastic and iron sewer rods and slashed from their neck to their navel with knives, said to have been taken from the pub kitchen. McCartney was kicked and his head stamped on. Some witnesses have said a gun was produced. McCartney lost an eye in the beating.

The family said the perpetrators left the men for dead, went back to the pub, locked the door, conducted a forensic clean-up operation in which evidence and CCTV footage were removed.

“They closed the doors and said: ‘Nobody saw anything; this is IRA business’,” says Paula McCartney.

No ambulance was called. The men were picked up by a police patrol. Devine survived. McCartney died in hospital.

One month on, of 70 witnesses in the pub, none has come forward with a full account of what they saw. Most tell the family they were in the toilet at the crucial moment. So many people have said they were in the small toilet at the time, the cubicle is now known as “the Tardis”.

The family and other Short Strand residents blame the continuing IRA intimidation of witnesses. The sisters said the men they believe were responsible were walking around the area “as normal, going in and out of shops, getting themselves a carry-out, going into the bookies, saying hello to people and saying hello to the family”.

Catherine McCartney, a teacher, said last week one of the alleged killers, a senior republican, stood openly in the street in long conversation with a key witness. “Their presence is intimidation enough,” she said.

The family disagree with the version of events presented in an IRA statement released on Friday night and described as “pure damage limitation”. Even after the IRA expelled three members on Friday night, many in the Short Strand feel the men are still under protection from the organisation and it is not safe to speak out.

When Gerry Adams last week carefully referred to the McCartney killing as “murder or manslaughter”, the family said the insertion of the “wee word manslaughter” was part of a quest to “dilute the severity” of the murder, which has caused far more grassroots damage to Sinn Féin than allegations over the £26.5m Northern Bank raid.

The family said suggestions that they were setting out to damage Sinn Féin politically were laughable.

“What have we got to gain from damaging Sinn Féin, especially when we voted for them?” asked Paula McCartney. “Robert’s murderers were the ones who damaged Sinn Féin so let’s keep the blame where the blame belongs.”

Guardian

People’s revolt against the IRA gathers momentum

Angelique Chrisafis, Ireland correspondent
Monday February 28, 2005
The Guardian

The people’s revolt against the IRA gang who murdered Robert McCartney continued to grow last night despite Sinn Féin’s attempts to defuse the crisis, with 1,000 protesters demanding the expulsion of more rogue republicans.

The McCartney family led an angry protest in the republican Short Strand area where the IRA’s cover-up of the murder was compared to the lies told by the British government about Bloody Sunday.

Despite the IRA’s court martial and expulsion of three members - allegedly including the former officer commanding the Belfast brigade - the family claim at least nine others implicated in the killing are being sheltered by the organisation.

They also claimed the IRA’s version of the murder outside a Belfast pub - in which Mr McCartney and a friend were beaten, stabbed and left for dead - was wrong and that a whispering campaign against the family was being conducted.

The unprecedented protest in Sinn Féin’s heartland has put the party under severe pressure with Alex Maskey, the former Sinn Féin mayor of Belfast, openly confronted on the street yesterday.

Asked whether, as residents claim, two of the men involved in the clean-up after the murder had previously acted as his election workers, he said he would not comment on “falsehoods in the media”.

He also denied claims by residents that republicans had ordered children to riot in the Markets area to impede police investigating the murder.

As he was answering these questions, one of Robert McCartney’s uncles burst through the crowd, shouting: “You have nine other members of this gang … who butchered my nephew. When are you going to hand them over? You couldn’t even remember Robert’s name [after the murder]. Hand over the 12.”

In front of placards held by Mr McCartney’s family saying “Shame on them” and “Evil will triumph if good people do nothing”, Paula McCartney demanded her brother’s killers and those who cleaned up the crime scene “do the patriotic thing and hand themselves over”. She said: “If not, they should be pressurised to do so. If these men walk free from this, then everyone in Ireland should fear the consequences.”

Despite the IRA’s call on Friday night that no one should be intimidated into not giving evidence, one Short Strand source said the three expelled IRA men were still considered to be under their protection.

The source said the IRA members were at their homes and one was at an IRA safe house. One of the men involved in the murder had been expelled before, but was allowed back shortly afterwards, after undergoing a punishment shooting.

A senior local IRA member was seen at the rally and several IRA members not involved in the murder were seen walking around the area before the rally. One source said: “This was a subtle form of intimidation.”

A man who was questioned by police and released this weekend was not one of the three expelled IRA men.

