Republican News 13 November 97 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Paddy Newell Republican News 13 November 97 >>>> Nationalist alarm over stalled peace talks Concern is growing among Irish nationalists over the lack of movement in the peace process, with Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Irish government seeking positive movement. A spokesman for Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern said today he would be asking all the groups involved in the current talks on the north's future to Dublin for discussions on ways to move the process forward. Yesterday he confirmed be would shortly be visiting the negotiations at Stormont Castle in Belfast in response to a question in parliament by Sinn Fein's Caoimhghin O Caolain. An SDLP delegation led by party leader John Hume yesterday met British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the House of Commons in order to overcome "the negativities we have had so far", in the words of deputy leader Seamus Mallon. Mr Adams said on Wednesday that despite frustratingly slow progress in current talks, he believed an eventual peace settlement was still possible. "My own conviction is that we will get a peace settlement. I cannot say when we will do it but I think we will have lots of difficulties, risks and challenges," Adams told the foreign affairs committee of France's National Assembly. "There is a lot of fustration out there. It's very widespread. It's much wider than Sinn Fein," he said Adams blamed the British government for creating the conditions that led to walkouts from a recent Sinn Fein party meeting in County Louth. "Their tactical approach was to cause division and confusion. By taking a minimalist approach, they could have this effect," he said. Adams also expressed caution about the current situation. "I say this is the best opportunity for peace. I also tell you we don't have peace. Peace has yet to be established because the causes of the conflict have not yet been resolved," he said. He said the election last May of a British Labour government under Prime Minister Tony Blair had helped to create this opportunity, but Blair must now seize the initiative. "This is, in the words of Mr Blair, a historic opportunity, a unique opportunity, but for that opportunity to be ring-fenced, to be anchored and built upon, needs more urgent a focus than we have seen in the past couple of months," he said. Speaking in Leinster House yesterday, Sinn Fein TD Caoimhghin O Caolain expressed alarm over the lack of movement on political prisoners and demilitarisation. Welcoming the Taoiseach's response to his question on whether he would visit the Stormont negotiations Deputy O Caolain said: "I am glad he has confirmed that he will be visiting the negotiations. This is very important in asserting the common ownership of the talks by all the parties and both governments." Referring to the lack of progress in the peace process Deputy O Caolain asked Mr Ahern if he would agree that the failure of the Ulster Unionist Party to engage constructively in the negotiations is preventing forward movement. "We have a position now where Mr. Paisley and his allies, including a former member of this house and Government Minister Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien are trying to wreck the talks from outside, while the Ulster Unionist Party is in effect engaged in sabotage from the inside. "Would the Taoiseach agree also that the issues of prisoners and of demilitarisation remain totally neglected by the British government ? In the county bordering my consistency, in South Armagh, British military fortifications have actually been extended during these negotiations. I would point to the position of those Irish political prisoners in England who have served 22 years and who have neither been transferred here nor received a release date-namely Joe O'Connell, Hugh Doherty, Harry Duggan and Eddie Butler. This is particularly glaring in the midst of a peace process and is a growing cause of alarm to all the many hundreds of relatives of political prisoners who are despairing of the prospect of release at this time." The representative for Cavan/Monaghan concluded by urging the Taoiseach to emphasise in his contacts with the British government "the vital issues of confidence building and equality, as well as the central need for real progress at the talks." ________________________________________________________ >>>> European support for peace process and prisoners The international community has a positive role to play in Irish politics, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams told an influential committee in the French parliament yesterday. Mr Adams was in Paris for a high-profile visit at the invitation of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee to present his vision of the peace process. Jack Lang, the committee president, said its aim was to support and understand the process. "It is a time of great opportunity, but we don't have justice yet," Mr Adams said. He stressed three key issues which needed to be looked at in the talks: "constitutional and political issues, demilitarisation and democratic rights". Asked about the problems facing the peace process, he said: "It is a testing time for everyone. The big difficulty will be on the union. People want change and want to see justice. The danger would be that people outside Ireland think we have peace," he added. Asked about the refusal of Sinn Fein's elected members of parliament to take their seats at Westminster in London, Mr Adams said: "The French, who have a great sense of patriotism would find it silly and provocative if someone asked them to take an oath of allegiance to the queen of the Netherlands or to the queen of England." Mr Adams said he expected France, and the European Union, to ask questions and raise issues such as justice, prisoners and human rights in the north of Ireland. During the eight-hour visit, Mr Adams also met former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Gonne Carmicheal from Ardoyne, now living in Paris, was outside the parliament building to greet the west Belfast MP with an Irish flag. "This is a very important meeting. People in the French government and in the EU have realised that Gerry Adams is a very important person in the current political situation in the six counties and in Europe," she said. The west Belfast MP had the attention of the Paris diplomatic press at a lunch hosted by Jack Lang where he fielded questions from reporters. The French TV news channel screened an interview with him and the visit received substantial coverage on radio, TV and in the press throughout the day. POW ISSUE HIGHLIGHTED IN BELGIUM Britain's Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), Emergency Powers Act, the detention of Roisin McAliskey, conspiracy charges in Britain, the role of lawyers and arrest procedures, the 22-year men in England, the death of Paddy Kelly, length of sentences, conditions of imprisonment including the SSUs, transfer and repatriation, the 40-year men in Portlaoise, extradition and fundamental legal principles regarding prisoners were all discussed at a press conference in the International Press Centre in Brussels on Monday. The press conference was called to launch a report by Flemish Human Rights lawyer Piet De Pauw, supported by the Lawyers Group of Amnesty International, Flanders and was attended by a delegation representing Irish political prisoners. Over the past year de Pauw conducted an investigation into conditions under which Irish republican prisoners were being held, the violations of human rights and the rights