Allister excoriates 'On the Run' Bill
03 December 2005
DUP MEP JIM ALLISTER QC, in a speech in Ballymoney tonight, has rounded on the Government over its “On The Runs” Bill, citing it as the proposal of an amoral government. Referring to the Secretary of State’s confirmation in the House of Commons that the Bill was the price of the IRA’s July statement, he said in one sentence Hain had both confirmed “the debauched parentage” of the Bill and demonstrated that the Provos stance was not born of “genuine abandonment of terror”.
The MEP warned that by their perfidious actions the Government was delaying rather han hastening the return of devolution.
“We in Northern Ireland are governed by an amoral Government. A primary duty of Government is to protect its citizens and their rights. When, as here, there has been over decades a failure to provide and protect that most basic of rights, the right to life, the resulting obligation on Government to protect the rights of those they permitted to become victims, is paramount. The right of the victim has at its heart the right to an effective remedy before a national authority, such as is set out in Article 13 of the European Convention of Human Rights. This includes the right to see the perpetrator of the crime, which made them a victim, proportionately punished. That is a principle of international human rights law.
Yet, this Government, with its outrageous “On The Runs” Bill is consciously and deliberately trampling into the gutter this right of victims to see proportionate punishment of the terrorists whose crimes made them victims.
The immorality of the Government’s stance comes from the fact that they are doing this on foot of a sordid deal with the very organisation which made the innocent their victims. Blair and Hain have openly chosen to be on the side of the criminal.
The matter is further compounded by the admission that the Bill was part of the price of the IRA’s July 05 statement. When Hain in the House of Commons on 23rd November, in response to William McCrea’s very effective intervention, said “one of the reasons we were able to achieve an end to the IRA terror campaign and the IRA’s statement of 28 July was the agreement that we made…. to produce this legislation..”, he, in one sentence, confirmed both the debauched parentage of this Bill and the fact that the IRA statement is not one born of genuine abandonment of terror, but rather is contingent upon the British Government bending to its will. How many more as yet undisclosed deals were made to buy that phoney statement of expediency?
If the Government thinks by such moves they bring the restoration of devolution nearer, then they are even greater fools than they are knaves. By such gross behaviour they but extend the time before any sane democrat could even begin to contemplate a place in government for Sinn Fein. Pander to the IRA as they will, walk over our rights as they might, but we have one veto, which even this perfidious Government cannot take from us, and that is the right to keep Sinn Fein out of government. By their actions they only make us more determined to exercise it.”