Meanwhile, the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, yesterday repeated his support for the McCartney family at an IRA commemoration in south Armagh. Tellingly, he signalled that there would be “more hard choices” for republicans and said criminality had no place in the movement. “There is no room in Sinn Féin for other than a clear and unambiguous commitment to democratic politics and the pursuit of our goals by legal and peaceful means.”

Eamonn McCann, the civil rights leader, said it was a “savage irony” that Mr McCartney was butchered on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, allegedly by men returning from a ceremony to mark the slaughter by paratroopers of 14 innocent Catholics in Derry.

“How dare they?” he said to rousing applause, adding that they had besmirched the campaign for the truth about Bloody Sunday. The cover-up of the McCartney murder had lowered republicans to the level of the British paratroopers, and cast a “dark shadow backwards” on the whole IRA struggle.

Mr McCann recognised the contribution of paramilitaries to the struggle for equal rights and said the McCartney campaign was not against any party.

But unless there was a people’s revolt against this obvious injustice, a “dark shadow would be cast backwards” over the whole civil rights movement. He said if paramilitaries and former paramilitaries did not speak out now, they were demeaning their “experience and contribution” to the republican struggle. “It is utter hypocrisy for anybody to say now that they stand with the Bloody Sunday families unless they stand also with the family of Robert McCartney.”

IRA2

IRA blocked deal to save hunger strikers

John Burns
Sunday Times
27 Feb 2005

THE IRA rejected a government deal to end the 1981 hunger strike by
republican prisoners that could have saved at least five lives,
according to a leading republican.

Richard O’Rawe, the IRA spokesman in the Maze prison during the
hunger strike, reveals that he and the IRA prisoners’ commanding
officer accepted concessions offered by the Foreign Office on July 5,
1981, just before Joe McDonnell, the fifth prisoner, died.

They were overruled by the IRA army council, which refused to call
off the hunger strike until 10 prisoners had died. O’Rawe suggests
that the IRA wanted to use continuing sympathy for the hunger
strikers to win a by-election.

O’Rawe is disclosing details of the secret offer made by Margaret
Thatcher’s government despite a threat from a senior IRA member that
he could be shot if he criticised the army council’s role in public.

His claims, in a new book, Blanketmen, An Untold Story of the H-Block
Hunger Strike, to be published by New Island tomorrow, will greatly
embarrass Sinn Fein at a time when it is already weakened.

Senior party figures have been accused of sanctioning the £26.5m
robbery of the Northern Bank, which police believe was carried out by
the IRA. The party is also implicated in an investigation in the
republic into IRA money-laundering.

The concessions offered to end the hunger strike were put to Gerry
Adams, now the Sinn Fein leader, by a Foreign Office intermediary
known as “the Mountain Climber”. His identity remains a mystery.

Thatcher’s government effectively conceded four of the IRA demands
including the abolition of prison uniforms, more visits and letters,
and segregation of prisoners on political lines. Prison work for IRA
men was to have been widely defined to include educational courses
and handicrafts. The only point the government refused to concede was
free association of prisoners on the IRA wing.

“I thought the offer was sufficient for us to settle the hunger
strike honourably,” writes O’Rawe, who was serving eight years for
robbery. “In fact, the British had gone further than I had considered
possible. I felt it was almost too good to be true.”

Brendan “Bik” McFarlane, the IRA prison commander, agreed the deal
was acceptable. But the army council ruled that the hunger strikers
should hold out for more. The protest was eventually called off three
months later, on less favourable terms, after five more deaths.

“I make no apology for saying now that the army council acted in an
inexcusable manner. A generous interpretation is that they
disastrously miscalculated on all fronts,” said O’Rawe. “A more
sceptical view would be that perhaps they didn’t miscalculate at
all.”

Bobby Sands, the first IRA hunger striker to die, had been elected
the MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone and the republican movement was
keen to retain the seat in the subsequent by-election. Owen Carron,
the Sinn Fein candidate, was elected in August, on the day that the
10th striker died.

Two days after the IRA rejected the government’s offer, McDonnell
died. Mountain Climber was in touch again two weeks later, but Adams
told the prisoners in a smuggled message that nothing new was on
offer.

O’Rawe says the IRA gave the impression that the prisoners were in
charge of the hunger strike and were determined to get the full five
demands from the government, but this was not the case.

“Omission, rather than lies, was the order of the day. The leadership
never told the hunger strikers’ relatives of Mountain Climber’s
intervention and they washed their hands of any responsibility for
making or breaking the deal,” he says.

