"Silence" on state violence questioned

A LAW lecturer said yesterday that while we rightly heard much about the violence of paramilitaries, we heard very little of state violence and wrongdoing.

Ms Angela Hegarty, lecturer in law at the University of Ulster, was speaking in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, during the annual ecumenical service organised by the refugees group Rescue Trust. It was held in remembrance of victims and survivors of torture worldwide.

On "the day on which Christ was tortured and died at the hands of the state", Ms Hegarty thought it "appropriate" to address human rights abuses by the state in the context of these islands. To do so was often to be greeted "with open hostility and downright abuse". Nowhere was this more acute than in Northern Ireland.

When people mentioned state violence, "they are accused of giving succour to the men of violence, or worse".

Yet she believed "just as the people who have had relatives abducted and murdered by the paramilitaries are entitled to the return of their bodies and to the truth about their deaths, so those who have had relatives murdered by the state are entitled, as a minimum, to have the truth of what happened acknowledged".

The experience of the Bloody Sunday families was an example. "Lies" had been told about their dead and they themselves had become objects of abuse. Meanwhile, the officer commanding the Parachute Regiment on the day had been promoted and given an OBE. People were told that sort of thing could not happen now. "Yet just recently Lee Clegg, who had been convicted of the murder of Karen Reilly, was released from, jail."

Dr Mary McAteer, a lecturer in physiotherapy at UCD, said physiotherapists were coming more in contact with refugees, "a significant number of whom have been tortured".

Among the attendance at the service was the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Brendan Lynch, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton, representatives of the political parties, the ambassadors of Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, diplomats representing Nigeria, Portugal and East Timor and representatives of many non governmental agencies.