THIS week marks the 33rd anniversary of the murder of human rights solicitor Pat Finucane by loyalists acting on the direction of the British state. It is easy to take those words for granted but look at their enormity. In 1989 a sovereign state, a founding nation of the international human rights covenants, procured and covered up the murder of an officer of the courts who was causing them discomfort.
In that attack his wife Geraldine, the mother of their three children, was also shot. From that moment on Geraldine became a warrior for truth and justice, taking on the might of a British Government, coping with the effects of her own trauma and raising her young family whose home and safety had been violated by this evil.
It was entirely fitting that Geraldine Finucane should be at the heart of this week’s United States Congressional hearing on dealing with the past, where the United States are standing up and listening to the cries for support of victims and survivors.
It stands in marked contrast to Leinster House where a weird climate prevails of policy support for the Stormont House Agreement, but alongside a wariness of victims and survivors themselves. This caginess creates a less than effective defence of victims’ rights.
When 3,500 relatives of people killed in the conflict signed an open letter calling for the full implementation of the Stormont House Agreement last year, it was raised by Mairead Farrell TD, niece of murdered Gibraltar victim after whom she is named. An Taoiseach saw fit to invoke a response which asked her to speak about victims of the IRA. When Pádraig McLoughlin TD raised the recent Police Ombudsman’s report finding state collusion in killings in the North West, An Taoiseach started to talk about the anniversary of Teebane.
These were extraordinary emphases, both political party point-scoring exercises, but serving to undermine every victim and survivor.
Mícheál Martin has visited many sites where actions are remembered, including Enniskillen on Remembering Sunday and more recently Derry on Bloody Sunday’s anniversary. He has been to the sites of the Ballymurphy Massacre and he has hosted victims of the IRA in government buildings. These are all important. However, this need he feels to “balance” out state violations with mention of the IRA is petty in the face of Britain’s assault on the rights of victims.
This unevenness feeds the anti-law propaganda that victims’ rights are about competing conflict narratives and who “wins” a battle of narrative. That putrid propaganda should instead be called out by the Irish Government and victims from all backgrounds defended.
The US Congress with their impartial example establishes that a vindication of law is a vindication for all.
A vindication for the rights of Geraldine Finucane is a vindication of all victims and survivors. If Jon Boutcher delivers the unvarnished truth and processes for accountability it could build the trust of every person affected by state agents, irrespective of which grouping, to engage with human rights compliant processes.
Hopefully the intervention of the United States will make a difference to the ongoing scandal of the denial of fundamental human rights to the Finucanes and every other family. And hopefully the example set by a bi-partisan and rights-focused approach will influence Dublin every bit as much as we hope it influences London.