O’Rawe fears that McDonnell and the hunger strikers who died after
him “were used as cannon fodder”. He said: “No matter which way one
views it, the outside leadership alone, not the prison leadership,
took the decision to play brinkmanship with McDonnell’s life. If Bik
and I had had our way, Joe and the five comrades who followed him to
the grave would be alive today.”

O’Rawe says that when he discussed his reservations with a senior
republican in 1991, he was warned he could be killed. “I would be
wise, he told me, to stay silent about those events and that I `could
be shot’ for speaking my thoughts in public. I heeded the warning,
and let down the hunger strikers.”

O’Rawe said yesterday that he no longer fears being attacked. “The
war was still on in 1991, and things have moved on a long way since,”
he said.

Adams declined to comment until he had read the book, but Danny
Morrison, a former republican publicity officer, said O’Rawe’s claims
were wrong. He questioned the authenticity of the deal offered by the
government and claimed the IRA army council did not run the hunger
strike. “The prisoners were sovereign, it was their call.”

Newshound

A momentous step towards acceptance of the PSNI

(Ed Moloney, Ireland on Sunday)

As any public relations flack can testify, issuing bad news late on a Friday night is a tried and tested way to minimise the impact. If the IRA thought that by choosing last Friday evening to announce that it had expelled three of the IRA gang responsible for the brutal stabbing of Short Strand man, Robert McCartney would ensure limited coverage, then it was badly mistaken.

The IRA and Sinn Féin leadership were under pressure as rarely before to surrender the suspected cuprits to justice and to satisfy the demands of the dead man’s family, his sisters in particular. The McCartney family were all Sinn Féin supporters and came from the Short Strand, the isolated Catholic enclave whose armed defence from Loyalist attack by the infant Provisional IRA in 1970 became a metaphor for the protective role the organisation claimed was the reason it had come into being.

Abandoning the McCartney’s by refusing to give up at least some of the killers would have been tantamount to denying its own history and origins and deserting the people who had sustained the IRA and Sinn Féin for more than three decades. It would have been the beginning of the end for the Provisionals. Gerry Adams and his more astute colleagues finally realised that and acted.

It remains to be seen whether this action will satisfy everyone. At least six men, all IRA members, were involved in the knifing of Robert McCartney and his friend Brendan Devine but only half that number have been forced out of the IRA. Of particular significance will be the fate of the most senior of the IRA gang, a figure who is part of the organisation’s national operational leadership. Was he included in the expulsion or was that confined to lower level members only?

The option of expelling the alleged killers was always open to the IRA leadership and there was a compelling precedent. In January 1989 an entire active service unit was stood down and disarmed by the IRA leadership after its members had shot dead a former RUC reservist, Harry Keys from Fermanagh who was visiting his girlfriend in Ballintra, Co Donegal.

The gunmen fired 23 bullets into his body and were heard whooping and cheering as they drove off. The killing caused outrage throughout Ireland and led to the expulsion of the unit. Having expelled members for killing a former policeman the IRA could hardly avoid doing the same to people who stood accused of butchering one of their own supporters.

The power to expel members in such circumstances is derived from the IRA’s own General Army Orders, a set of rules and regulations which govern internal discipline. Order number 13 says that any IRA volunteer who brings the IRA into disrepute is liable to immediate expulsion and it is difficult to think of anything more likely to do that than knifing a man to death in a bar-room brawl and then using IRA resources to cover up the deed.

The immediate effect of the expulsions will be to release the witnesses, said to number over 70, from any fear of reprisals if they go to the PSNI to give statements. They can now do that in the knowledge that they will not be informing on IRA men but on ordinary civilians suspected of having played a part in murder.

The implicit message in all of this is one that is full of significance. The IRA leadership knows full well that the effect of its action will be to allow the PSNI to prosecute the case in court and that this process will do much to enhance the PSNI’s credibility and acceptability in the Short Strand and other parts of Nationalist Belfast. Would the IRA have allowed this to happen if it intended to forever boycott and shun that force? This is a small but momentous step towards acceptance of the North’s new policing arrangements.

The IRA action also settles another issue, that of growing speculation about a split between IRA hardliners and the Sinn Féin pragmatists on the Army Council. This is a decision that will benefit Sinn Féin, not least by removing any threat of electoral damage, but if there really was a split and the hardliners were in the ascendancy, as some observers have claimed, it never would have happened. Had they been in charge the IRA hardliners would have insisted on standing with their men and hunkering down for the storm. If anything the decision demonstrates that it is the Sinn Féin element of the IRA leadership which is calling the shots.

Having said that the IRA and its political spokesmen had to be dragged, almost kicking and screaming to this decision and had it not been for the persistence and courage of Robert McCartney’s sisters it is likely this would never have happened.