to a proper and fair defence. ________________________________________________________ >>>> Cearta's Charter for Change A new group, Cearta, will be launching their charter this week in an initative designed to "stimulate debate and encourage ownership of the peace process". The peace process has to be bigger than the talks process, said Ciaran Kearney, a spokesperson for the group. "The Cearta initative is just one idea intended to make the peace process more dynamic and encourge greater participation," he said. "Irish people living in the North of Ireland are entitled to the same full National and Democratic rights of Irish citizenship as Irish people living elsewhere in Ireland," states the charter. "All people living in the North of Ireland are entitled to receive full parity of esteem and equality of treatment with one another. Delivering these fundamental rights is a prerequisite to, and is not dependent upon, any negotiated settlement." The steering group, which will be promoting the charter in a series of local meetings, is made up of a broad cross section of people within the nationalist community: community workers, residents groups, professional and business people as well as people with experience in campaigning for human rights. "Although the denial of National, Democratic and Human Rights has mainly penalised the nationalist population, partition has also denied unionists the opportunity for reconciliation with the rest of the people of Ireland, within shared political structures based on agreement and a common civic identity," says the charter, "This is not a statement of exclusive rights and upholds the Human and Civil rights of all people equally." ________________________________________________________ >>>> New leader for Irish Labour Party Dubliner Ruairi Quinn has been chosen to replace Dick Spring as leader of the Irish Labour Party. Following his defeat of rival Brendan Howlin by 37 votes to 27 in a vote by the Labour Party's parliamentary party, Quinn immediately ruled out the possiblity of entering a future coalition government with the governing Fianna Fail party as a potential "betrayal of supporters' trust", but did not rule out the possibility of a coalition with John Bruton's Fine Gael party. ________________________________________________________ >>>> Gardai must learn to build bridges BY SEAN Mac BRADAIGH Mary McAleese was inaugurated as President of Ireland to much pomp and ceremony at Dublin castle on Tuesday. A theme which featured strongly in her address was Irish success. She spoke of the confidence of the Irish nation in latter years. The inauguration was an Irish feel-good occasion and we all need a bit of that now and again. I got home on Tuesday evening to my flat, a 20-minute walk from Dublin Castle, to find a rather disturbing phone message on my answering machine. It was from a neighbour, a single-mother in her twenties who sounded distraught and was ringing to tell me that her flat was being raided by the Garda [26 County police], that she was being arrested and could I please do something to help her? The messages had been left at around 9am that morning. It was by now 6pm and the woman had still not returned to her flat. I found that her five-year-old son was being looked after by neighbours and believed that his Mammy had ''gone to the shops''. Something in his eyes told me that he didn't really believe this. I asked the neighbours why the young woman had been arrested. They didn't know. I naively asked whether anyone had contacted a solicitor on her behalf. They hadn't. I rang the Garda station, asked if she was still being held and was told that she was about to be released. ''We believe she has a young son who she is a bit anxious to get home to,'' the anonymous man in the detective's office said in a very matter-of-fact way. I waited in the neighbours' house as we attempted to speak in code in front of the children about the woman's arrest, so as not to alarm her young son. Eventually she arrived in the door. Her face was a sickly white, and etched upon it was the ordeal she had endured over seven hours that day. Sweet tea and cigarettes were produced, the children told to play in another room as the adults waited to hear what this dark drama had all been about. Plain clothes gardai had beaten down the woman's front door early that morning brandishing a search warrant and claimed to be looking for firearms. They pulled the place apart and found nothing. They then arrested the woman and brought her to a garda station several miles away for several hours questioning. Over seven hours she was interrogated in two different Garda stations at opposites sides of Dublin city and strip-searched twice. The Garda detectives said she was arrested because her address had been used to hire a car which was subsequently found in suspcious circumstances. The car may have been used in a robbery in which firearms had been produced. A young woman was separated from her child for the whole day, had her home turned upside down, was subjected to two humiliating and degrading strip-searches, was insulted, abused, and had her entire life probed by a cabal of suited gurriers because somebody, somewhere had used her address. How was this young woman to know that somebody would use her address for criminal purposes? How was she to stop such a thing happening? Since when do criminals hire cars for criminal purposes using their own addresses? People's addresses are used all the time by other people for nefarious puprposes. People's names are hijacked every day in this way -- to hire cars, mobile phones, to rent equipment. Credit cards are stolen and used to buy goods. Stolen passports and driving licences are regularly used and abused by criminals but this does not normally result in the unwitting personation victim having their house raided and being subjected to a frightening day-long interrogation. Neither would this have happened to my unfortunate neighbour if her address had been in another, more affluent, part of Dublin. But she lived in a flats complex in north-inner city Dublin. That was the difference. As far as the gardai are concerned, people in areas such as Dublin's north inner city don't have any rights. The tragedy is that they can get away with such notions because most ordinary people don't know their rights. This is why the woman's neighbours had not contacted a solicitor. This is why the woman is now reluctant to make any complaint to the Garda Complaints Board about what happened to her. She fears that this will result in further harassment. Nobody is saying that the gardai should not carry out their investigations. Just that they do it properly and even-handedly. Surely the proper procedure in such an investigation would have been for the gardai to call to my neighbour, inform her that her address had been used in such circumstances and ask if she knew anyone who might be responsible for doing this. That is exactly what the gardai would have done if the woman lived in a leafy middle-class suburb. Garda Commisioner Pat Byrne attended Mary McAleese's inauguration on the day my neighbour was terrorised by members of his force. He would have heard her speak a lot about bridge-building. Building bridges is the theme of her Presidency. The Gardai are one group in this state who have an awful lot of catching up to do when it comes to building bridges. A bridge the Gardai have consistenly failed to build despite the best efforts of community workers in recent years is the one that really counts -- a bridge between the force and the community they are meant to serve and protect. 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