21 October 1999 Edition

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Sanitised RUC lecture disrupted

Paddy McGreevy, Sinn Féin Down District Councillor, has congratulated party activists on disrupting what he called a revisionist lecture on the RUC in Down County Museum on Wednesday 13 October 1999. The sanitised lecture was the only one in the Museum's millennium series to deal with the emotive issue of policing in the Six Counties.

Speaking about the action, McGreevy said: ``Despite the presence of the RUC, including Special Branch officers, my party colleagues and I successfully disrupted today's sanitised lecture on the RUC in Down County Museum. As Sinn Féin's Assembly member for South Down Mick Murphy anticipated in his letter of complaint to Down District Council's Education Officer, Hugh Forester's lecture never mentioned how the RUC has been condemned by virtually all human rights agencies around the globe, including Amnesty International and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

``The RUC has murdered eight children with plastic bullets and injured or maimed thousands more. In carrying out its primary political function of suppressing nationalists, the RUC has tortured and harassed. The RUC has also deliberately built its military fortifications next to play areas in an effort to use children as human shields, yet this was never mentioned by Hugh Forester.

``Sinn Féin is prepared to call from the rooftops if need be for the disbanding of the RUC. They are an internationally discredited paramilitary force who are beyond reform and anyone who thinks otherwise is not only wishing on a star they are living on another planet.''

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