SAOIRSE32

BBC

The cost of the body overseeing the decommissioning of NI paramilitary weapons has topped £8m, NIO minister Shaun Woodward has told the Commons.

The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning has cost between £276,000 and £701,814 each year since 1997 when the body was set up.

Mr Woodward said the British and Irish governments equally shared the costs.

“The total cost to date is £8,381,956, with the British government contributing £4,190,978,” he added.

The DUP’s Gregory Campbell said he was shocked by the figures.

“It shouldn’t cost the UK taxpayer £4m to get rid of some of the weapons from some of the groups, and we haven’t even begun some of the loyalist groups,” he said.

“It seems an absurd amount of money to look at in terms of where we’ve got.”

Weapons

The commission was established in 1997 under chairman General John de Chastelain, of the Canadian army.

Last September, General de Chastelain said the IRA had put all of its weapons beyond use.

“We have observed and verified events to put beyond use very large quantities of arms which we believe include all the arms in the IRA’s possession,” he said.

The IRA announced an end to its armed campaign in July.

The republican organisation said it would follow a democratic path ending more than 30 years of violence.

Loyalists are said to have an “on-off” relationship with the general.

A number of guns belonging to the Loyalist Volunteer Force were destroyed in 1998 in a token gesture of decommissioning, but no further arms have been handed over from any of the loyalist groups.

Larkspirit

Saturday 14th

Again, another uneventful somewhat boring day. My weight is 58.25 kgs, and no medical complaints. I read the papers, which are full of trash.

Tonight’s tea was pie and beans, and although hunger may fuel my imagination (it looked a powerful-sized meal), I don’t exaggerate: the beans were nearly falling off the plate. If I said this all the time to the lads, they would worry about me, but I’m all right.

It was inviting (I’m human too) and I was glad to see it leave the cell. Never would I have touched it, but it was a starving nuisance. Ha! My God, if it had have attacked, I’d have fled.

I was going to write about a few things I had in my head but they’ll wait. I am looking forward to the brief company of all the lads at Mass tomorrow. You never know when it could be the last time that you may ever see them again.

I smoked some cigarettes today. We still defeat them in this sphere. If the Screws only knew the half of it; the ingenuity of the POW is something amazing. The worse the situation the greater the ingenuity. Someday it may all be revealed.

On a personal note, Liam Og (the pseudonym for Bobby Sands’ Republican Movement contact on the outside), I just thought I’d take this opportunity tonight of saying to your good hard-working self that I admire you all out there and the unselfish work that you all do and have done in the past, not just for the H-Blocks and Armagh, but for the struggle in general.

I have always taken a lesson from something that was told me by a sound man, that is, that everyone, Republican or otherwise, has his own particular part to play. No part is too great or too small, no one is too old or too young to do something.

There is that much to be done that no select or small portion of people can do, only the greater mass of the Irish nation will ensure the achievement of the Socialist Republic, and that can only be done by hard work and sacrifice.

So, mo chara, for what it’s worth, I would like to thank you all for what you have done and I hope many others follow your example, and I’m deeply proud to have known you all and prouder still to call you comrades and friends.

On a closing note, I’ve noticed the Screws have been really slamming the cell doors today, in particular my own. Perhaps a good indication of the mentality of these people, always vindictive, always full of hate. I’m glad to say that I am not like that.

Well, I must go to rest up as I found it tiring trying to comb my hair today after a bath.

So venceremos, beidh bua againn eigin la eigin. Sealadaigh abu.

(Translated, this reads as follows:)

So venceremos, we will be victorious someday. Up the Provos.

Socialist Worker Online

**Click on the above link to read the extracts. As they have previously been re-posted from Daily Ireland, I will not repeat them today.

Bobby Sands’s funeral in Belfast became a focus for resistance (Pic: John Sturrock)

A new book by Denis O’Hearn about Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands shows the violence of the British state in 1981. We reproduce three extracts, and an introduction to the events

Background

by Simon Basketter

Twenty five years ago, Irish Republican prisoners went on hunger strike in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh prison in Northern Ireland. After 66 days Bobby Sands, aged 27, was the first of ten hunger strikers the British government allowed to die.

Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher denounced Sands as a “criminal” and “terrorist” on the day of his death.

Sands and the other hunger strikers were ordinary working class Catholics who found themselves up against the extraordinary violence and repression of the British state. Republican prisoners were prepared to starve themselves to death for the right to be treated as political prisoners.

Sands was typical of the men and women who joined the IRA. His family were twice forced to flee their home by Loyalist gangs. Loyalists threatened Sands at gunpoint when he worked as an apprentice coach builder.

He later wrote in an article smuggled out of prison, “I had seen too many homes wrecked, fathers and sons arrested, friends murdered. Too much gas, shootings and blood, most of it our own people’s. At 18 and a half I joined the IRA.”

Sands was arrested in the early 1970s. Like other Republican prisoners he was given “special category status”, which allowed them to wear their own clothes and associate freely.

He read widely in prison. His favourites were the political writings of Franz Fanon and Che Guevara. He was arrested again in 1976, tortured in the Castlereagh interrogation centre and sentenced to 14 years.

It was a Labour government in 1975 which introduced a policy of trying to “criminalise” the Republican movement.

The government had been embarrassed by international criticism of the number of political prisoners – then 3,000 – in Northern Ireland’s jails. Labour’s Northern Ireland secretary Merlyn Rees withdrew political status from prisoners.

The fight to regain political status began in 1976. Prisoner, Ciaran Nugent refused to wear a prison uniform.

He was forced to sleep on a concrete floor with only a blanket. Hundreds of other prisoners joined him “on the blanket”, and two years later nearly 400 Republican prisoners began a “dirty protest” after prison officers deliberately spilt shit and piss from chamber pots on cell floors.

A hunger strike began with seven prisoners in October 1980. It ended two months later when the now Tory government seemed to offer concessions. The government reneged, and a second hunger strike began in March 1981, led by Bobby Sands.

The hunger strikes won huge support in Ireland, North and South, and around the world. Sands was elected as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone a month before he died.

Over 100,000 people attended his funeral.

>>Read extracts

Those of you, like myself, who use ‘Dot.tk’ domain names for their sites may have just noticed that Dot.tk was totally messed up today. They were using banner pages and directing people to the wrong URL. Previously, I have posted dot.tk URLs for many of my sites. Although the problem seems to be solved at this time, if you need the correct URL for any site, please send me an email, and I will give it to you as soon as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience.

>>Email me

BN.ie

14/03/2006 - 17:20:54

An environmentalist who lost his court challenge to the routing of the M3 motorway near the Hill of Tara today appealed for his costs to be granted.

Vincent Salafia is claiming that he took the action on public interest grounds and that there was no personal gain involved.

The environmental campaigner, from Dodder Vale, Churchtown in Dublin, is facing a six-figure legal bill if costs for the seven-day hearing are awarded against him.

At the High Court, barrister Colm O’hEochaidh said Mr Salafia had been motivated by the spirit of the public interest.

“Mr Salafia is not against road building. His motivation was to protect the national heritage and the national monument,” he said.

The court heard that when Judge Thomas Smyth dismissed Mr Salafia’s challenge as unfounded on March 1, he ruled that the campaigner had no legal standing to take the case.

Judge Smyth also criticised the delay in taking the case and said it was inexplicable that Mr Salafia had taken no part in the oral hearings held by Bord Pleanala into the routing of the motorway.

Mr O’hEochaidh admitted it was difficult to contemplate the courts awarding costs to his client in these circumstances.

But he said that Mr Salafia assumed that the heritage around the Hill of Tara would be protected by the existing national monuments regime, until he saw that Environment Minister Dick Roche had given the go-ahead last May for archaeological excavations to begin on the route.

Mr O’hEochaidh said it was true that his client had not been one of the 4,000 people who made submissions to an Bord Pleanala about the routing of the motorway near the Hill of Tara.

But he asked how many of these people would have been prepared to risk their houses to take a legal challenge to the decision to allow work to start on the archaeological excavations along the route.

“The court can see the level of endeavour and risk taken on by Mr Salafia in circumstances where he had absolutely nothing to gain,” he said.

