Andersonstown News, 26. April 2004
We say:
"IMC gets its answer from the community"
We’ve tried and we’ve tried, but for the life of us we can’t find any group
or individual in West Belfast who was invited by the Independent Monitoring
Commission to aid them in the compilation of their report. The IMC didn’t
approach this newspaper even though we’ve led the way on the Bobby Tohill
story. Maybe they just didn’t have the time, because as they admit
themselves in the report (twice) their work was compromised by the new
deadline which the British government asked for – and which the IMC was
happy to concede.
We’ve had a few days now to digest the report and with every reading it
becomes more and more ridiculous. This farrago of rehashed anecdotes and
unsubstantiated British intelligence guff has been roundly rejected by the
overwhelming majority of people within this community. That rejection will
be manifested today when we join together with a wide range of concerned
groups to formulate a response to the report – the IMC didn’t bother to
speak to any of us when it was drawing up its report, so we’re going to have
our say now and the IMC is going to hear it very loudly and very clearly. It
will hear in no uncertain terms that we reject their attempts to punish our
elected representatives and, perhaps even more worryingly, their disgusting
attempt to raise the spectre of political vetting.
The has-beens and never-weres of the IMC will quickly learn that this is not
1974, 1984 or even 1994 – their cynical and shabby report will be thrown
back in their faces and their contemptible efforts to shove this community
around will fail completely.