Human Rights – Page 5 – Slugger O'Toole

Avoid a battle of the narratives. The Chief Constable and Police Ombudsman appeal for agreement emerging from the proposed legacy process

Brian Walker on May 16, 2018, 1:07 am

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Eamonn Mallie has published transcripts of Chief Constable George Hamilton and Police Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire addressing a gathering at Queen’s University on the approaches they hope will be adopted on the consultation just launched on dealing with the past. I shamelessly share them with warm thanks to Eamonn. Both men plead for responders not to adopt a polarised or polemical position right from the start and take the broader view that works for reconciliation. They also call for a …

The unintended consequences of an amnesty for security forces are forensically exposed

Brian Walker on May 12, 2018, 12:21 am

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The case for a selective amnesty for former security forces is powerfully refuted by the leading lawyer in the field Professor Kieran Mc Evoy of Queen’s in a Guardian article ( see below). Clearly someone got to Theresa May after Wednesday’s PMQs to make her change her mind. She did a similar U- turn yesterday over nominating two lay assessors to sit with the retired judge in parts of the Grenfell fire inquiry. The same scary changeability can be seen …

With all respect to concerned former soldiers, Theresa May is right to see off last minute demands for a selective amnesty

Brian Walker on May 11, 2018, 8:25 pm

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After appearing to side with her Defence Secretary on Wednesday in favouring a selective amnesty for former security forces in Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister has thought the better of it as the long delayed consultation on the Legacy Bill was launched. We are in the peculiar position of Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill broadly welcoming the Bill, while the DUP leader Arlene Foster contemplates a legal challenge to the High Court ruling that she wasn’t entitled to refuse to submit a …

Superpatriotic ministers claim bias against soldiers in new Troubles investigations

Brian Walker on May 9, 2018, 1:42 pm

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Update.. May appears to back amnesty for former security forces At Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday, Mrs May said the issue of a statute of limitations was “very important”. “At its heart, is the support and gratitude that we owe all those who have served in our armed forces,” she said. “The situation we have at the moment is that the only people being investigated for these issues are those in our armed forces or those who served in law enforcement …

“The third lesson of this episode stretches far beyond Israel-Palestine…”

Pete Baker on May 5, 2018, 3:02 pm

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The Palestinian leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, has been widely condemned for his anti-Semitic remarks in a televised speech addressing a meeting of the Palestinian National Council on Monday 30th April. Among his critics, as the Belfast Telegraph notes, former US Secretary of State John Kerry Former US Secretary of State John Kerry wrote on Twitter: “These comments are wrong, ugly, and unacceptable – anywhere from anyone – but particularly from anyone who says he wants to be a peacemaker. No …

On the legacy deadlock, equality before the law for the security forces is not moral equivalence with the IRA

Brian Walker on April 30, 2018, 3:49 pm

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Ruth Dudley Edwards has just commended “Legacy: What To Do About The Past in Northern Ireland”, a short book by Unionist councillor and redoubtable human right campaigner Jeff Dudgeon, edited mainly from the contributions at the conference on legacy legislation he organised in Belfast on March 3rd. As you’d expect, Ruth shares the passionately held view that the UK’s so far unseen draft Legacy Bill is based on a flawed approach developed by the traditional justice academic lawyers who to …

The Border Force row exposes differences between British and Irish citizenship that have to be settled

Brian Walker on April 18, 2018, 10:00 am

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Leaving aside the delicious irony, I would guess that Sinn Fein are right: the attempt to limit recruitment for the UK Border Force to British passport holders is discriminatory and would be overthrown in court. Why should anyone have to produce a passport for a job in Northern Ireland anyway? This has echoes of the malign Windrush problem. without feeling the pain – yet, Up to now only when you go abroad and need to produce a passport has the issue …

A noble illusion perhaps, but unity and reconciliation are not compatible

Brian Walker on April 9, 2018, 3:20 pm

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Writing in the Irish Times, Robin Wilson has eloquently identified “a cosmopolitan vista of “unification as reconciliation” among diverse individuals on the island…. as the current Tory government disappears down the Brexit rabbit hole”. Amid fears of a renewed, Brexit-induced hard Border, a plebiscite would be a blunt-instrument (and one-sided) response – less discussion, more sectarian headcount. A more sophisticated approach, less likely to lead to highly unwelcome consequences, would be to redefine the process of north-south co-operation recognised by …

A revised Belfast Agreement is needed more than nostalgia for 1998

Brian Walker on April 2, 2018, 4:31 pm

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Like Magna Carta, the Belfast/ Good Friday Agreement has acquired the status of icon of the constitution. This is not altogether in its favour. A good deal of nonsense is talked about Magna Carta. Back in 1215, no sooner had the ink dried on the vellum of the fair copy, than bad King John denounced it. But the idea of curbing the unbridled power of the monarch could not be unborn and it finally evolved into government by the rule …

With or without a good deal on Brexit, EU oversight of an all-island economy is looking likely