This carries an important message about the way this IRA and Sinn Féin leadership behaves and it has lessons for the wider problems caused to the peace process by the Nortrhern Bank robbery. Without intense and unrelenting pressure that leadership will resist making any move at all in the hope that it if it sits long enough something will happen to improve fortunes. But if the pressure is applied strongly and resolutely enough that leadership will move.

As the Irish and British governments look forward to new peace talks and the hope that they can persuade the IRA to disband, decommission fully and abandon criminality it is a lesson they would be foolish to overlook.

February 27, 2005
________________

Ed Moloney is author of A Secret History of the IRA.

This article appears in the February 27, 2005 edition of the Ireland on Sunday.

BreakingNews.ie

NI walk raises funds for Ukrainian frostbite victim

27/02/2005 - 17:50:56

A sponsored walk has raised thousands of pounds for a young Ukrainian woman who lost both legs to frostbite in Northern Ireland last Christmas.

More than 100 people took part in the walk in Co Derry to help raise funds for Oksana Sukhanova, the 23-year-old migrant worker who became homeless in Ballymoney.

The event was organised by the Saint Vincent de Paul. Oksana is currently being treated at Musgrave Hospital, where she’s being fitted with new artificial limbs.

Sinn F?in: Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin is committed to bringing the peace process to a successful conclusion

Published: 27 February, 2005

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams speaking in South Armagh this afternoon at a commemoration for IRA Volunteers Brendan Burns and Brendan Moley said ‘Robert McCartney’s murder has shocked hundreds of thousands of republicans throughout Ireland and we are united in our call for anyone with information about the killing to come forward.’ Mr. Adams also sent his wishes of support to the rally, which is taking place in the Short Strand this afternoon and which is being attended by Sinn Féin leaders in the city.

Mr. Adams said:

“Robert McCartney‚s murder has shocked hundreds of thousands of republicans throughout Ireland and we are united in our call for anyone with information about the killing to come forward. I want to send my support to the rally, which is taking place in the Short Strand this afternoon and which is being attended by Sinn Féin leaders in the city. Sinn Féin fully supports the family of Robert McCartney in their demand for justice and truth. I have met the family and I remain in contact with them.

“Sinn Féin does not underestimate the seriousness of the current situation. The process is in grave difficulties and just as all of us in political leadership must share responsibility for this crisis, we must also share the responsibility to create the conditions to put the process back on track. The republican people of Belfast do not need Irish government ministers to lecture us on our patriotic duties nor should they or others in the political establishment in Dublin demonise the good people of the Markets and Short Strand.

“Sinn Féin is totally and absolutely committed to bringing the peace process to a successful conclusion. We are also committed to bringing about Irish unity and independence and to representing all those who vote for us. And while we will not shirk in our responsibilities we will not allow politicians, especially those who are glorying in the current difficulties, to criminalise those who support us or more importantly to set the political agenda.

“Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin spoke for republicans the length and breadth of this island when he said in the Dáil last week that ‘Sinn Féin is a party that rejects criminality of any kind and no republican worthy of the name can be involved in criminality. There is no room in Sinn Féin for other than a clear and unambiguous commitment to democratic politics and the pursuit of our goals by legal and peaceful means.’

“It is a truism that those who want the greatest change have to take the greatest risks. We have demonstrated our capacity for doing this time and time again. Inevitably that will mean more hard choices, more hard decisions for Irish republicans as we push ahead with our political project and as we seek to achieve a united Ireland.

“We are up for the challenge today. We are determined to see all the guns taken out of Irish politics and to be part of the collective effort that will create the conditions where the IRA ceases to exist. We are determined that the issues of policing, demilitarisation, human rights and equality are dealt with.

“But republicans cannot make peace on our own. We cannot implement the Good Friday Agreement on our own. We cannot establish a working, viable power sharing government on our own. We cannot resolve the outstanding issues of equality and justice on our own. These require the British and Irish governments and the Unionists to play their part and to face up to the challenge of making peace.”ENDS

IOL

Republicans facing tough choice, admits Adams

27/02/2005 - 15:00:58

Republicans will face hard choices as they push ahead with their political plans and attempt to achieve a united Ireland, Gerry Adams said today.

At a commemoration for two IRA members Brendan Burns and Brendan Moley in south Armagh, the Sinn Fein leader again stressed that his party rejected criminality and believed no republican worthy of the name could be involved in criminal acts.

But, in a clear response to demands from political opponents for republicans to change tack in the process, he also acknowledged that having taken so many risks to move the peace process forward in recent years, the Republican movement would face even more difficult challenges in the time ahead.

