So I commend you for these hearings. I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses today, and I would just ask all of the people here today and all of the members of this committee not to allow themselves to be lured into the trap of this being a Catholic versus Protestant fight. It is not. It is a battle between, it is a struggle, it is a human rights struggle between an oppressive force against innocent people, both the Protestant and the Catholic communities. They have all suffered. The one group who has not suffered is the British Government, and they should be brought to task for the terrible injustice they have brought about.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. King. I want to thank you for your leadership on this issue in the Congress.

I would now like to yield to another gentleman from New York, Mr. Ackerman.

Mr. ACKERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is very difficult to add anything after the eloquent remarks of my colleague from New York, Peter King.

Let me also thank and commend you, Mr. Chairman, for your dedication to this issue and to all causes that have to do with protecting human rights around the world. You have truly been a leader and a champion in this area. And also, as Peter and Tom Lantos have mentioned, let me express the gratitude of all of us to the President of the United States who for the first time in my memory any chief executive is spending so much time and energy and effort trying to come to a just resolution of the troubles in Ireland.

I had the opportunity to visit Ireland not too long ago, and my personal guide was the legendary Paul O'Dwyer. And you hear about these things related by other people who tell you stories second and third hand. You can see them on television, you can read about them, but there is nothing like being on the ground and talking to the real people in their neighborhoods and in the communities where they are affected.

I had the chance of being in the Ardoine and walking along the Falls Road and going into homes and talking to people and their families. And as a former school teacher, I have to tell you how deeply I was impressed by meeting with the young people who grew up and were growing up with constant depression, seeing their mothers harassed and intimidated on a daily basis by policemen, and the kind of a toll that takes, and hearing story after story of not only discrimination, when you say "not only discrimination," there is a certain irony to that as well, but of the daily violence that is done to one's person and also one's psyche.

Peter is right. This is not only a battle between Catholics and Protestants. It is not only the story of discrimination. That is bad enough. But as Americans we should have a deeper understanding of what this problem is all about. It is really about the last vestiges of colonialism, and to remember that we too could not tolerate living under the occupation of foreign troops with other people being responsible for our own history.

The people of Ireland are entitled to their own self-determination as are peoples all over the world.

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I would really prefer to hear from our witnesses. Thank you very much.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Ackerman.

Mr. Menendez, the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. MENENDEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you most particularly for calling this meeting. For those of us who have been pressing for some time to have a hearing on the question of human rights in Northern Ireland, we are particularly thankful to you for conducting the hearing. There has been a resistance in this Congress, not only this particular session but in the past, toward holding this hearing, this type of a hearing, and I appreciate your willingness to do so and those of us who petitioned you to do so. You know, since Prime Minister Tony Blair took office we have seen more progress, I think, toward peace and reconciliation than maybe in the entire term of his predecessor. The Labour Government's actions have been promising, the possibility of opening the Bloody Sunday investigation, the transfer of prisoners closer to their families, tentative contacts with Sinn Fein speak volumes about the government's desire to see the peace talks succeeded. And I am hopeful that the new government will remain committed to that process.

The Blair Government has presented an unprecedented opportunity, I think, for peace in Northern Ireland. However, I want to say as a member who clearly is not of Irish dissent, maybe my closest connection is the Spanish Armada and its history, and who has consistently since he arrived here, and as a State senator in New Jersey where I presented the Free Joe Doherty Resolution in the legislature, who has consistently spoken out on the abuses of the rights of the people in Northern Ireland, I must say that the recent murders of the two police officers in Lurgan have frustrated, I think, a nation's opportunity for real and meaningful peace talks, and talks that would include what I have always argued for, along with other members, Sinn Fein.

After years and years of intransigence and abuse, clearly the Catholic minority is rightfully angry and suspicious. But if there is to be peace in Northern Ireland, that time is now. And it is crucial that the more extremist elements of the opposition be reigned in. And so I have got to take this opportunity, since we are talking about human rights, that this is a moment for restraint. It is difficult after decades of frustration, but is a moment for restraint. And those of us who consistently argue on behalf of peace and justice in Northern Ireland also have to be able to speak out when we see abuses on the other side.

Now, the history of abusive human rights in Northern Ireland is long and treacherous from the more recent confinement of Roisin McAliskey during her pregnancy, which I think was an abomination, to the use of plastic bullets and the countless violations of rights stemming from British emergency legislation which governs the six northeast counties in Ireland, the populace of Northern Ireland has suffered myriad abuses of its civil and human rights. The emergency legislation has been responsible time and time again for illegal arrests, detentions and interrogations.

Amnesty International speaks about its powers to hold attainees for days before bringing them to a judge, to prevent access to law

yers, to deny lawyers access to their clients during interrogation, the use of special interrogation centers where detainees can be held virtually in communicado. The list goes on and on.

The U.N. Committee Against Torture, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International have all repeatedly urged the repeal of this repressive legislation.

In my own trips to Belfast, the fact of the matter is I first became involved with a case called the Ballymurphy Seven, seven young boys who were arrested, rounded up for allegedly attacking British troops. The fact of the matter is there were no eye witnesses, no forensic evidence. They were rounded up in a way that was simply because of who they were and where they lived, spentand I'm talking about boys, they were barely teenagers-spent years of their lives in jail waiting for trial.

And only because of the fine work of their solicitors who faced enormous pressures, Mr. Chairman, as I know that you have one of the witnesses who will testify who faced, in some cases attorneys who have been killed, in other cases who consistently face the threats of physical abuse and/or death, and who do so, as an attorney I admire their consistent courage in representing the rights of the Nationalist minority, who constantly are in need of that type of courageous representation, and yet they do so under a process by which their very lives are threatened.