He added that the challenging of legislation in the courts was critical to the healthy functioning of democracy and warned that otherwise acts would go unchecked.

Lawyers for Environment Minister Dick Roche, the National Roads Authority and Meath County council argued that it would not be in the public interest for Mr Salafia to be granted his costs.

They said that Judge Smyth had outlined in his judgment that Mr Salafia had no legal standing to take the case, that he had been guilty of delay and that under the normal court procedures, the costs followed the event.

They also said that Mr Salafia had failed to provide a scintilla of evidence that national monuments had been discovered on the route and that the issues raised had already been addressed in previous court cases.

Judge Smyth said his ruling on costs would have serious consequences whichever way the decision went. He adjourned the hearing until 11am tomorrow.

RTÉ

14 March 2006 16:17

Israeli forces say most of the prisoners at a Palestinian prison in the West Bank have surrendered to their troops.

The Israelis seized the jail in Jericho using tanks and bulldozers to destroy one of the walls and have killed at least one prison guard.

An Israeli army spokesman has said it has removed 182 people from the prison and is questioning them. 26 are wounded.

The troops are trying to capture the Palestinian militant, Ahmed Saadat, who has been blamed for the killing of an Israeli minister.

But speaking from inside the prison, Ahmed Saadat, who is the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has said he will not give himself up.

Hundreds of Palestinians have reacted to the prison siege by taking foreigners hostage and attacking a British cultural centre, which has been set on fire.

The demonstrators fired into the air inside the centre and also torched a vehicle. Militants and Palestinian police earlier exchanged gunfire outside the British Council office.

Protestors also stormed the EU compound in Gaza, smashing windows and causing other damage.

A US-based educational organisation, operated by America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, was later targeted by militants who entered the building and caused minor damage.

In the wave of violence that followed the storming of the prison, a number of international aid workers have been kidnapped.

The director of the International Red Cross in Gaza was kidnapped by gunmen and two French members of the Medecins du Monde charity in Gaza were also seized.

The kidnappings came as Palestinian militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Gaza City warned US and UK nationals to leave the Palestinian territories immediately.

BN.ie

14/03/2006 - 14:16:20

SDLP leader Mark Durkan has described members of Britain’s MI5 spy agency as “para-terrorists”.

Mr Durkan claimed today that the undercover internal security outfit had been involved in numerous terrorist crimes in the North, including the murder of innocent civilians in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.

The SDLP leader was speaking during a House of Commons debate in London about moves to give MI5 a greater role in security in the North.

He said the SDLP could not accept British government assurances that the spy agency’s past misdeeds would not be repeated.

Mr Durkan claimed Britain was in denial about its ugly role in the North and had acted precisely and deliberately to make sure that the truth about its activities would never emerge.

Derry Journal

Tuesday 14th March 2006

THE AUTHOR of a new biography on Bobby Sands will be in Derry today for the official launch of the book. Denis O’Hearn’s biography of the hunger striker, “Nothing But an Unfinished Song,” has just been released and has already attracted critical acclaim. The book deals with Sands’ early life, his involvement in the IRA and subsequent imprisonment and participation in the prison protests, culminating in his death on 5th May 1981 after 66 days on hunger strike. (Click to view book cover)

Speaking to the ‘Journal’ ahead of the Derry launch of the book in the Tower Hotel tonight, Mr. O’Hearn, who is a professor of sociology at Queens University, Belfast, said that he had been working on the book for almost six years. “Most people are aware of Bobby Sands the hunger striker but not much is known about him as a person and a leader. That was why I wrote this book. We have all seen the grainy pictures of Bobby Sands and the images of him on murals but few people know who he was beyond what he did. I thought it was important that people know more about what kind of a man he was and how he found this amazing inner strength to do what he did,” he said.

Mr.O’Hearn admits that he did not know much about Bobby Sands before he began the project. “I did not know more than anyone else before I started writing this book. Obviously I was aware of Bobby Sands but I learned an awful lot about Bobby as a leader, not just a hunger striker. He had a tremendous ability to reinvent himself.” He spent most of his adult life in prison and he used his time for personal development. He learned Irish and taught himself to play the guitar and, most importantly, he became politically sophisticated. He was political before he went onto jail but he sophisticated his politics in prison.

