"Innocent!"
"The victims of Bloody Sunday have been vindicated, and the parachute regiment has been disgraced. Their medals of honour have to be removed."The families of Northern Ireland protesters, unarmed and expressing their collective opinion in the streets of Londonderry, who were brutally murdered by British soldiers who used live ammunition to suppress what they may have felt was an impending riot, finally find their family members' actions vindicated. They were exercising freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom to express their opinion about the government they found fault with.
An enquiry that took twelve long years to come to a conclusion, and that cost $280 million to do that, interviewing over 900 witnesses, and producing a report than ran to five thousand pages relating to a miserable attack on innocent people by a British parachute regiment which concocted a story of having been first attacked by the demonstrators, tells the story. That story being that the deaths of 14 innocent people were covered up for far too long.
People who marched for their civil rights, were silenced when they should have been respected and heeded. That violence gave birth to the resistance the country soon found itself facing in the activism of the notorious Irish Republican Army, who thereafter viewed Great Britain as their enemy. Roman Catholic republicans brought "the Troubles" to the attention of the world at large, in a demonstration of religious and sectarian violence that seemed non-stoppable.
There was no provocation at the demonstration, other than heckling and demands from Northern Ireland to London, to respect them and their wishes. Without warning the British paratroopers opened fire and shot whoever was unfortunate enough to be in harm's way, even while trying to escape the slaughter. The IRA was always spoken of in hushed tones of fear, their hunting down and their murder of Protestants seen as despicable and a horror.
Revenge is a fearful element in human relationships. Where the emotions overtake reason and a hard cruelty of purpose defrays empathy to non-existence. Thousands of people died needlessly because a patrician and unalert and unsympathetic government would not stoop so low as to negotiate with those of its Northern Ireland province who felt ill done by. Diplomacy was the least that might have been expected; deadly force never anticipated.
People are relieved that their story has finally been told. The truth really does make us free.
"What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable... there is no point in trying to soften or equivocate what is in this report", conceded Britain's new prime minister. "On behalf of the government, and indeed our country, I am deeply sorry."
Labels: Human Relations, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, June 17, 2010
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