-24-97 MON 07:25 AM BEST WESTERN SKYLINE IN 2024880790 P.03 As a human rights lawyer who has experience of,studying the human rights situation in a number of countries around the world I believe that it is important to get the situation in Northern Ireland in perspective. There are many parts of the world where human rights are more consistently violated than in Northern Ireland. Moreover Northern Ireland over the past twenty eight years has been the site of sustained campaigns of political violence by armed groups both opposed to and in favour of the current constitutional arrangements. Unlike many of the conflicts with which Northern Ireland is so often compared, such as central America, South Africa or the Middle East the vast majority of the killings in the Northern Ireland conflict (around 90%) can be attributed to those groups rather than the state. These groups have killed around five times as many police officers and soldiers than police officers and soldiers have killed of them and over ten times as many people without any affiliation than have been killed by agents of the state. These facts are well known, and the threat which political violence poses to the security of all the people of Northern Ireland has regularly been accepted by international human rights monitoring bodies as permitting the state to derogate to some extent from its human rights commitments.* However as a human rights lawyer its is also deeply disturbing that the United Kingdom, one of the prime movers in the creation of international human rights law after world war two, continues to be found in breach of particularly fundamental human rights provisions in relation to Northern Ireland. Remember this is breach of what are acknowledged to be internationally agreed minimum human rights standards and standards which are structured so as to permit states to take necessary steps to protect the rights of others in times of crisis. In the forum of the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg for example the United Kingdom has been found to have breached the right to protection against inhuman and degrading treatment in the 1978 Ireland v United Kingdom case on interrogation conditions and the right to life in the 1995 McCann' case on the Gibraltar shootings. It has also been found to have breached the right to liberty in the 1989 Brogan' case on seven day detention after arrest and the 1990 Fox, Campbell and Hartleys case on the operation of emergency arrest powers, and to have breached the right to fair trial in the 1996 Murray case in connection with 1 For example by the European Court of Human Rights in 2 2 European Human Rights Reports 25 (1978) JUN-24-97 MON 07:26 AM BEST WESTERN SKYLINE IN 2024880798 inquests would all be high on that list. All of these are achievable without rendering the law enforcement authorities incapable of performing their legitimate tasks of preventing and detecting crime, including politically motivated violence. The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights, promised by the current government, is a welcome step but this must be supported by giving powers to an independent Human Rights Commission (whether an improved Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights or some new body) to scrutinise its enforcement and initiate litigation where it feels the Convention is breached. It would be naive to believe that effective enforcement of human rights alone would resolve Northern Ireland's conflicts. It is true to say that the protection of human rights is more likely to flourish in a time of peace. Moreover exactly how certain rights are given effect to in Northern Ireland is itself likely to be the expression of a political settlement. However measures to enhance the protection of certain basic rights like those to life, freedom from torture, liberty and fair trial are both right in themselves and might contribute to an atmosphere of greater public trust and confidence in which a settlement is more likely to be achieved. Jun-23-9/ 10:41 P.02 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH A HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH REPORT; COPYRIGHT © HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, ISSN: 1041.9197 STATEMENT OF JULIA A. HALL W. BRADFORD WILEY FELLOW HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH JUNE 24, 1997 HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Jun-23-97 10:41 Human Rights Watch believes that it is a particularly important moment for the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights to turn its attention to Northern Ireland. The protection of individual rights and the maintenance of the rule of law are essential to advancing the peace in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, attempts by state authorities to control the conflict there have created an environment in which human rights violations are routine. This erosion of civil liberties and human rights in the interests of security and public order has, in many ways, served to exacerbate the conflict. Thus, any effort to build trust and confidence in the peace process must include immediate and careful attention to the protection of human rights for all of Northern Ireland's citizens. We understand that recent events have had a negative impact on the peace talks. The brutal murders of three police officers in the last month have shocked and saddened all those committed to peace. These senseless killings, coupled with serious tensions with great potential for violence-arising from the annual marching season, signal an urgent need to resume efforts to create trust in all Northern Ireland's communities so that people have more of an investment in advancing the peace than they do in perpetrating or supporting acts of violence. Human Rights Watch's research and advocacy in the past year has focused on the reform of policing in Northern Ireland. This focus was a direct response to