Children and Young Persons Rights and Advocacy in Times of Conflict and Transiti
Children and Young Persons Rights and Advocacy in Times of Conflict and Transition
Friday 14th May 2004 Belfast Waterfront Hall
Address by Clara Reilly Chairperson of Relatives for Justice and founder member of the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets.
For general press release:
Rubber and plastic bullets were first introduced into the North of Ireland in the early seventies. They were described by the government as non-lethal riot control weapon with strict guidelines governing their use.
They were introduced despite the result of tests carried out by the American army that described them as being in "the severe damage category" resulting in such injuries as skull fractures and fragmentation of the liver. Other tests later carried out by doctors at the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) in Belfast showed they caused brain damage, blindness, paralysis, smashed hands, triple fractures of the legs and injuries to the kidney, liver, groin and throat.
When twelve-year-old Paul Corr was hit in the face with a plastic bullet, it tore off part of his nose, shattered and ripped out his pallet, and forced his teeth down into his mouth. Three people died as a result of rubber bullet injuries including eleven year old Francis Rowntree, who died in 1972, the first victim of this controversial weapon. It was claimed that bullet fired at Francis was fired from a distance of feet away and eyewitnesses claimed that the rubber bullet was ‘doctored’ – meaning the top of the bullet had an AA type battery inserted into it. It was common knowledge that these bullets were doctored and at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry Dr. Richard Sheppard, an independent forensic scientist to the inquiry, concluded that injuries to Mr. McDaid were in fact the result of such doctoring. It had initially been thought that a live round had hit Mr. McDaid. There was no rioting at the time of Francis’s killing. However, as in most cases a riot ensued shortly after he was shot.
My first introduction to the damage inflicted by this weapon was my friend Emma Groves, the mother of eleven children, the youngest only five years of age. Emma was hit in the face by a rubber bullet as she stood in her own living room. Such was the severity of the injuries that both her eyes had to be removed and she faced months of plastic surgery to rebuild the bridge of her nose which had been shattered by the impact. Just imagine the fear and trauma suffered by the children who witnessed this and who faced years of coping with their blind mother. The elder female children now had to take over the role of mother and housekeeper as Emma tried to come to terms with what had happened to her. Mother Teresa, who had been in Belfast at the time, visited Emma in hospital and broke the news to her that she would never see again.
On the 10th October 1976 I was a witness to the killing of thirteen year old Brian Stewart, who was hit in the head by a plastic bullet - fired by a member of the British Army on the streets of Turf Lodge in West Belfast.
I can state with all honesty, as did eight other independent witnesses, including the local parish priest, that there was no riot-taking place when the plastic bullet was fired. After the boy had been removed by ambulance a full-scale riot did occur when angry locals confronted the soldiers. This was a clear case were the firing of plastic bullets incited a riot instead of stopping one. Brian Stewart was placed on a life support machine and died six days later of severe brain damage.
Carol Anne Kelly was returning home from an errand for a neighbour on the 19th May 1981. Her mother Eileen was anxious that her children stay around the family home as tensions were high in nationalists areas as the hunger strikers started to die. She watched from her window as the children stopped outside her neighbour's home while at the same time observing two British army carriers appear from around the corner. The first military carrier stopped and Eileen Kelly was horrified to see a plastic bullet gun appear from one of the side portholes. She was even more horrified when it was aimed at the two little girls. Two plastic bullets fired out. She saw her daughter fall and ran screaming from the house to find Carol Anne lying unconscious and bleeding profusely from a wound to the back of the head. The second jeep had stopped and one of the soldiers ran up the grass bank and he kept shouting back to his comrade, "it's only a little girl, it's only a little girl"….. Local people who had started to gather remonstrated with him only to be told by the distraught mother to let the soldier administer first aid. He attempted to apply a pressure dressing to the wound but his commanding officer ordered him back to the carrier, reprimanding him for leaving his rifle down on the ground while he tended the child. Carol Anne was placed on a life support machine but died several days later. She was twelve years of age.
Nearly 30,000 plastic bullets were fired in 1981 killing seven people in total, seventeen people have been killed with rubber and plastic bullets, eight of them school children. Along with the ones I have mentioned there was Stephen Geddis aged 10 years, Paul Whitters aged 15 years, Julie Livingstone aged 14 years, Stephen McConomy aged 11 years and Seamus Duffy aged 15 years. I purposely name these children and the facts behind some of their killings to emphasise in the strongest terms possible the legacy in human terms of the miss-use of plastic bullets and the brutal reality of their deaths. These weapons have killed and seriously injured hundreds of others maiming and disfiguring many for life. They have left a catalogue of carnage, grief and brutal sectarian oppression. Independent international studies of plastic bullets have shown that they are lethal and excessively dangerous weapons - that their use was not monitored and those who have used them to kill or maim innocent people have not been brought to justice is a further indictment and adds to the widely held belief that rubber and plastic bullets are indeed the technology of political control. Consequently their very mention instils fear given their lethal capacity and the nature of impunity for those who use them.