“When I was doing my research for this book I heard a story about Bobby in the H Blocks. Apparently he was in his cell with Tony O’Hara and Tony was lying sleeping and Bobby asked him why he spent so much of his time sleeping and said he was wasting his opportunities. That sums him up well,” he said.

Before writing the book, Mr. O’Hearn interviewed many republicans who were imprisoned with Bobby Sands and has said that their assistance was “invaluable.” “I would not have been able to write this book without the help of men like Bik McFarlane and Seanna Walsh. They opened a lot of doors for me. No former prisoners refused to help me, even ones that I doorstepped. It has taken me almost six years to write this book and it was a very in depth process.” he said.

Mr. O’Hearn also said that the book was intended for activists all over the world. “I have been getting some very good feedback since the book was released in the United States. I think that the memory of Bobby Sands has faded outside of the Irish in America. I wrote this book for activists all over the world but hopefully it will reawaken interest in Bobby Sands in America,” he said.

Nothing But an Unfinished Song will be launched in the Tower Hotel tonight at 7.30pm.

Derry Journal

Tuesday 14th March 2006

ONE OF the world’s leading cancer specialists, Derry-born professor, Patrick Johnston, believes up to 700 lives could be saved each year by the North’s new flagship cancer centre. The £60 million stateofthe-art complex –located in the grounds of Belfast City Hospital –received its first patients yesterday.
The new facility is now the regional treatment centre for cancer patients across the North. Prof. Johnston - who hails from the Chapel Road area of the Waterside - believes the North’s current 52 per cent cancer survival rate will match the United States’ 61 per cent outcome by 2011. Prof. Johnston, a key player in the regional treatment centre project, says: “This building represents the optimum chance for cure for patients with cancer. “It is not about hospice care. This is about providing the best chance for people diagnosed with cancer to be cured from their disease. “Our biggest problem now is making people aware of the fact that cancer is treatable. It is not a disease to be afraid of any more. It is not a chronic disease.
“Diseases like breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer and, increasingly, aspects of lung cancer are all curable, if detected early.” With up to 3,750 adults dying from cancer each year and rates set to rise, Prof. Johnston believes the new “integrated approach” will change the face of cancer treatment.
The centre will provide multidisciplinary expertise and specialist diagnostic facilities –including access to a full range of clinical imaging services. Among these will be six “linear accelerators” which treat tumours with radiation therapy. The specialist machines rotate around the target tumour while sparing the surrounding tissue. Specialist therapeutic services, including radiotherapy and complex chemotherapy, will be delivered, as well as access to high quality clinical trials and academic research. The new cancer complex will have 84 ward beds, a specially designed central garden and 29 apartments for patients and families travelling from outside Belfast.

Derry Journal

Tuesday 14th March 2006

LOYALIST PARAMILITARY groups should wind up all their activities now or be shut down by the authorities. Recent remarks from a number of loyalist sources have been bizarre to say the very least.
For example, what good is disbandment without decommissioning? It simply doesn’t work. The UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groups need to wise up and get real. They have to go out of business or be put out of business. This is the clear choice they face and it isn’t one that should require reward or thanks. The entire nationalist community know exactly what loyalist paramilitarism is all about. Indeed, it is very hard to take the UDA posing as if they are somehow at the vanguard of some battle against deprivation in communities while, at the same time, they poison their own communities with drugs, rip-off businesses and intimidate Catholics and ethnic minorities from their homes. The British Government must not indulge loyalists in these pretensions to be saviours of their communities. Instead, they should put it up to them to do what communities want them to do - wind up and shut down.

Sinn Féin

Published: 14 March, 2006

Sinn Féin Human Rights spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD has called on An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to withdraw the Criminal Justice (Mutual Assistance) Bill 2005, which is currently before the Seanad. Speaking today Deputy Ó Snodaigh said the Bill will increase the prevalence of email and phone tapping in this state and that, “we could end up in the nightmare situation where Michael McDowell has, at his disposal, an unimaginable amount of information on private citizens that he would undoubtedly exploit.”

