Sir, – We very much welcome the renewed debate on conditional amnesties in the columns of The Irish Times, with Newton Emerson’s column “If Britain pushes Troubles amnesty Bill through, quiet relief may be most common reaction” (Opinion & Analysis, October 13th) and the editorial “The Irish Times view on the legacy of the North’s Troubles” (October 13th).
President Michael D Higgins’s address to the Council of Europe on Tuesday and the celebratory aftermath of the Irish women’s historic victory over Scotland in the World Cup playoffs were reminders that the legacy issues of the Troubles have not gone away; and none have been so troublesome as the issue of “truth and justice” for victims and survivors, versus amnesties, conditional or otherwise.
The Truth Recovery Process has been advocating the need for conditional amnesties as an alternative means of seeking truth and justice since 2019, but in ways that also promote reconciliation rather than perpetuating a conflict that took nearly 4,000 lives and inflicted serious injuries on over 47,000 others, when people in England, the Republic and the continent of Europe are included.
We are totally opposed to the British proposals, which have understandably been condemned by victims groups, political parties and the Irish Government. As your editorial points out, the British government has already received due warning from Dunja Mijatovic, the human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, that the Bill runs the “very significant risk” of being judged unlawful in the courts at both national and international level.
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However, none of these factors address the very real dilemma, acknowledged on all sides, that only a fraction of the outstanding legacy cases, probably between 2 and 4 per cent, will ever reach the courts. This is not to mention the many miscarriages of justice that need to be addressed. While no victim or survivor should be denied their fundamental right to justice through the courts, we believe that there should be an alternative route available such as we advocate for those who choose to do so, based on mediation rather than litigation through the courts.
May I also point out that the first time questions of a conditional amnesty were asked in opinion polls in Northern Ireland was when they were included in the Institute of Irish Studies, Liverpool University, polls conducted between February and July 2022 for the Irish News. This was done at our request by Prof Peter Shirlow, director of the IIS, for which we are very grateful. For reasons best known to itself, the Irish News chose not to include them in its published reports.
The fact remains that, as Newton Emerson points out, over half of nationalist voters surveyed and almost half of unionists answered yes to the question, “We can only get truth for victims and survivors if we offer conditional amnesties to those who offer up truth”.
Can I add that our proposals, which can be viewed on our website at truthrecoveryprocess.ie, do not remotely resemble the British government’s Bill, although we have no doubt that the poll findings informed the timing of that legislation.
It must also be said that the Irish Government’s absolute refusal to contemplate any form of conditional amnesty flies in the face of history.
The Provisional Government of the Irish Free State accepted the British amnesty for all offences committed in the War of Independence in 1922, it went on to issue its own general unconditional amnesty in 1924 for all politically related offences committed in the Civil War, and in 1948 it released all convicted IRA prisoners, including those guilty of murder and attempted murder.
We agree with Fintan O’Toole, when he pointed out in a column on May 15th, 2021, about the Truth Recovery Process, “This is where the Irish Government and the political parties in Northern Ireland should concentrate their concerns. Telling victims that there is some future in which they will get conventional justice in court is easy but dishonest. Offering them a serious process of care and a stringent path towards whatever truth can still be found is not the best possible outcome. But it is the best that can be achieved and therefore the least that must be done.” – Yours, etc,
PADRAIG YEATES,
Secretary,
Truth Recovery Process,
Dublin 13.