Northern Ireland: The Truth Or A Version Of The Truth?

 

The bereaved and injured have suffered too much already to lose what could be their best hope of securing truth or justice.

By David Blevins, Ireland Correspondent

South Africa did it.  Rwanda did it. So why has Northern Ireland not been able to establish truth and justice structures to underpin its peace?

The first problem with those comparisons is that there was no doubt or ambiguity about who had won the conflicts in South Africa or Rwanda.

The British government and Irish republicans do not seek to recover the truth per se. Each seeks to recover its own version of the truth.

Britain has questions about what it calls the "terrorist campaign".
Sinn Fein has questions about the state's role in what it calls the "political conflict".

Former IRA prisoner, Anthony McIntyre, a prominent critic of Sinn Fein, fears recent attempts to address the troubled past are more about recrimination than reconciliation.
But he believes some people would be truthful "not because of Martin McGuinness but in spite of Martin

McGuinness" if there was a judicial amnesty.
He said: "I don't think the past should be protected from investigation.

"I think it should be shielded from prosecution because prosecution drives truth underground.
"It is a difficult one for victims to swallow… but victims are left with a terrible choice here… justice through
 retribution or justice through revelation."

Rescuers continue to Iook for survivors of the Poppy Day bombing in Enniskillen

But Aileen Quinton, whose mother Alberta was killed in the Poppy Day bombing in Enniskillen, says no one has the right to give up on justice.
"That compromising of justice is one of the things that has made the world more dangerous but whatever justice there is, I will still hold out for the fact that that must take its course, even if it turns out to be not

Possible.
"It's the same principle as sometimes it's not possible to save somebody's life but we don't say let's stop hospitals.  You carry on with the principle."

With some victims demanding justice and others prepared to settle for truth, Northern Ireland's politicians compromised and agreed a range of truth and justice measures.
The combination of a new historical investigations team, a truth recovery process, a mental trauma service and an oral history project offered victims some hope.

Britain's concern about the measures compromising its national security is understandable but all sides have overcome greater challenges in the course of the peace process.
The bereaved and injured from The Troubles have suffered too much already to lose what could be their best hope of securing truth or justice.