The UK Government has no right to speak for the victims of the Troubles, the brother of a child who was shot dead by British forces has told Newstalk Breakfast.

A new report into Westminster’s proposed amnesty for Troubles’-related crimes has found it to be “illegal, illegitimate and unworkable.”

The amnesty would end prosecutions for all conflict-related crimes committed by security forces and paramilitaries throughout the Troubles.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, report author, Queens University Professor Louise Mallinder said the plan would have far-reaching consequences.

   

“The UK proposals include notifications for any crimes so it seems they would cover killings, torture and sexual violence – and they have no temporal limits so they could cover the whole 30 years of the Troubles,” she said.

“Indeed, it could not only close down all ongoing and future criminal proceedings, but it could go beyond that to close down all ongoing civil remedies, coroners’ inquests and other formal investigative processes.”

She said she can’t find any other amnesty with such broad legal effects.

“If these proposals were to be enacted, they would offer one of the broadest amnesties to be seen in in the world in recent years and would make the UK very much an outlier on the international stage,” she said.

Victims

Also on the show Emmett McConomy, whose 11-year-old brother Stephen was killed by a British Army Soldier in Derry in 1982, said the plan has united Northern politics in anger.

“The British Government don’t have a monopoly on victimhood,” he said. “They were the victim-makers in this conflict along with the other organisations as well – the paramilitaries.

“They don’t get to move the goalposts and change laws and speak for all victims.

“The only thing the British Government has done with this proposal is to unite absolutely everyone in condemnation of what they are proposing. That has never ever happened before in Irish politics or the politics of the North.”

Retraumtised

He said the plan has served to retraumatise victims of the Troubles yet again.

“We have got to look as to why,” he said. “Why is the British Government looking to bring in these new laws that effectively draw a line under the past and bury it forever.

“What are they hiding and what are they concerned about? They are concerned about the truth coming out. They are concerned about families getting the answers they need

“We have seen that through the Bloody Sunday campaign and the apology they received from Tony Blair. We have also seen it now with the Ballymurphy families.”

He expressed anger at the Northern Secretary Brandon Lewis’s claim that most of the state killings carried out by British soldiers were lawful.

“That is just simply not true,” he said. “There were no lawful circumstances surrounding my brother’s murder.

“He was 11-years-old. A primary school child who was shot at point-blank range with a plastic bullet fired from inside an Army Saracen [vehicle] within a few hundred metres of his home.

“There was no investigation into my brother’s death. Not only did the British Government not investigate what happened to an 11-year-old child; the same regiment who shot Stephen, only a few months later, was kicking down my mother’s front door and raiding her home.”

The Queens Belfast report notes that the UK plan offers one of the most sweeping amnesties offered anywhere since 1945 – noting that it would be “significantly more expansive” than the one offered by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The UK Government says it is continuing to engage with stakeholders on the proposals.

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