Stand-Up to Racism

In 1972 Catholic families – who had endured three years of sustained sectarian attacks on their homes – fled Annalee St in North Belfast. Last month - fifty-three years later - Catholic homes in Annalee St. were again the target of sectarian attack and families were forced to flee. In the last fortnight we have also witnessed the firebombing of homes in Ballymena, the Larne Leisure Centre and racist attacks in other parts of the North.

The images of homes in flames in Ballymena reminded me of similar scenes I first witnessed in Belfast in August 1969. The film footage of that period is of streets ablaze, frightened families hurriedly stacking furniture on lorries or carrying their most precious possessions on their backs. Then it was the racism and sectarianism of the apartheid unionist state attacking nationalist and republican families, killing residents, destroying hundreds of homes and forcing thousands to become refugees in our own city.

Regrettably, the same sectarian and racist fundamentalism that motivated those attacks still exists today among some in our society who campaign against housing for Catholics, hang effigies of political leaders on bonfires and use violent rhetoric to promote hate crime against immigrants and those they define as ‘others’. That is those who are of a different religion or colour, or sexual orientation. 

Defending Neutrality

The Israeli rogue state has set the world on a dangerous course. Its deadly assault on Iran, allied to its violent actions in Lebanon and Syria and its genocidal war on the Palestinian people, has cast a huge shadow over the Middle East. As its military forces continue to kill scores of Palestinians daily in Gaza and its war planes attack Iran the Israeli military imposed a complete siege on the west Bank. Over a thousand military checkpoints which provide Israel with absolute control over the occupied west Bank, were completely closed imposing a siege on the Palestinian towns, villages and isolated farms of that region.

As the world focusses on the exchanges between Israel and Iran the Zionists’ genocidal and ethnic cleansing strategy against the Palestinian people is escalating. Those western states that have refused to challenge Israel’s murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians or stand-by international law, are now defending Israel’s attack on Iran using the same unacceptable excuse that Israel has the right to defend itself.

Pat Finucane - End the Delay

It has been ten months since the British Secretary of State Hilary Benn first announced that he was setting up an independent inquiry into the killing of Pat Finucane under the 2005 Inquiries Act. Last week he appointed Sir Gary Hickinbottom as the Chair of the Inquiry. Hickinbottom has been given responsibility for investigating one of the most high profile examples of state collusion between loyalist death squads and British state agents and agencies during the decades of conflict.

As well as Hickinbottom, former Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan and international human rights lawyer Francesca Del Mese have been appointed as assessors to the inquiry. Their role is to advise the Chair but they will not be involved in any final report.

It has been a long difficult road for Geraldine Finucane and her family to secure this Inquiry. Twenty-four years ago the British and Irish governments agreed at Weston Park to establish public inquiries into a number of troubles-related cases. Canadian Judge Peter Cory recommended inquiries into the deaths of: Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill, Billy Wright, and Patrick Finucane and also into the deaths of RUC officers Bob Buchanan and Harry Breen.