MURDER

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That's not the word they used, but it is the inescapable conclusion of the report released yesterday on the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry.

On January 30, 1972, civil rights marchers in Derry were confronted by the English army of occupation. Without provocation the army opened fire and thirteen Irish demonstrators lay dead on the ground; another later died of his injuries.

The dead have now been utterly vindicated. A report by Mark Saville, a justice of the English Supreme Court, which took twelve years and cost nearly $300 million, concludes that the killings were unprovoked and unjustified. The report finds that the victims were unarmed, that the army targeted unarmed civilians, that the army fired without warning, and that there was no justification for the killings.

I call that murder.

 Cross posted from Rational Resistance.

3 thoughts on “MURDER”

  1. It doesn’t look like there will be any prosecutions forthcoming.

    When you think of all the collateral violence that Bloody Sunday incurred, those riflemen have a whole lot more blood on their hands than just that of the demonstrators.

  2. Assaulted by police in 1972

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    and he won the Nobel Peace prize 26 years later for spending all of the interim time successfully working toward the Irish peace accords. He also received the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Martin Luther King Award.

    I am not aware of anyone else who has received all three.

    Justice rarely comes, and if it comes at all, it will only come slowly when it is the State doing the killing. We can thank people like John Hume for bringing an end to so much of the violence.

    From the SDLP website

    “I want to see Ireland as an example to men and women everywhere of what can be achieved by living for ideals, rather than fighting for them, and by viewing each and every person as worthy of respect and honour. I want to see an Ireland of partnership where we wage war on want and poverty, where we reach out to the marginalised and dispossessed, where we build together a future that can be as great as our dreams allow.”

    John Hume Nobel Laureate Oslo 10 December 1998

    While political violence in Northern Ireland has claimed more than 3,500 lives, John Hume never abandoned the quest for a peaceful solution. Inspired by the example of Martin Luther King, Jr., the young ex-seminarian led a non-violent civil rights movement in his home town of Derry.

    As a founder and head of the SDLP, as a Member of the European Parliament, and as a member of Britain’s House of Commons, he has worked continuously for peace, tolerance and international cooperation.

    In 1988, Mr Hume began a series of contacts with the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, which was to prove crucial in developing the current process.

    Further talks became public in 1993 amid considerable controversy and hostility, especially from unionists. In defiant mood, Mr Hume declared he did not care “two balls of roasted snow” about all the criticism he faced.

    The SDLP leader’s strategy was to try to persuade Sinn Fein that the problem in Ireland was not so much the British presence but the divisions between the people of Ireland, Unionist and Nationalist.

    He set aside partisan differences to meet with rival parties, and braved the ancient sectarian divide to negotiate with Unionist leaders in talks which led to the 1993 Joint Declaration by Britain and Ireland, and the 1994 cease-fire agreement between the IRA and Unionist paramilitaries.

    The 1998 Good Friday agreement, ratified overwhelmingly by voters in Ireland, North and South, reflects principles John Hume has followed for his entire public life.

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