WHEN the American Department of Homeland Security ICE militia murdered Renee Nicole Good they followed a tried and tested method for state murder: justification and cover-up.
Donald Trump’s military regime at home and abroad is impervious to truth, justice or human rights, as it is for so many living in so many parts of the world. In Belfast we recognise these patterns as established in Ireland, and maintained as seen in all of the efforts of the British government to deny remedy to victims.
Renee Good’s killing was captured on multiple cameras. In an age of digital media the space for permissible lies is reduced, however that will not stop those defending their own actions and their own narratives. State violence deliberately creates dystopian, unequal playing fields. First the life is taken, then the justification is issued, then the cover-ups spin and spin for decades. Every victim of state violence here recognised their own experience in what HS Secretary Kristi Noem was doing last week when she called Ms Good a “domestic terrorist”.
For nearly 50 years Joan Connolly’s children were told by the British government that her murder – she was shot in the face by British soldiers – was justified because she was a “gunwoman” and a “terrorist”. It took a hard-fought-for inquest to expose the deliberate lies which obscured state responsibility for the murder of a mother searching for her child in a militarised environment.
The children of Kitty Irvine have lived with state disinformation following her murder in McGurk’s Bar, when the British MRF-planted bomb was deliberately blamed on the IRA and those killed blamed for their own deaths. If the Legacy Act comes into force their inquest, to set the record straight, might never happen.
Just before Christmas the family of 15-year-old Dessie Healy did set the historical record straight as an inquest at last found that his killing was unjustified and that those responsible should be held accountable. The patterns of every state killing are exposed again and again in inquest courts. Impunity was not accidental, lies were policy, as was the protection of state murderers. And given the de facto impunity that reigns, this is not past tense.
So is it any wonder that Donald Trump can walk through corridors without challenge from other states’ leaders, when only bald-faced hypocrisy would allow Keir Starmer to ask about the actions of ICE in the USA while his government is actively engendering state impunity here via a refreshed Legacy Act which will treat state veterans with “compassion” instead of accountability under the law.
That Ms Good was murdered only a few blocks from the scene where George Floyd was killed by police officers five years ago is notable as well as heartbreaking. The civic reaction then was 'Black Lives Matter', and it changed the environment for policing in Minnesota. What happens now with federal policing in America remains to be seen.
In Ireland, the response of families and human rights allies in challenging ongoing state impunity is essential, with the lesson from America this week highlighting its importance. It is essential to expose patterns of abuse, uphold international human rights norms and tell victims at home, and in every corner of the globe where violations happen, that truth and justice will come.