the final report of the International Body on Arms Decommissioning chaired by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell and tasked in 1995 with providing to the multi-party peace talks an acceptable plan for the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons in Northern Ireland. However, the International Body wisely recognized that success in the peace process could not be achieved solely by focusing on the decommissioning of weapons. To create trust in the peace process, confidence-building measures would also be necessary, including the normalization of policing, a review of the use of plastic bullets, a more balanced religious representation in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Northern Ireland's police force (which is currently 90 percent Protestant), and the cessation of paramilitary punishment assaults. Human Rights Watch's report To Serve Without Favor: Policing, Human Rights, and Accountability in Northern Ireland, released in May 1997, addresses all of these issues. Let me lay out for the Subcommittee some of our specific concerns. First, the policing of the upcoming marching season is a matter of urgent concern for Human Rights Watch. The marching phenomenon involves the ongoing dispute between Protestant fraternal orders supported by the unionist community and predominantly Catholic nationalist communities organized to oppose Protestant marches through Catholic areas. A detailed investigation by Human Rights Watch of last year's marching season strongly indicates that a series of police actions-sanctioned by the government of the United Kingdom-exacerbated the intercommunal conflict and contributed to an effective breakdown in the rule of law. The failure of state authorities to maintain the rule of law occurred when police officials reversed an earlier decision to reroute a loyalist march and allowed the march to proceed down the predominantly Catholic Garvaghy Road under threat of unionist mob violence. In the aftermath of this extraordinary reversal, the RUC's strategy for dealing with nationalist protesters involved the use of brutal force in contravention of international standards. P.03 23-97 10:41 : P.04 Of particular concern to Human Rights Watch was the excessive use of physical force directed at peaceful demonstrators and the massive and indiscriminate use of potentially lethal plastic bullets. Testimony from residents on the Garvaghy Road indicated that many persons peacefully protesting on the road were brutally assaulted by RUC officers in full riot gear, many of whom used sectarian language throughout the course of the police operation. Furthermore, the massive use of plastic bullets by the RUC—often in situations where there was no imminent threat to life-resulted in grievous injuries, including shattered jaw bones, broken palates, and internal injuries leading to coma. It is imperative to note that plastic and rubber bullets have killed seventeen people in Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense admission just this month that defective plastic bullets were used during last summer's marching season supports our own conclusion that the bullets are inherently unreliable and potentially fatal and thus should be removed from use. Significantly, an internal police review of plastic bullet use during the summer of 1996 suggested that the presence of plastic bullet gunners can actually exacerbate tensions as opposed to defusing them. For all of these reasons, Human Rights Watch continues its campaign to have plastic bullets banned. As well, we have called for a "zero tolerance" policy for the excessive use of force by police officers and greater accountability for RUC operational decisions and conduct in order to avoid a repeat this summer of last year's widespread police abuse. Another immediate concern for Human Rights Watch is the daily violence of paramilitary punishment assaults and shootings in both unionist and nationalist communities. Throughout "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland, the police have concentrated their efforts on the suppression of political violence by paramilitary groups. This "anti-terrorist” campaign has been waged to the exclusion of many traditional policing functions in some areas. In the absence of normal policing, loyalist and republican paramilitaries have assumed quasi-policing roles in their respective communities by meting out "punishments" for perceived or actual offenses such as drug trafficking, wife abuse, or burglary. These non-political offenses, which would be addressed through routine policing by a traditional police force, have instead been effectively delegated to irregular, paramilitary "law enforcement." Paramilitary punishments in both communities take many forms. People have been brutally assaulted with baseball bats, iron bars, and clubs driven through with sharpened spikes. In some cases, metal spikes have been driven through the legs and elbows of young men. Young women have been abducted, had their heads sheared, been tied to lampposts, and had paint poured over them. Many people have been shot, some in the back of the knee which causes excessive bleeding and has led to the amputation of limbs. In 1995-96 eight men were summarily executed for alleged drug offenses by vigilantes widely believed to be associated with the IRA. In addition, paramilitary organizations issue “expulsion orders” to force alleged perpetrators to leave a particular city or all of Northern Ireland for a designated period of time under threat of being shot or beaten. Testimony from residents in both the unionist and nationalist communities of Northern Ireland indicates that there is a profound lack of confidence in the RUC. Representatives from both communities appeared resigned to paramilitary policing because they felt that normal policing did not occur in their neighborhoods. Human Rights Watch has called for an immediate cessation of all |