22 April 1999 Edition
New victims group guilty of hidden agenda
A new victims' umbrella group, `Northern Ireland' Terrorist Victims Together (NITVT), has been accused of reinforcing divisions in the status of the dead of the last 30 years of conflict in the Six Counties. By failing to contact many of the victims/survivors groups in the nationalist community prior to its launch on Friday, 16 April, at the La Mon House Hotel, NITVT sent a clear message that the only innocent victims are those who are victims of republican violence.
NITVT failed to contact groups such as the Relatives for Justice (RfJ), Bloody Sunday Justice Group, the Pat Finucane Centre, Cúnamh, United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets, Loughall Truth and Justice Campaign, the Fermanagh based Voice, Dublin/Monaghan Bombings Forgotten Victims group, the Robert Hamill Campaign or the Survivors of Trauma. They also failed to contact individuals such as Jean McBride or Kate Duffy, who have established public profiles through their campaigns to highlight the deaths of their sons at the hands of the crown forces.
The difference between these groups and the 11 groups under the NITVT umbrella, such as Lisburn-based FACT (Families Against Crime by Terrorism), fronted by Ulster Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson, FAIR (Families Acting for Innocent Relatives) or SLANT (Survivors Left After Nationalist Terror) is that the former mostly represent victims of state violence.
Despite expressing the desire to remain non-political and non-sectarian, at the NITVT launch a spokesperson claimed to know of no group representing innocent Catholics killed as a result of the war.
Relatives for Justice spokesperson, Mark Thompson, told An Phoblacht: ``We accept the obvious hurt, pain and anger felt by these people but they need to come and sit down with the different communities in the North and accept that everyone has the right to grieve but at the same time respect the grief of others.''
NITVT failed to contact groups such as the Relatives for Justice (RfJ), Bloody Sunday Justice Group, the Pat Finucane Centre, Cúnamh, United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets, Loughall Truth and Justice Campaign, the Fermanagh based Voice, Dublin/Monaghan Bombings Forgotten Victims group, the Robert Hamill Campaign or the Survivors of Trauma. They also failed to contact individuals such as Jean McBride or Kate Duffy, who have established public profiles through their campaigns to highlight the deaths of their sons at the hands of the crown forces.
The difference between these groups and the 11 groups under the NITVT umbrella, such as Lisburn-based FACT (Families Against Crime by Terrorism), fronted by Ulster Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson, FAIR (Families Acting for Innocent Relatives) or SLANT (Survivors Left After Nationalist Terror) is that the former mostly represent victims of state violence.
Despite expressing the desire to remain non-political and non-sectarian, at the NITVT launch a spokesperson claimed to know of no group representing innocent Catholics killed as a result of the war.
Relatives for Justice spokesperson, Mark Thompson, told An Phoblacht: ``We accept the obvious hurt, pain and anger felt by these people but they need to come and sit down with the different communities in the North and accept that everyone has the right to grieve but at the same time respect the grief of others.''