28 August 1997 Edition
Back issue: ``Good year for RUC'' says Newman - only 23 killed
Last Wednesday Kenneth Newman, head of the RUC, issued his annual report of ``successes'' and ``achievements''. However, certain admissions had to be made, the most important of which was the fact that military attacks by the Irish Republican Army rose by 1000 to 8,500. Incidentally these figures don't take into account the recent increases in state forces fatalities, and the decrease in civilian deaths; evidence of an increasing militarisation of the armed struggle and a reluctance of Republican Forces to get drawn into disastrous feuding/sectarianism.
Belfast Sinn Féin counteracted Englishman Newman's Brit lies with the following statement:
``The Nationalist population and young people drawn from it have had to go through untold suffering so that Kenneth Newman could make his inflated boast of RUC `successes'.
The bulk of these so-called ``successes'' have been based on the repressive 7-day detention orders and not on people caught in the act of committing political offences. Medical evidence and court statistics show the relationship between RUC interrogation and RUC torture and RUC successes, where 80 per cent of people convicted during the last year for political offences have been sentenced on `confessions' in the form of signed statements. These statements alone have superceded real evidence (people caught in possession of firearms or explosives, or in the act of committing a felony).
The attempted suicides during interrogation, the admissions to mental hospitals and the overwhelming documentation of the use of torture must be stated alongside Newman's boast.''
Belfast Sinn Féin counteracted Englishman Newman's Brit lies with the following statement:
``The Nationalist population and young people drawn from it have had to go through untold suffering so that Kenneth Newman could make his inflated boast of RUC `successes'.
The bulk of these so-called ``successes'' have been based on the repressive 7-day detention orders and not on people caught in the act of committing political offences. Medical evidence and court statistics show the relationship between RUC interrogation and RUC torture and RUC successes, where 80 per cent of people convicted during the last year for political offences have been sentenced on `confessions' in the form of signed statements. These statements alone have superceded real evidence (people caught in possession of firearms or explosives, or in the act of committing a felony).
The attempted suicides during interrogation, the admissions to mental hospitals and the overwhelming documentation of the use of torture must be stated alongside Newman's boast.''