Report of shame - Allister
28 January 2009
TUV Leader, Jim Allister MEP, who, with victims’ groups, picketed at the launch of the Eames/Bradley proposals with a poster declaring, “The wages of murder is £12,000”, has described the report as one of “shame”.
In a statement the MEP said:
“The utterly immoral equivalence which this report bestows on murderer and murdered is not just disgusting, but it provides the basis of sand upon which its proposals are built.
For me, to stand outside with Michelle Williamson, who lost both her parents in the Shankill bomb, and then to see inside the man, Gerry Adams, who glorified the murderer of her parents, Begley, by carrying his coffin, was stomach-turning. Adams was there to gloat on how his IRA killers had been elevated by Eames/Bradley to the same status as their innocent victims. I was there to convey my outrage that Eames and Bradley, and their support cast, had delivered such a victory to terrorism. Lord Eames, in particular, should hang his head in shame.
The truth is that despite all their platitudes, Eames/Bradley have visited huge pain and renewed grief on the innocent victims by peddling the lie that those who made them victims are also victims.
As for those MLAs which pretend empathy with innocent victims, but complicitly allow the definition of victim, in the 2006 Order, which equates perpetrator with the innocent, to continue, without amendment, their condemnations of Eames/Bradley exude hypocrisy. Stormont could change the iniquitous definition, but won’t because of the veto bestowed on IRA/Sinn Fein.
The poison of “equivalence” which runs through this report extends well beyond the definition of victim, it even includes the insult of bracketing Remembrance Day with the IRA’s Easter Sunday’s Commemoration, as it proposes a shared “Day of Reflection”.
It is also clear to me that the gameplan of this report is to move away from the criminal justice system as the venue for justice to information gathering, where amnesty would operate. Under Eames/Bradley the HET will be phased out and pursuit of justice abandoned.”
