and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland, peace and normalcy and stability that all the people of this region so desperately need and so fully deserve. You have to visit Northern Ireland really to fully appreciate the high quality of the men, women and children in this long-suffering region of Europe.

Terrorism must come to an end. The rule of law must be observed in all its ramifications. And human rights violations must stop. This Congress and the American Government will do its utmost to bring about peace at long last in Northern Ireland. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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

I would like to yield to Mr. Gilman, the chairman of the full International Relations Committee.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank you for arranging this historic opportunity to publicly explore the troubling human rights situation in Northern Ireland. It has made lasting peace and reconciliation in the north very difficult to achieve and has been neglected for far too long.

And I am pleased that we have with us several outstanding leaders from my area, Mr. Danny Withers, a member of the board of directors of Hibernian Civil Rights Coalition, and Dennis Lynch, general counsel of the Coalition. We welcome them here as observers today.

One of the most shocking abuses is displayed in the State Department's most recent human rights report. The report notes the use of plastic bullets-and, you know, they are not little, small 22 bullets-these are plastic bullets, it's a very deadly piece of plastic. Now one of the most shocking abuses is the note of these bullets being used in the north of Ireland, but not in the rest of Great Britain, as you have indicated, Mr. Chairman.

These plastic bullets have been widely criticized by human rights monitors, by the U.N. Commission Against Torture, and by the European Parliament. There has been a call for a ban on these plastic bullets' use, issued by the European Parliament and most recently by the New York Times, and we hope someone is going to sit up and take notice.

I find it particularly ironic that these plastic bullets are not used by British authorities in serious race or youth riots in places like Leeds and elsewhere in England, yet it is all right to use them in Northern Ireland. Nothing better illustrates the second-class status the Nationalistic community faces in the north.

I am particularly pleased that we have witnesses today from the north who are fully familiar with the abuses by the security forces with regard to these plastic bullets, especially against the Nationalistic community. Seventeen deaths, eight of which are young children, deaths from these plastic bullets are intolerable for Europe or anywhere around the globe for that matter.

Finally, the suspension of rights and the lack of due process in the Diplock nonjury courts, and the adverse inference that can be drawn from mere silence in criminal cases, have long concerned many of us who have been observers of Northern Ireland.

Today, we will have the opportunity to hear from the Kelly family on the Casement Park case. Their son, Sean, has spent many unjustified years in prison serving two life sentences for merely

being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He innocently observed two plain-clothes British army personnel who had wandered in an unmarked car into the middle of a Nationalist funeral, drew their weapons, a shot was fired, and were put upon by an angry crowd. This happened only days after a brutal attack on the Nationalist community when the anxiety level was very high, one of whom was being buried at the funeral.

There is no credible evidence that young Sean, who had sought to try to find his father in the crowd, who he knew was participating in the funeral of a fellow cab driver, did anything other than observe the chaos. He did not aid or abet the killings which later took place elsewhere. He sits in prison for life under a novel and erroneous legal theory called "common purpose," a very grave case of injustice which cries out for relief for both Sean and the other innocent Casement Park defendants. We will hear more about that today, and I was pleased to hear that one of these innocent young men was finally released just last week.

There are many cases of suspension of due process and fundamental fairness like the Casement Park matter on the Loyalist side as well, as we will hear today. I am pleased that some of these abuses are finally coming to light here in our own country. Maybe young Sean and others can finally get some long overdue justice in the north. It would certainly help start some of the healing and the reconciliation that is so badly needed there today.

So I look forward with my colleagues to today's testimony. It will put a human face on Northern Ireland, a place described recently before this committee by our good friend and very knowledgeable observer of the north, Father Sean McManus, who is here with us today, representing the Irish National Caucus, and his words were in describing Northern Ireland, "a sectarian State in which antiCatholic discrimination is systemic, endemic, and institutionalized." Those words will linger.

