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Prolonged Detentions – Nothing But The Same Old Story

19/03/09

éirígí spokesperson Breandán Mac Cionnaith has said the advent of 28-day detention in the Six Counties is an indicator of the British government’s contemporary attitude to human rights.

Mac Cionnaith’s comments coincided with the announcement by the director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, Mike Ritchie, that his organisation was monitoring the situation with regard to the continued detention of two people, one a 17-year-old minor.

Ritchie said: “We would be concerned about holding anyone for this length of time and the fact that one of them is a minor is an additional concern that aggravates the situation.”

The two have now been held for nine days, the longest period anyone in the Six Counties has been held without charge since internment, and the PSNI can continue asking for extensions to their detention up to the 28-day limit.

Last year, éirígí held a number of demonstrations across Ireland to highlight the danger of the British government increasing the detention without charge time to 42-days.

Mac Cionnaith said: “In recent weeks, the British government has revealed its thinking to be remarkably similar to what it was during the height of the conflict: increased numbers of British ‘special forces’ have been deployed, the PSNI has been exposed to be as unaccountable as ever and, now, people are being held without charge for periods of time that are in complete contravention of any notion of human rights.

“This situation poses a very important question. What happened to the new relationship between the British government and the Irish people that the Good Friday and St Andrew’s agreements were supposed to deliver?

“It is not good enough for organisations that are supposed to defend human rights to remain silent when peoples’ human rights are being violated. The McCarthyite anti-republican hysteria of recent weeks provides no excuse for this silence.

“It is not good enough for politicians who should know better to pledge full support to the PSNI and then say nothing when the inevitable happens. MI5 are integrally involved in policing the Six Counties, the PSNI is working hand-in-glove with British army ‘special forces’ and people are being effectively interned. This is not a dispensation which any Irish citizen should give their support to.”

Breandán continued: “What we are seeing now in Ireland is the use of detention powers that were introduced as part of the so-called global war on terror. Like legalised torture, rendition flights and the Guantánamo Bay torture centre, this modern day form of internment needs to be publicly and vociferously challenged.

“Any attempt by politicians or human rights groups to fudge this issue should be seen for what it is - hypocrisy. Human rights are universal. They are not gifts to be granted or denied on the whim of the British government, or its paramilitary police in Ireland.”

He concluded: “The British government has yet again demonstrated that it will use repressive legislation and tactics in occupied Ireland for as long as it is able to get away with it. All those with an interest in human rights should oppose this obvious undermining of the most basic tenets of natural justice.”

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