Andrée Murphy hails from Dublin but has lived in Belfast since 1994.
She is the Deputy Director of Relatives for Justice, a national victim support NGO which provides advocacy and therapeutic support for the bereaved and injured of the conflict. Holding a Masters Degree in international human rights law, Andrée's particular expertise and research on women affected by conflict trauma has seen her provide evidence to the United Nations in Geneva and to Congressional hearings in the US.
Andrée is a columnist for Belfast Media Group and is a regular contributor to broadcast media, providing political analysis and commentary.
THE idea of political violence is horrific isn’t it? It needs to be condemned by everyone and the standards of democratic norms promoted and espoused. Yes, of course. That is one caravan of love we can all get into – if it was not for the nauseating hypocrisy and sheer brass neck of those pontificating on the subject and who seem to be driving this particular campaign bus.
WITHIN hours of taking office the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer tweeted that he had spoken to the “First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. We are resetting our relationship, working together to unite our country."
I WOULD not be the biggest fan of the concept of devolution. For me it is kind of in the way of the real conversation. And handy for those who want to distract from it.
A GIANT has fallen. News that our laoch náisiúnta Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh has passed at the tender age of 93 stopped me in my tracks. Those of us lucky to meet him will be sitting this week and weekend sharing pics and stories of one of Ireland’s greatest sons.
IT is unconscionable that a public inquiry has not yet been called into the PSNI spy cops scandal.
“IN Ireland, public meetings are absolutely necessary preliminaries to any enterprise... The hard-headed, commercially-minded Ulsterman is just as fond of public meetings as the Connacht Celt."
WHEN I was four, I had a winter of tonsilitis that kept me out of school for my first formative year. That August I had my tonsils out but remember clearly always feeling like I was catching up.
THE Nazis gassed their prisoners before they incinerated them. In Rafah the refugee women and children in shacks and tents were not even afforded that. One has to assume the difference is that Israeli drone operators either have the sound turned off or they enjoy the sounds of Palestinian screams.
IT is widely acknowledged that our island is in a period of fundamental change. Change can bring uncertainty and apprehension when it is not formally planned.
IN 2007 a civilian worker in the PSNI was arrested and charged with passing information from the PSNI computer to loyalist paramilitaries. Scores of names, addresses and car registrations were given to the UVF by Aaron Hill. For the PSNI, the arrests and charging of Mr Hill, along with his accomplice, Darren Richardson, this was the end of the matter.
IN the dying hours of the inquest into the killing of Paul Thompson, the legal representatives of the Northern Ireland Office and the Secretary of State worked to the last minute to prevent Eugene Thompson, Paul’s only surviving relative, from getting a 'gist' of withheld papers which may have been relevant to the murder.
THE past week has been another landmark in the bizarre official relationships between our islands. And one that will have lasting implications.
IT was not without irony that Simon Harris’ words in apology for state failings regarding the Stardust disaster travelled up the M1 to Belfast courts where families of the other state’s violations sat in a race against time to secure some accounting for direct state violence and collusion.
IN less than a fortnight, almost coinciding with the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, our society will be immersed in laws of impunity, disregard and denial with the Legacy Act.
NEVER in my lifetime has a Taoiseach been on Teilfís Éireann talking about the aspiration to Irish unification and put the case for its desirability. On his way out the door, Leo Varadkar managed to pull off the unlikely and the exceptional – he became the modern Irish patriot we needed in a week when small-minded begrudgers tried to reduce the national debate to the last farthing and tell us our boundaries for self-determination.