IRA memorial a grim reminder of suffering inflicted on many
Irish Times/by Jim Dee
Monday, September 29, 2003
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Pro-British unionist foes of 1998's Good Friday agreement will probably never attend an Irish Republican Army memorial service. But if they had last Friday, perhaps some would understand the extent to which all sides suffered during the conflict here.
The event was the dedication of a wall mural honoring IRA and Sinn Fein members killed in the north Belfast IRA stronghold of Ardoyne.
As the names of the dead were read aloud, former IRA heavyweight Martin Meehan stood glassy-eyed, choked with emotion. Later, as the crowd dispersed, he stood alone staring at the young faces of the dead painted on the gable wall.
``I knew every one of them lads, and women, that was killed,'' he told the Herald afterward. ``It brought back memories of the sacrifice they made. On many of those occasions, I should've been with them. I was just one of the lucky ones who survived.''
Hard-line unionists vilify people like Meehan, branding them ``unrepentant terrorists'' who bear sole blame for the bloodshed.
Meehan is certainly unrepentant. But he considers himself and his former comrades to be freedom fighters, not terrorists. And he said war was triggered by decades of anti-Catholic discrimination by Protestant unionists who used electoral gerrymandering and voting restrictions against Catholics in order to rule unopposed for the first 50 years of Northern Ireland's existence.
``We were born into conflict. We didn't create this situation. This situation was created by the British government when they partitioned our country,'' Meehan insisted.
``Nobody liked to do it,'' he said of the IRA's war. ``Nobody wanted to do it. Nobody took pride in doing it. But it was a job that had to be done. People were hurt, and nobody takes any glory in anybody being hurt. But people were hurt on both sides - British soldiers, (police) and IRA volunteers. And, mostly, civilians.''
Speculation is rife that the IRA may stage a major disarmament act to break a political deadlock that has existed since Britain iced the North's assembly in October amid claims the IRA was spying there.
An IRA move may pave the way for assembly elections, possibly in November. But fully transforming this sharply polarized society will take more than political movement.
Many people also want the full truth told about atrocities by the IRA and pro-British loyalist paramilitaries, and about the British army's involvement with loyalists who killed alleged IRA members (a charge leveled in April's high-profile report by London Police commissioner John Stevens).
There is a growing debate about whether a formal truth and reconciliation process, perhaps along the lines of that instituted in post-apartheid South Africa in the 1990s, should be established.
But true societal healing won't occur until unionist hard-liners accept there is a parity of pain between that felt by slain IRA members' friends and relatives, and the suffering of friends and relatives of slain Protestants, policemen and soldiers.
In this deeply divided society, such a scenario may seem light years away.
Then again, amid the bloodshed 10 years ago, few would have predicted the ensuing decade would see the IRA on cease-fire three-quarters of the time and a landmark peace accord in place for more than half that period.