Part IV - British Violations of European Charter Right to Life

In a wide range of specific cases, the British government has not delivered justice, or even truth. As evidence of British Army and RUC collusion with loyalist death squads and its shoot-to-kill policy slowly comes into public view, British government involvement in the murders of hundreds of nationalists remains concealed by the British.

A recent BBC produced documentary -- A License To Kill -- tied the murder of civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane directly to British intelligence, army and RUC.

Over the past months, an extraordinary number of reports B, inquiries and inquests have delved into allegations that the British government, military, and police directly, and indirectly by collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, killed innocent members of the public.

They include:

The Saville Inquiry into British army killing of 14 unarmed civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday;

A Community Inquiry (The New Lodge Six ) into the killing of 6 unarmed men by the British army in north Belfast;

The Barron Report exploring allegations of British military/police collusion in the Dublin/Monaghan Bombings that killed 33 Irish citizens;

The Stevens 3 Inquiry Report into the British policy of collusion with loyalist death squads;

The Cory Report (UK) into British State collusion in the killings of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill, Mand Billy Wright;

The Tyrone Inquest into British army/police shoot-to-kill and collusion in the killing of 10 Irish people in the early 1990s have been stalled and stonewalled;

The Euro Court of Human Rights ruling that the British government violated the Right To Life in Ireland; and

The Police Ombudsman s Report: The Investigation by Police of the Murder of Mr. Sean Brown on 12 May 1997 into police failure to investigate (and perhaps to have colluded in) the murder of an esteemed, innocent member of the public, Sean Brown.

Many of these investigations have been the result of decades of campaigning and pressuring the British government by human rights groups and the families of those killed.

Revelations

The course of these investigations point in the same direction:

1) The British government directed, 7 oversaw, failed to prosecute, helped or committed the murder of hundreds of its own citizens in Ireland;

2) The vast majority of these citizens, innocent members of the public killed directly through covert operations by British forces, or in collusion with their Loyalist agents, were special -- they were Irish Catholics or Nationalists; and

3) In each investigation, many under their own auspices, the British government and its agencies refused to cooperate fully or at all, engaged in cover-ups and stonewalls, or refused to hand over files or other evidence in its possession, and otherwise interfered with the pursuit of truth and justice.

Justice for nationalists remains an unfulfilled promise.

(Click for more info: INA Pol Action Report British Violations of The Right to Life in Ireland)