Conference tallis::celt

849.0. "Creation of Northern Ireland Justice Watch" by TALLIS::DARCY () Fri Dec 28 1990 16:57

    Boston Group to advocate justice in N. Ireland
    Embraces nonviolent, nonpartisan principles
    
    By Kevin Cullen (Boston Globe 12/28/90)
    
    A Boston-based group of lawyers, politicians and labor leaders has
    formed a civil libertarian organization that will monitor the justice
    system in Northern Ireland.
    
    Northern Ireland Justice Watch will be chaired by Mayor Flynn and US
    Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy 2d.  Its headquarters will be in Boston but it
    will have representatives nationwide.  Among its two dozen organizing
    commitee members is Martin Luther King 3d, son of the slain civil
    rights leader.
    
    Organizers, who have scheduled an 11 a.m. news conference today at the
    Omni Parker House, say they intend to carve out a niche in an area
    thought to belong to supporters of the Provisional Irish Republican
    Army, which is fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland.
    
    In the United States, organizations that support the IRA have been the
    most vocal and visible critics of the measures used by the British in
    their efforts to control the conflict in Northern Ireland.  But because
    the US government considers the IRA a terrorist organization, its
    supporters have been rendered largely ineffective in putting pressure
    on the British government to reform the justice system in Northern
    Ireland.
    
    Northern Ireland Justice Watch organizers say their position as a
    broad-based, nonviolent organization will give them the credibility to
    consolidate international pressure on the British government to
    eliminate nonjury trials and to restore the right of suspects to refuse
    to answer police questions without it being used against them in court.
    
    "Our purpose is to address instances of injustice, whether the
    perpetrator is the British government or the paramilitary groups,"
    said Francis Costello, Flynn's adviser on Irish affairs and a member of
    the group's organizing committee.  "We can't control the
    paramilitaries.  But Britain is an ally of the United States, and
    Britain must be held to a higher standard than the paramilitaries, to
    the standards of democracy."
    
    The group, whose organizers attach considerable symbolism to their
    efforts being launched on the bicentennial of the ratification of the
    US Bill of Rights, will also advocate the establishment of a bill of
    rights for Northern Ireland.  A 10-year campaign for such rights by
    civil libertarians there has never succeeded.
    
    Hoping to play advocacy role
    
    The Boston group is modeled after and will work closely with a
    Belfast-based organization, the Committee on the Administration of
    Justice.  Last week, Maurice Cunningham, a Boston lawyer and one of the
    group's organizers, met with CAJ chairman Michael Ritchie in Belfast to
    discuss joint activities.
    
    The CAJ was a leading critic of the British government's
    since-abandoned "supergrass" system, in which large numbers of British
    loyalist and Irish republican paramilitaries were convicted in the
    mid-1980s on the uncorroborated testimony of paid informants.
    
    Northern Ireland Justice Watch organizers say they want to mirror the
    CAJ's advocacy role.  A local delegation plans to visit Northern
    Ireland this spring and issue the first of what the group says will be
    annual reports on Northern Ireland's legal system.  Organizers say they
    will hold an educational forum on human rights issues later this year
    in Boston.
    
    The group will also sponsor a scholarship fund for students interested
    in a civil rights career in Northern Ireland.  The scholarship will be
    named for Patrick Finucane, a Belfast lawyer murdered by loyalist
    gunmen in 1989.   His cousin, Anne Finucane, a Boston advertising
    executive, is a member of the group's planning committee.
    
    Pat Finucane was the first lawyer killed in the so-called troubles
    which began in 1969 and have since taken nearly 3,000 lives.  His fate
    underscores the difficulty facing civil libertarians in a political
    climate as desperate as Northern Ireland's.  His killers thought that
    because he represented IRA men, and because his brothers were involved
    in the IRA, he was, too.
    
    Broad human rights issues
    
    Kader Asmal, president of the Irish Council of Civil Liberties, said
    addressing human rights violations in conflicts as deadly as Northern
    Ireland's "is particularly important because terrorist thrive on
    violations of human rights."
    
    Asmal, a native South African, who is head of the Irish antiapartheid
    movement and a confidante of Nelson Mandela, said such alleged abuses
    as detaining people for days without charging them, police and army
    harassment of Irish nationalists, and house searches based on specious
    evidence not only can motivate people to resort to violence, but can
    undercut the credibility of those supposed to uphold the law.
    
    Asmal will serve as an adviser to the Boston-based group.  He called
    its formation "a significant development at a time when there is a need
    for a political initiative in Northern Ireland."
    
    "In the past, there have been Irish-Americans involved either to fight
    the IRA or the support the IRA, but this group is a broad coalition to
    fight the conditions that lead to conflict," Asmal said in a telephone
    interview from Dublin, where he is a law professor at Trinity College.
    
    He said the inclusion of blacks such as King and State Rep. Byron
    Rushing among the group's directors "shows it's more than an Irish
    issue.  I think it's the kind of international rainbow-building we
    need."
    
    Other members of the committee-in-formation include James E. Mahoney,
    a Kennedy aide who advises him on Irish affairs; Seamus G. O'Kelly, an
    Irish-born lawyer in Boston; Boston Police Sgt. William Casey, who is a
    lawyer; and Rev. Raymond J. Helmick, a theologian at Boston College.
    
    Amnesty International, the European Commission of Human Rights, and
    more recently, the Helsinki Committee all have criticized measures used
    by the British in Northern Ireland.
    
    Two years ago, the European Court of Human Rights found that the
    detention of suspects for up to seven days without charge was a breach
    of the European Convention on Human Rights.
    
    Asmal said that the voice of US civil libertarians has been largely
    unheard.  "I believe this group will be that voice," said Asmal.