All the pomp and circumstance surrounding the platinum jubilee celebrations for Queen Elizabeth should not distract from the British government's record in Northern Ireland and current efforts to curtail investigation of legacy issues there - this according to the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
In a statement, the AOH said that as the world watched the pageantry and pomp of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in London, celebrating the history of her seventy-year reign, the government of Boris Johnson was "simultaneously putting forth an amnesty bill that will effectively end future investigations into the role of British state forces in the murder of innocent civilians."
Continued the statement: "While Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis attempts to portray this as ;turning the page in Northern Ireland,' it is nothing but a cynical attempt to rip Britain's true role in the Northern Ireland conflict from history's pages. The hypocrisy of recalling the events of seventy years ago with lucid clarity while attempting to ignore the events of fifty years ago in Northern Ireland is rife.
"In the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent internationally binding treaties, Britain has pledged time and again to address the legacy issues of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Yet, it has spent the intervening twenty years stalling and equivocating in fulfilling that commitment.
"Despite the best efforts of the British bureaucracy to stonewall, thanks to the courage and the perseverance of the victims' families, the truth of the British role in Northern Ireland has begun to leak out. The British-commissioned Saville Report found the killings of civilians on Bloody Sunday to be 'unjustified and unjustifiable.'
"Prime Minister David Cameron admitted to 'shocking levels of collusion' by organs of the British state in the murder of Pat Finucane. A British coroner's inquest found that the ten people shot by British paratroopers in Ballymurphy 'were entirely innocent of wrongdoing on the day in question.' For each of these cases, there are hundreds more still waiting to be heard after half a century.
"Yet, despite these damning findings, admissions, and official apologies, no one has been held accountable for these murders. Now, in contravention of its signed international agreements and all accepted practices of justice, the Government of Boris Johnson is taking steps to offer an amnesty for murder for acts committed by its forces during the Northern Ireland conflict in an attempt to airbrush the British government's role in the Northern Ireland conflict from history.
"With hubris, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis has tried to spin an amnesty for murder as being motivated as an act of compassion for old British veterans who 'have to live in perpetual fear of getting a knock at the door for actions taken in the protection of the rule of law many decades ago."
The statement added: "That is an insult to victims like the Finucane family, who received their 'knock at the door' courtesy of a sledgehammer. The family, including small children, were peacefully eating dinner when their father was shot 14 times. The victims of the Sean Graham Bookmakers got a similar 'knock at the door' when five people were killed with a submachine gun supplied by a British-run intelligence agent. They, and the civilized world, are within their rights to expect the perpetrators of theses and other vile crimes should get a 'knock at the door' in the form of a warrant to answer for their acts in a court of law."
the statement concluded: "Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis' purple prose in defense of an amnesty for murder tries to hide the truth like a rich gravy attempting to cover up rotten meat. The reality is that the families of victims have had to endure not only the murder of their loved ones but attempts to assassinate their reputation, slandering innocent civilians by claiming they were 'gunmen' to justify their deaths. At the same time, their killers, the men who committed the same acts that the British government has admitted were 'unjustified and unjustifiable,' received medals, knighthoods, and the privilege of reaching old age, a privilege they denied their victims.
"Many in the world will be awed as Britain again demonstrates its showmanship in presenting a bowdlerized past. We should not let justice in Northern Ireland be lost in that razzle dazzle. Certainly, a nation that unilaterally redefines its international treaty commitments should not be entrusted with a U.S. trade deal."
