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Northern Ireland or terrifying them out of following a particular course of action: the Donegal Celtic football team were intimidated into backing out of a match with the RUC.
FAIT's succinct summaries of more than 60 individual incidents in November alone record families being intimidated out or exiled by the IRA because of disputes with influential republicans, for having a family member in the RUC, being a Protestant or refusing to allow the IRA to use their house. Crimes punished by the UDA and the UVF included having Catholic friends or refusing to deal drugs, do robberies to order or to pay protection money.
One of the awful ironies of the present situation is that it is precisely because the ghettos are ruled with iron bars and guns that people will not give evidence against the thugs who torture and terrify them. Although the RUC unofficially confirm IRA, UDA and UVF involvement in hundreds of crimes like these, they can rarely obtain proof that will stand up in court.
Repeated questioning about these blatant breaches of the Good Friday Agreement elicit bland, words from Mo Mowlam and. colleagues determined to turn a blind eye. "(The RUC) needs people to come forward" announced the Security Minister Adam Ingram, in the House of Commons recently.
"It needs those who have been victimised, harassed or intimidated to stand up and say what has happened to them and it needs witnesses to back them up." It was a heartless, hypocritical and insulting request to make of people living in fascist statelets. It is quite simply immoral that the British and Irish governments are deliberately ignoring the plight of these desperate people. Appeasement rules OK. At the present moment, it looks as if the only hope of freeing the prisoners of the ghettos, is that heroines like Maureen Kearney will publicly shame the politicians into action.
This article first appeared in the Sunday Independent 20 December1998.
Ruth Dudley Edwards is author of "The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions", HarperCollins, 448pp.
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