Sunday Business Post, August 29, 2004
North reforms in a sorry state 10 years later
By Paul T Colgan
Ten years on from the first IRA ceasefire (August 31, 1994), the North still awaits a proper
human rights and equality regime, a power-sharing government, full policing
reform and `normalisation'.
For many nationalists, August 31, 1994 was meant to deliver them from
mistreatment by the RUC and the British army. Yet, recent figures show that
the British army and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) stopped
and searched almost 15,000 people in the North last year.
Around 11,000 of those searched were stopped by British soldiers. South
Armagh and East Tyrone, two overwhelmingly nationalist areas, remain heavily
militarised.
The south Armagh border is still peppered with spy-posts, PSNI and British
army barracks and military helicopter landing pads.
The recent report by the International Monitoring Commission highlighted the
fact that there are still thousands of military over-flights in the area
every month - despite a lack of any clear paramilitary threat.
No PSNI officer or British soldier has died in a paramilitary incident since
1998.
While the IRA cessation was followed six weeks later by the ceasefires of
the Combined Loyalist Military Command, the two main loyalist paramilitary
groupings remain armed, and engage in sporadic attacks on Catholic
communities.
The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) ceasefire has been declared bogus by
the British government - yet the people who run the organisation are still
allowed to operate.
The majority of violence in recent years has occurred in loyalist areas such
as East Belfast and North Down, yet the British army continues to
concentrate its presence in nationalist communities.
In 1996, Catholics in mid-Ulster witnessed the birth of the Loyalist
Volunteer Force (LVF) - a breakaway grouping that engaged in scores of
murder attempts on nationalists. It is thought by many to have been riddled
with RUC special branch and British army agents.
Questions sill hang over policing reform. The special branch, which for
years waged war on republicans, is still to be sorted out to Sinn Fein's
satisfaction. The party says it cannot endorse the new policing structures
until the branch is scrapped and policing and justice powers are devolved to
the North.
As it stands, the Northern secretary can still interfere in the day-to-day
running of policing.
Given that much of the IRA's campaign was fuelled by the Northern state's
entrenched discrimination against nationalists, the British government has
moved slowly in addressing the core issues of human rights and equality. The
two bodies set up to deal with equality and rights proved largely
ineffectual.
The Human Rights Commission (HRC), launched in 1999, has been heavily
criticised by nationalists for its failure to support their human rights.
The body was undermined when chief commissioner Brice Dickson sided with
former RUC chief constable Ronnie Flanagan against the parents of the Holy
Cross primary school children.
A parent of the one of the children had secured the support of the HRC in
her case against the RUC and its handling of the dispute.
Loyalists were allowed to line the route of the Holy Cross children hurling
verbal abuse, urine and pipe-bombs.
Dickson wrote to Flanagan privately saying he disagreed with the HRC's
decision to fund the case. A joint parliamentary committee went on to
question the commission's independence in the light of Dickson's
correspondence.
The current HRC has yet to carry out its core objective of producing a bill
of rights. Four members have resigned since its inception, and many of the
nationalist members who have held their places choose not to attend
meetings. A clean sweep of the body is planned for later this year.
The Equality Commission has been similarly criticised for its failure to
properly support people taking anti-discrimination cases against employers.
In 2002, that commission famously withdrew funding from cases that were
already under way, leading to the collapse of numerous legal actions.
It was recently revealed that the body, while compiling figures on racially
motivated attacks, had no mechanism in place to monitor sectarian attacks.
Criminal justice reform has been slow in coming. The Justice Oversight
Commissioner reported in June that significant reforms had yet to take
place, and that reform should not be contingent on a new deal to restore
power-sharing.
The recently constituted Judicial Appointments Commission has the job of
improving the transparency of appointments to the Northern judiciary - for
years a unionist-dominated elite.
Neither it nor the HRC, nor the Equality Commission, is headed by a
nationalist.
New legislation designed to counter electoral fraud has deprived tens of
thousands of people of their vote.
According to figures relating to the most recent Northern census, one in six
voters was unable to vote in last November's Assembly elections - either
their names had been removed from the electoral roll or they turned up to
booths without the proper identification.
Voters are now required to continually claim their right to vote anew. This
has hit the elderly and those in deprived areas particularly hard.
Shades of 1967 were prevalent last week when the SDLP alleged that the
North's department of regional development had discriminated against
nationalist areas when it came to the allocation of housing.
Housing discrimination was the driving force behind the civil rights
movement in the 1960s - yet, according to the SDLP, it is still going on.
The party said that young nationalists would be driven out of rural areas if
plans by the department to cap housing development in predominantly Catholic
areas were implemented.
If the plan is put into action it could conceivably redraw the North's
voting landscape. The details were signed off by the DUP's Gregory Campbell
during his stint as a Stormont minister.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has been briefed on the SDLP figures,
which show huge deficits in housing allocations for areas such as Derry,
Magherafelt and Newry.