And as the family of Belfast father of two, Robert McCartney, whose murder has led to the expulsion of three IRA members, held a vigil in east Belfast, Mr Adams said he fully supported their demands for the truth of what happened to emerge.

The West Belfast MP told republicans: “Robert McCartney’s murder has shocked hundreds of thousands of republicans throughout Ireland and we are united in our call for anyone with information about the killing to come forward.

“I want to send my support to the rally which is taking place in the Short Strand this afternoon and which is being attended by Sinn Fein leaders in the city.

“Sinn Fein fully supports the family of Robert McCartney in their demand for justice and truth. I have met the family and I remain in contact with them.”

With republicans under pressure to wind down IRA activities following Mr McCartney’s murder and December’s Northern Bank robbery, Mr Adams acknowledged the political process was in grave difficulty.

But in a reference to recent strained relations with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, he said: “The republican people of Belfast do not need Irish Government ministers to lecture us on our patriotic duties. Nor should they or others in a political establishment in Dublin demonise the good people of the Markets and the Short Strand.

“Sinn Fein is totally and absolutely committed to bringing the peace process to a successful conclusion.

“We are also committed to bringing about Irish unity and independence and to representing all those who vote for us.

“And while we will not shirk in our responsibilities we will not allow politicians, especially those who are glorying in the current difficulties to criminalise those who support us or, more importantly, to set the political agenda.”

IOL

Paisley: I’d work with SF with no arms or crime

27/02/2005 - 14:25:49

The DUP leader, Ian Paisley, has said he would share power with Sinn Féin if there was “no arms and no crime”.

The 78-year-old signalled that there was still a realistic prospect of devolved government for the Catholic and Protestant communities in the North, despite the fallout from the alleged robbery of the Northern Bank by the IRA.

“I have made it clear that as a democrat if people turn up with a mandate and if that mandate does not depend on criminality, does not depend on armed revolt and rebellion… I would face up to the fact that I would have to do business with them.”

BBC

Killers urged to ‘come forward’

Robert McCartney, 33, was killed near Belfast city centre

The family of Robert McCartney, killed after a Belfast bar row, have urged his murderers to give themselves up.

Hundreds of people gathered in the Short Strand area of east Belfast for a rally in support of the family, who blamed IRA members for the killing.

His sister Paula said they must do “the patriotic thing” and come forward.

“If not they must be pressurised to do so. If these men walk free from this then everyone in Ireland should fear for the consequences,” she said.

The 33-year-old father of two died in hospital after being stabbed near the city centre last month.

On Friday the IRA said it had expelled three of its members over suspected involvement in the killing, a move the family welcomed but said did not go far enough.

Mr McCartney’s sisters called on all those involved to come forward

On Saturday night a man was released without charge by police investigating Mr McCartney’s death after presenting himself to police earlier in the day.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said “any self respecting republican” had a responsibility to come forward if they witnessed the fatal assault.

“Had I found myself in Magennis’s Bar and was caught up in these dreadful events, I would now be making myself available to the court as the McCartney family have asked,” Mr Adams told the BBC’s Today programme on Saturday.

The IRA said one of those expelled made a statement to a solicitor and called on the others to take responsibility.

Two of the men dismissed were described by the IRA as “high ranking volunteers”.

Sunday Life

Police warn Shoukri that republicans targeting him

27 February 2005

UDA boss Andre Shoukri has been warned he’s being targeted by republicans.

The top terror chief was visited by cops last Tuesday and warned to vary his routine because of “republican interest” in his movements.

Shoukri refused to comment on the warning to Sunday Life.

But we have learned that police are taking republican threats more seriously, since the issuing of an IRA statement earlier this month.

In Britain, the threat of an IRA attack has been raised from ‘Level 4′ to the higher ‘Level 3′.

Senior police and military figures, and some politicians, have been advised to be more security-conscious.

The warning to the UDA’s north Belfast ‘brigadier’ didn’t specify whether the threat relates to mainstream or dissident IRA. It’s understood other loyalists have received similar warnings in recent days.

Although police aren’t anticipating a return to widespread terror attacks by the IRA, there is concern about isolated terrorist incidents designed to destabalise the situation.

Said one senior security source: “A one-off hit with a clean gun could be blamed on another republican group, or even on the IRA, and it would make little difference politically, because there is a political vacuum.

“Warnings are relayed to individuals when threats become known about, and there were several issued before the IRA statement. But there’s a feeling now that the risk is higher, and people should take the advice given much more seriously.”