Maybe today's hearing can help bring much-needed change in the north. So, Mr. Chairman, we thank you and we thank our witnesses who came from Ireland and suffered so much over these many years in painful silence.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that a recent report on human rights in Northern Ireland by Monsignor Raymond Murray, a well-known crusader for human rights, a leading scholar, and a historian on human rights in Northern Ireland, and former chaplain of Armagh Prison in Northern Ireland where I first met Chaplain Murray, be included at this point in the record.

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, it will be included in the record. Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The report appears in the appendix.]

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

Mr. Payne, the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this very important hearing on the plight of the people in Northern Ireland. I commend you for your continued push toward human rights around the world.

From the outset, let me just say that I cannot condone any form of violence, and I said that in my speech in Northern Ireland last summer, whether it is intended for Catholics in Mid Ulster, West

Belfast, or Caven Monahan of Curie or Dublin or the innocent people beyond the island. I visited Northern Ireland last year, as I indicated, at the height of the marching season, and around Bloody Sunday. And what I witnessed was appalling. Human rights in general is a problem there. However, the attack by the British Army and the RUC during the summer of 1996, in my opinion, contributed to a serious breakdown in the rule of law.

Since the RUC and the British army have begun to use plastic bullets as a weapon, as we have already heard, thousands have been injured, and we have already heard each of us mentioned it. Seventeen individuals have been killed by these bullets, including seven children.

This week's events, coupled with the tensions building toward the Orange marches in July, prompted me to introduce H.R. 1075, calling for an immediate ban on the use of plastic bullets. In 1986 convention of the Democratic Unionist Party criticized the blatant misuse of the plastic baton rounds in Portadown, and said this bullet, which I am holding in my hand as I collected while I was at Northern Ireland last year, was a killer weapon, designed to kill or to maim. This is not a 22 bullet. This is intended to kill and to maim, and at the velocity that it hits, even though they are supposed to use them at a distance, I have seen where they have been shot point-blank at people. I do not want to see a repeat of last year.

Let me conclude by saying that the question of decommissioning has not yet been removed as an obstacle in the negotiations. This remains the biggest stumbling block to the move forward. It is a very difficult question and I hope that there can be a resolution to that particular question. The marches through the Catholic neighborhoods by the Loyalists in the next few weeks could determine whether we move forward or backwards in the entire process.

George Mitchell says that he still has a lot of optimism. He says the time is now, it is very important, and hopefully we can move forward. But I think that the situation must be dealt with as it has been indicated, the situation of the hopelessness of the young people in the cities with despair and hopelessness and substance abuse and school dropout remind me of some of the same problems that we see in our inner cities here.

I was also moved by a plaque at one of the community centers that was put at that center in honor of the late Ron Brown who had visited Northern Ireland to try to deal with employment for young people, for dropouts, for people who felt that the world had shut them out, and also the admiration that I found in Northern Ireland for Mr. Nelson Mandela, who is a symbol to all of us about courage, and Mr. Mandela's appreciation for the situation in Northern Ireland.

So once again, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you calling this hearing and I look forward to hearing from our esteemed group of panelists. Thank you.

Mr. SMITH. I thank my friend from New Jersey.

I would like to yield to the gentleman from New York, Mr. King. Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to join with all of the Subcommittee in commending you for scheduling this hearing, for holding it. I believe it is very timely, it is very vital, it is very

necessary, and it is illustrative of the fact that you have a deep concern for human rights violations and exposing them and bringing them out to the public no matter where it occurs in the world. I really want to commend you for that.

I also want to join Mr. Lantos in a bipartisan note in commending President Clinton for the work that he has done on the issue of the north of Ireland. He has certainly put the prestige of his administration on the line, and I think he has to be commended by all of us for the dedication he has shown.

Mr. Chairman, as I sit here today there is a certain tragic irony in this. I remember back in 1981 I was a member of an international tribunal which met in Belfast to examine the use of plastic bullets by the security forces. And one of the leading witnesses at that hearing at that time, in 1981, was a lawyer by the name of Pat Finucane. And he was extremely active in the civil rights movement in the north of Ireland. He gave especially compelling testimony at that tribunal, and ironically, to show how the cycle of violence continues through generations now, the suffering continues since that hearing in 1981. Pat Finucane was murdered, and that will be brought out in detail at this hearing, and his son who is testifying here today also is a lawyer. So it shows the intensity of the violence and it shows how the tragedy in the north of Ireland continues.

