Innocent victims an inconvenient embarrassment to DUP/Sinn Fein coalition
03 March 2011
Speaking last night in the Long Gallery at Stormont to the 150 strong gathering of innocent victims of IRA terrorism, TUV Leader Jim Allister said the sad reality, under the DUP/Sinn Fein coalition, was that innocent victims were an inconvenient embarrassment to the present regime.
“When the victim makers are put in charge of victims policy, don’t be surprised that insult and deprivation results. Hence, the woeful record of the last 4 years:-
§ the farce over the appointment of 4 Commissioners, with very little resulting product;
§ the serial breach of promise over the start up of a Victims and Survivors Strategy, first promised to be activated in May 2008;
§ the prioritising of terrorist prisoners groups as a special target group in the criteria for PEACE III approved by OFMDFM, and the resulting disparity in funding;
§ the promotion of the hideous Maze Shrine project;
§ the refusal of OFMDFM to do anything to help the case against Libya;
§ the abject failure to change the definition of a victim so that it no longer inflicted the injustice of equating the perpetrator with his victim.
“The definition of a victim is the seminal issue. Because it is unjust, everything resulting is unjust. Under EU framework documents a victim is properly defined as someone suffering in consequence of a criminal act, but here we have the absurdity of the criminal himself being equally defined as a victim. Despite repeated false promises by the DUP that this would be changed, it remains – as they knew it would – because in their rush to power they conceded the republican veto of the Belfast Agreement.”
It was particularly noticeable last night that when challenged on the issue as to why the DUP did not make the definition change a key bargaining demand in the Hillsborough negotiations over policing and justice, Nelson McCausland had no reply to offer. Patently, they could have wrung this concession at Hillsborough, but were not prepared to risk the deal with IRA/Sinn Fein for the sake of those the IRA made victims.
Likewise, the anger of the meeting over the scandalous Provo Project at the Maze went unanswered.