He said, “A year ago Justice Minister Michael McDowell pushed an amendment introducing mandatory three-year data retention into the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act. In light of the prior guarantees that any legislation around data retention would be in a separate Bill preceded by a focused Oireachtas debate, this was an unexpected move in the final hours before the Act was passed and when very few were in the Dáil chamber to debate the proposal. This shows premeditation on the part of the Minister who is eager to develop, even by stealth, a bank of information on citizens which is then at his disposal.

“The Criminal Justice (Mutual Assistance) Bill will increase the prevalence of email and phone tapping in this state thereby adding to the already vast bank of information on private individuals and citizens that is available to so-called intelligence services and governments. In the absence of safeguards, this will create further opportunities for McDowell to subvert the judicial process, trample the fundamental rights of citizens and engage in political policing to serve his own narrow agenda and self-interest. The Minister’s actions in relation to Frank Connolly and the Centre for Public Inquiry and the comments by Phil Flynn over the weekend clearly demonstrate the serious threat McDowell poses to the democratic fabric of our society. I am calling on the Taoiseach to withdraw this Bill and defend the people of this state and their fundamental rights from the attacks of the Sinister Minister.

“If this Bill is passed we could end up in the nightmare situation where Michael McDowell has, at his disposal, an unimaginable amount of information on private citizens that he would undoubtedly exploit.” ENDS

News Letter

By Stephen Dempster Political Editor
Tuesday 14th March 2006

THE British Government has sparked outrage by deciding to send a representative to the Easter Rising celebrations in Dublin. British Ambassador to Ireland Stewart Eldon will attend events marking the 1916 anti-British uprising, it was confirmed last night.
Ulster Unionist peer Lord Kilclooney, who was told of the plan in a written answer to a question he tabled in the House of Lords, said he was “amazed”. “Our ambassador is to join with Gerry Adams and Bertie Ahern in marking the rebellion against British rule in Ireland,” he said. DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson called the The ambassador will be celebrating the murder of British police officers and soldiers in an act of terrorism directed at the British State, he said. UUP MLA Danny Kennedy said: “It’s totally disgraceful.” Lord Kilclooney asked “how Her Majesty’s Government will be represented at the 90th anniversary celebrations in Dublin of the Easter Rising of 1916 against United Kingdom Rule?” On behalf of the Government, Lord Triesman of Tottenham responded: “The Irish government plans to invite representatives of the Diplomatic Corps in Dublin to attend the events to mark the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising. Our ambassador to Ireland therefore plans to attend.” The Irish republican rebellion of Easter Monday 1916 took place as Britain fought World War One with Germany. Around 450 people - 250 civilians - died that week.
The uprising was suppressed and its leaders executed but it was a significant stepping-stone in the eventual creation of the Irish Republic. Irish president Mary McAleese courted controversy in the South recently by making an impassioned speech about the event.
“It’s bizarre that the British Ambassador should be invited to these celebrations in the first place,” said Mr Donaldson. “After all, this is about celebrating the deaths of British soldiers, British policemen in the old Royal Irish Constabulary and innocent civilians. “The Easter Rising was an act of terrorism directed against the British State and that a representative of that state should in anyway be involved in an event glorifying such actions is most unwelcome.” Mr Kennedy said: “It’s quite astonishing that the Government would be even prepared to acknowledge the events, let alone participate. “I think most people will be astonished. Bizarre is the only word for it.” Earlier this month, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern issued an invite to unionists to attend the Easter Rising celebrations - in conjunction with a Battle of the Somme commemoration - but acknowledged that his offer would be rejected. He explained he had made the invitation in a spirit of friendliness and hoped it would be seen in this way.