Brian Walker on March 29, 2018, 11:34 am

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Jim Allister QC is not the only one to spot the potential extension of north-south areas of cooperation under “the backstop”, the notorious Option 3 of the draft Withdrawal Agreement, as Newton Emerson reports. There’s quite a bit more from Professor Dagmar Schiek of Queen’s University and from human rights organisations north and south. With cooperation, authority follows. It is indeed a wonder that the DUP have not reacted more strongly. They seem to be putting their faith in a …

The next big Brexit issue- the future rights of EU/Irish citizens in the North

Brian Walker on March 22, 2018, 12:56 pm

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Another big Brexit theme has been overshadowed by the border conundrum – the future of citizens’ rights in Northern Ireland. The contention is that many of these will go unprotected when the UK withdraws from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the rulings of the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg, a key UK government aim. The Charter has greater force than the non-EU European Convention on Human Rights which is written into UK law as the Human Rights …

More than the leadership of Arlene Foster it’s about what the DUP under unprecedented pressure, is for

Brian Walker on March 8, 2018, 12:12 pm

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In “Arlene Foster’s authority is ebbing away“, Newton assesses the pressure on her in the Irish Times. His fascinating analysis is the latest example of local Kremlinology peering into the suffocatingly tight networks that dominate these little parties. But new outside elements are at play as never before to supplement rapid change at home , like the unpredictable fallout of Brexit and pressures for social change from London and Dublin. But for these pressures to have full effect, they must …

DUP Councillor refuses to engage with Pro-Choice Group

Soapbox on March 5, 2018, 9:21 am

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Emma Gallen is an activist for Alliance for Choice. Alliance for Choice had planned to be at several different International Women’s Day events last week. But the snow meant that many were postponed. As a result, a well meaning campaign, asking councillors at Belfast City Council to support Kate Nicholl’s motion to support the decriminalisation of abortion, gained more traction than expected. The debate at City Council was due to be on Thursday March 1st, but was also postponed due …

A timely reminder that today’s unionists and other non-nationalists have as big a stake in human rights as nationalists. Further polarisation must therefore be avoided

Brian Walker on February 26, 2018, 3:02 pm

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The stale stereotype that nationalists are all for civil rights and unionists fight them tooth and nail is challenged in an open letter signed by over 100 “civic unionists, pluralists and other forms of civic leadership” published in the Irish Times. It’s a riposte to similar letters from “ civic nationalism” appealing to the Dublin government “to defend the legal, human and language rights of Irish citizens in the North, and warning that the British government’s deal with the DUP …

For the sake of clarity, all sides should stop spreading myths about Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement

Brian Walker on February 26, 2018, 1:22 pm

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Ignorance and special pleading about the Good Friday Agreement and its relationship to Brexit and the border has been a feature of angry comment that has followed the collapse of the Stormont talks. The Daily Express led the pack The Good Friday agreement explicitly stipulates there cannot be a hard border on the island of Ireland, leaving Brexiteers launching impassioned arguments on the deal. It does nothing of the sort. Even Adam Boulton who speaks with the great authority on …

Equality has arrived but the DUP and Sinn Fein have yet to face up to what it means

Brian Walker on February 23, 2018, 6:39 pm

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“Equality” has always been a Sinn Fein buzzword. As the recanted ex- IRA man Shane Paul O’Doherty lethally today quoted Gerry Adams speaking in 2014: “The point is to actually break these bastards – that’s the point. And what’s going to break them is equality … That’s what we need to keep the focus on – that’s the Trojan horse of the entire republican strategy is to reach out to people on the basis of equality.” Other views are un-cynical …

Does Brexit threaten rights protection for Irish citizens in the North?

Brian Walker on February 22, 2018, 9:33 am

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What happens to a raft of human rights when we leave the European Union and the European Charter of Human Rights no longer applies? The question is raised by the leading constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor. Successive UK governments (and I!) thought we had opted out of it for years, but the European Court of Justice ruled in 2013 that we hadn’t. Inevitably there is an Irish angle to this that may be of particular concern to Irish-EU citizens in Northern …

Care is needed to stop the wheels coming off the Good Friday Agreement

Brian Walker on February 20, 2018, 1:04 pm

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I suppose it was inevitable. On the fringes of Westminster politics the alignment of Leave with a Brexit Union and Remain with support for the GFA is hardening, as shown in reaction to the failure so far to restore Stormont. This is what happens when people dip into the issues and pull out again. Living with them requires steadiness. Former secretary of state, stout Brexiteer and Shropshire lad Owen Paterson tweets that the GFA “has outlived its use.” Kate Hooey, …

For a political deal ever to emerge, mutual ignorance needs to faced and mutual respect observed

Brian Walker on February 14, 2018, 4:27 pm

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Mick has rightly just pointed out how tantalising easy the language issue could be to solve, were it not for the politics that expresses a far deeper mutual ignorance ( in both senses) than is often recognised and which 20 years of supposed power sharing has failed to reduce. Politically there must be limits to the management of the voluntary apartheid state we appear to be creating before cohesion collapses altogether. That moment may not be as far off as …

Irish citizenship may open the door to an extended role for Dublin and Brussels in the North after Brexit

Brian Walker on February 9, 2018, 12:18 pm

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Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London