I just want to make several points clear on this. No. 1, I do not think we should be lured into the trap of saying this is a fight between Catholics and Protestants; that this is some sort of an ethnic or religious fight that is going on in the north of Ireland. The fact is historically and continuing through this moment the underlying cause of the violence in the north of Ireland is the British presence; it is the policies of the British Government.

The examples we are going to be talking about today on plastic bullets, on abuses by the police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, by the British army, by the courts, none of these are accidents. In any democratic society you are going to find certain accidents. You are going to find police who occasionally will carry out excesses. You will find judges who occasionally are biased. You will occasionally find a law which is Draconian and then subsequently repealed.

But the fact is violations of human rights, violations of basic human decency have been an integral part of British policy in the north of Ireland for the last 75 years. There have been_no_jury trials for political defendants in Northern Ireland since the State was created in 1922. This is not something that developed over the last 25 years. For the entire existence of Northern Ireland there have been no jury trials allowed for political defendants.

The use of plastic bullets and rubber bullets has been going on for over 20 years, and these are not accidents where somebody happens to get killed in a riot situation. Again, back at the tribunal in 1981, we had a young girl, Carol Ann Kelly, walking by herself on the street, the top of her head blown off by the British army. We had another girl, Julie Livingstone, shot dead by the British army for no purpose at all other than to avenge other acts that were going on in Ireland at that same time. There were IRA attacks against the British army. The British army responded by

shooting young girls in the streets of Belfast, and then putting out press releases somehow trying to tie this in with the IRA, somehow trying to tie this into riots or disturbances which were not going on. That showed the collusion, it showed the systemic corruption of the British forces in the north of Ireland.

On the issue of the courts, we had cases where you would have 30 to 35 to 40 defendants put on trial at one time based on the perjured testimony of one witness. These were, again, policies which were instituted by the British Government, carried out by the police and the army, and then fully implemented by the courts, which shows, again, the collusion, it shows how the systemic corruption is there at every level of the criminal justice system in the north of Ireland.

And Michael Finucane will testify today about the killing of his father. Yes, it was an absolute tragedy that his father was killed. It was terrible, he was shot in front of his family. He was shot by Loyalist paramilitaries, all of which is absolutely horrible.

What makes it more horrible, though, from a democratic point of view is the fact that he would not have been killed without the cooperation of the police force in the north of Ireland. The police force, the British army were active collaborators in the killing of his father.

That continues today where people living in Nationalist Republican communities have their identities given by the police to Loyalist paramilitaries to killers, and that is what is not really brought out to the American people who somehow see this as being some sort of tribal war going on in the north of Ireland where the British are there as referees or as honest brokers. They are not. They are the cause of the problem, they sustain the problem, and we as members of an elected body and those of us who happen to be lawyers in particular have to speak out and denounce the way the criminal justice system is so debased.

I know as a law student I studied very proudly the common law of the British. I mean, it was basically our system, was transplanted here from the British system, and I always had tremendous admiration for the British system of law until I saw how it was so distorted and so perverted in the north of Ireland. And that, I think, Mr. Chairman, from looking at the witnesses you have here today, certainly is the focus of where we are going, and it also shows that it is not enough to call on people to stop violence, it is not enough to call on people to seek peace when the underlying institutions are corrupt, are inherently violent and biased toward one section of the community.

There will never be peace in the north of Ireland until the criminal justice system is corrected, until the inequalities are rooted out, and until the State-sponsored terrorism or the British security forces against the people of the north of Ireland is rooted out, ended once and for all. Until then we can talk all we want, we can say all we want about peace, we can say all we want about nonviolence. But until the systemic violence of the British security forces against the people in the north of Ireland ends we can never hope to see a realistic end to violence in that terribly shattered part of the world which has resulted from British policies over the

years.