Daily Ireland1

by Jarlath Kearney
14/03/2006

A memorial ceremony marking the seventh anniversary of the murder of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson will take place in Belfast tomorrow.
Mrs Nelson (40) was a prominent defence lawyer and mother of three children.
She was fatally wounded by a loyalist under-car booby trap bomb on March 15, 1999. The bomb exploded under Mrs Nelson’s car moments after she drove away from her family home.
Mrs Nelson was repeatedly threatened with death by members of the RUC, the UDR/RIR and British army.
Consistent efforts by human rights groups and international agencies to secure protection for Mrs Nelson were rejected by the British government.
A member of the RIR was among the key suspects in the murder.
Canadian judge Peter Cory conducted an independent review of the case at the request of the British and Irish governments.
Judge Cory concluded that prima facie evidence existed of collusion in the murder.
He recommended that a public, independent inquiry should be established. It is not expected that the British government’s inquiry into Mrs Nelson’s murder will commence before 2007.
Fellow solicitor Padraigin Drinan, who was a friend of Rosemary Nelson, appealed for anyone who knew her to attend tomorrow’s memorial.
“The theme of the memorial is about fighting facism and, in that framework, remembering the work of Rosemary,” Ms Drinan said.
“Some of Rosemary’s friends are coming together to discuss her life and what she might have been involved in now.
“But we are also interested in talking about issues such as Palestine and recalling the Spanish civil war in word and in song,” Ms Drinan said.
Tomorrow’s memorial takes place at Conway Mill, at 1pm.

Daily Ireland

14/03/2006

Belfast-based priest, Fr Alex Reid, who witnessed IRA arms being decommissioned last year, is to be named Tipperary Person of the Year.
Fr Reid, who played a long-time role in the Northern peace process since the 1980s, will receive the honour from the Tipperary Association in Dublin next month.
Association chairman Michael Fenton said Nenagh native Fr Reid has been acclaimed both at home and abroad for his pivotal role as a peacemaker.
Fr Reid is believed to have brought former SDLP leader John Hume and Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams together for dialogue in the late 1980s.
Based in Belfast’s Redemptorists’ Monastery in Clonard, Fr Reid witnessed the violence and suffering caused to both sides in the conflict. His initiatives with the Hume/Adams talks led initially to the 1993 Downing Street Declaration and eventually to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Fr Reid worked through this period with the Irish government’s representative Dr Martin Mansergh, now a senator.
Methodist Minister Reverend Harold Good and Fr Reid were asked to witness the decommissioning of IRA arms in September 2005. However, a month later he had to apologise for remarks he made at a public meeting comparing unionists to Nazis. He had said that unionists had politically persecuted Catholics in the North for more than 60 years.
The Hall of Fame award will also be presented to Monegall native, former GAA President Seamus O’Riain.
Both men will be presented with their awards at the annual dinner of the Tipperary Association in Dublin, on April 21.

Daily Ireland

By Connla Young
14/03/2006

An international conflict-transformation expert has revealed plans to launch a reconciliation process in the North.
South African Brandon Hamber, who now lives in Belfast, yesterday said the reconciliation group Healing Through Remembering planned to unveil its blueprint for bringing together those caught up in the conflict.
The move comes within weeks of the BBC broadcasting several programmes that brought together a number of combatants for the first time.
Facing the Truth, which was facilitated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, also brought the families of some of those killed in the conflict face to face with former paramilitaries.
The Healing Through Remembering group has voiced concern about the reconciliation process being turned into a televised spectacle. The reconciliation group said every party involved in the conflict must acknowledge its part and this should include the state, the judiciary and the political parties.
Writing in today’s Daily Ireland, Dr Hamber contrasts the South African experience in dealing with reconciliation and the Facing the Truth programmes.
Dr Hamber outlined the Healing Through Remembering vision for the North.
“The view of Healing Through Remembering is that there are no quick fixes and no one is neutral in protracted political conflict. A range of interrelated options for dealing with the past are required, such as a living memorial museum, a day of reflection, a network of commemoration projects, and collective storytelling.
“For truth recovery, an informed debate is necessary, evidenced by the misperceptions created by the recent programmes. To this end, Healing Through Remembering will shortly be launching five detailed options for truth recovery for public discussion,” Dr Hamber writes.
He said the recent BBC programmes had failed to focus on relevant issues.
“There is no doubt that the BBC programmes have stimulated debate on dealing with the past.
“But in the long run, this will demand something more subtle than eerie music and darkly lit forums where victims and perpetrators meet in the glare of the camera, no matter how moving or personally transformative such meetings might be.”