And for those of us in the United States who practice law, I cannot fathom the possibility of having to go every day to court wondering whether on your travels to represent your clients you in fact might have your very life ended, and that is a reality for those courageous attorneys who represent individuals of the Nationalist minority.

So the Diplock Courts which derive their authority from the emergency legislation are a blot on English jurisprudence. Clearly, the convictions of people like Collen Duffy and Steven Larkin and most recently Damion Sullivan, all of whose convictions were overturned by working with their attorneys and also with organizations like Lawyers Alliance for Justice in Ireland, working with Voices of the Innocent and others, and Members of Congress, some of which I have solicited and others who have solicited me in the process of these individuals, their convictions have been overturned.

But in the process their lives have been marred, and their families have been hurt, and the fact of the matter is that their basic human rights have been abused time and time again, and those are names of real individuals. But there are so many that we could recite through this process.

So I appreciate the opportunity for this hearing to send the message that it is intolerable for a Nation which has enjoyed a great history of democracy to stoop to tactics used by military regimes and dictatorships on the people of Northern Ireland.

I believe the new Prime Minister seeks to make amends in Northern Ireland, but it will only be done if there is action, only if there is action.

So, Mr. Chairman, human rights, whether they are perpetrated by friend or foe, need to be exposed to the harsh sunlight of public scrutiny. Only then can they be rooted out and justice flourish, and

for that opportunity to speak about the human rights abuses of the people of Northern Ireland by those who we generally consider a friend and ally, I commend you for having this hearing.

Thank you.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Menendez. And I would agree with you that sunlight continues to be one of the best disinfectants, and hopefully this hearing, coupled with ongoing efforts by the Subcommittee, will bring some scrutiny and light to this terrible situation.

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SMITH. Yes, I will be happy to yield.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding.

Your earlier witness notice states that the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights was invited to participate in today's hearings, and I do not see any representative out there from the Administration to discuss their annual report on human rights as it relates to Northern Ireland. I see we have Amnesty International and a number of the other important organizations.

How come, Mr. Chairman, we have not heard from the Administration? Have you had any response?

Mr. SMITH. Chairman Gilman, we did invite John Shattuck, who is the Assistant Secretary for Democracy and Human Rights, approximately a month ago, and told him we would be flexible in terms of the date, it could be any day this week, frankly, as we were working on the schedules. We had hoped if he could not make it, perhaps someone else might give the testimony on behalf of the Administration. So that may have to wait for another day, but it is regrettable because I believe it is opportunity lost. But we did issue an invitation, and Mr. Shattuck has been a frequent witness before our subcommittee, as you know so well, and is a very articulate and able guy. So it is disappointing he is not here.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope this is not indicative of the kind of regard that they place on their report with regard to the troubles in Northern Ireland. But thank you for your

response.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like now to go to our first panel, and again I want to thank each of our panelists for being here, and I will introduce them in the order that I would ask them to testify:

Martin O'Brien is the executive director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice in Belfast. Mr. O'Brien, who earned his degrees in human rights law and sociology from Queens University at Belfast was a recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1992, and has been selected by Human Rights Watch as an international human rights monitor. In addition to his extensive writing and speaking, Mr. O'Brien is involved with the Kilcranny House, a rural education center which he helped establish in 1985.

Michael Posner has been the executive director of the Lawyers Committee of Human Rights since its inception in 1978. Mr. Posner, who served on the board for Amnesty International, America's Watch, and the International League for Human Rights, has been a visiting lecturer at both Yale Law School and Columbia University Law School, and in previous times has been before our

subcommittee and provides enormous expertise and a wealth of information for our subcommittee.

Stephen Livingstone is currently co-director of the Human Rights Law Center at the University of Nottingham in England. Mr. Livingstone received his B.A. in law from Cambridge University and his L.L.M. from Harvard. He was previously the chairperson of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, and is the author of multiple books and articles on the situation in the north of Ireland. Julia Hall is the W. Bradford Wiley Fellow and Northern Ireland researcher in the Helsinki Division of Human Rights Watch. Ms. Hall earned her J.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law, and holds a certificate of international law from The Hague Academy of International Law.

And, finally, Maryam Elahi is the advocacy director of the Middle East and Europe in Washington for the DC office of Amnesty International, and Amnesty too is frequently before us as is Maryam, and has provided enormous insights as to the true on-the-ground situation of human rights, not only in Northern Ireland but in many other parts of the world.

Mr. O'Brien, if you could proceed.

STATEMENT OF MARTIN O'BRIEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMMITTEE ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Mr. O'BRIEN. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the invitation to testify today. My comments today will be a summary of a longer written statement which I believe you have for the record.

I would like to begin by saying a little bit about the organization for which I work, which is the Committee on the Administration of Justice.

The Committee is an independent human rights organization which draws its membership from across the community in Northern Ireland, and it works on behalf of people from all sections of the community and takes no position on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. We are opposed to the use of violence for political ends, and are profoundly disturbed by the breakdown in the IRA cease-fire and the return to violence.

As a number of you have already mentioned this morning, recent weeks have seen a number of particularly horrific events, including the kicking to death by Loyalists of two young men, one a Catholic and the other a policeman; and the shooting dead in recent days of two policemen by the IRA.

Although it may be easier to promote human rights in times of peace, it is particularly during times of conflict that they are most at risk. It is precisely because of this that we are so appreciative of the opportunity to speak to you today. International especially U.S.-involvement in developments in Northern Ireland has been extremely important in the past and is urgently needed at times like this.

We are particularly grateful to Chairman Smith, Chairman Gilman, Mr. Lantos, and the other members of the Subcommittee for their interest in human rights in Northern Ireland.

The CAJ believes that issues of justice and fairness are at the heart of the current conflict in Northern Ireland. Peace is only likely to flourish when everyone feels that their rights are respected