Sinn Fein's submission to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva accusing the British government of human rights violations in the North was not "hypocritical", its MLA for Newry and Armagh said yesterday.
Mr Conor Murphy was speaking at the publication of a 40page document submitted earlier to the UN, which details Sinn Fein claims that the British government had broken human rights charters through discrimination, state violence, oppressive legislation, excessive police powers and curbing freedom of expression.
Asked if it was hypocritical for Sinn Fein to criticise Britain's record on human rights when republicans had also been accused of humanitarian abuses, Mr Murphy replied: "There has been a conflict here and in every conflict human rights suffer. We don't deny that human rights have suffered all over." But they wished to point out that the British government had not acted within the law in Ireland.
The submission calls on the UN to support the creation of judicial inquiries into the murders of Mr Pat Finucane, Mrs Rosemary Nelson and Mr Robert Hamill. It is also asked to pressure the British government into releasing the Stevens report on collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces. Asked whether recent loyalist violence had made IRA decommissioning less likely, Sinn Fein vice-president, Mr Pat Doherty, said the solution to the current crisis in the North lay with "making politics work". "If we are to deal seriously with the question of arms we must realise the North is awash with arms.
"There is not just IRA arms, there is the question of the British army and the RUC - the so-called licensed weapons, and the weapons of loyalists."
What was required was for all parties to collectively find a new political way forward, he said. "We haven't as yet cracked that, but I believe if the British government are serious about living up to their commitments on policing, demilitarisation and sustaining the institutions, which they haven't to date, there is the potential for us finding a way forward on all of this."