Thousands of pounds in compensation has been paid to the bereaved and injured and yet this tacit acknowledgement of culpability is not matched in punitive actions. Not one member of the ‘security forces’ so called has ever been convicted in relation to the deaths or injuries. The rules governing the use of plastic bullets have been flouted time and time again. All of those killed by rubber and plastic bullets – and indeed those who lost eyes, suffered severe internal organ injuries, paralysis, and brain damage, were hit in the head or upper body regions and almost all at close blank range. This predominately occurred in non-riot situations and in contravention to the British government’s own stated ‘rules’ supposedly governing the use of rubber and plastic bullets, which state that they should not fired directly at targets, must be fired from a ‘safe’ distance – their term which is determined at 30 meters – must not be fired at the upper body, and mostly definitely not to be used in non-riot or life threatening situations.
Condemnation of these bullets has come from respected world wide human rights groups, the Taoiseach, US Congress and the European Parliament who voted on several occasions to have these weapons banned. The Catholic Bishops of Ireland have consistently added their voice also. Just two years ago, in capacity of Relatives for Justice, we met with the UN Special Rapporteur, on the rights of the child and introduced her to several children who had quite recently been injured by plastic bullets. Some of who were suffering long term physical damage and whose education and vital exams had also been affected. Following the recommendations of the Committee against Torture, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called for the abolition of the use of plastic bullets as a means of riot control. The British Gov has conveniently ignored all of these calls and recommendations.
We – The United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets - led a delegation of bereaved relatives and those injured to address the Patten Commission on Policing resulting form the all-party negotiations of 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement. The directive from the subsequent Patten Report was to find a safer alternative to the plastic bullet. After five years a so-called ‘safer’ plastic bullet was the introduced on the 1st Jun 2001. We discovered, via the good offices of our parliamentarian friend Kevin McNamara MP, that according to the British Ministry of Defence's own research, conducted in secrecy by the Defence Advisory Scientific Council Report which Mr McNamara was able to obtain and place in the public library of the House of Commons, that the new bullet would lead to more injuries from ricochets and more severe damage if they strike the body and head even from the stated ‘safe’ distance. In fact the research also shows that if the new bullet strikes the skull head on there is a substantial risk that the projectile will be retained in the head - embedded.
It is our view that the Patten Commission certainly had not intended on this approach and therefore the introduction of this new bullet is not in keeping with the spirit of the Patten Report. Indeed the research into this new bullet predated the Patten Commission and was therefore somewhat disingenuously availing of Patten’s recommendations as a convenient vehicle for its introduction. It was equally ironic that at the time of its introduction the British government was rigorously pursuing an agenda of disarmament. And that the bullet, with such a physical and psychological impact legacy, came at a time of conflict resolution beggared belief.
Commitments, given by the British government during the Hillsborough political talks in April 03, that plastic bullets would be phased out be the end of the year were not honoured when several months later British minister Jane Kennedy informed us that new research into another type of plastic bullet was underway and that until then the bullet would remain. It was also in this context that they gave a date for the introduction of the new bullet – again using Patten as the vehicle. When plastic bullets replaced rubber bullets the accompanying propaganda PR stated that they were ‘safer’ which in fact the opposite was the case. The same is true of the current bullet. It has been our collective experience that every replacement is potentially more lethal and it is highly likely that the bullet due for introduction in the summer of 05 will follow that trend.
What we have seen is huge amounts of research and internal conferences, which focus almost exclusively on military technology, rather than transitional policing methods. Andree Murphy, Deputy Director of Relatives for Justice, and myself recently attended an international law enforcement forum in London. I was hoping that Police chiefs in England would bring an understanding to the North of Ireland of the importance of community relations and bridge building in terms of the stated new beginning to policing as part of the agreement of 1998 and the Patten report. And that this conference might have shown the values of policies of containment such as those used so recently in Oldham and Bradford were no lives were lost during extremely serious rioting in which unarmed police officers acted to quell disturbances and restore order. It must also be noted the police in this situation also faced gunfire and petrol bombs.
The process of finding an alternative to plastic bullets here has now unfortunately influenced the thinking of English constabularies to the point that they have now introduced plastic bullets into operation. Previously they were proscribed and used only in the North of Ireland. However, the British Home Secretary, David Blunkett MP, and the head of the London Metropolitan Police, Sir John Stevens, both stated when asked in April 2002 that under no circumstances would they countenance the use of plastic bullets during forthcoming May Day protests in London in which serious disturbances were anticipated despite having the option.
This forum was framed around advancing such weaponry with lip service only to human rights. I personally wish that the resources and enthusiasm for on the shelf-off the shelf emerging military advances to policing would be poured into training and research programmes about promoting human rights and winning the trust and confidence of communities affected by multiple Human Rights abuses.
As I see it there is too much emphasis on drawing comparison's on policing methods with super- states in which rights can be violated and become secondary to other competing commercial and political interests. This undoubtedly threatens democratic and legitimate protest to unpopular multinational and governmental policy and actions by civil society to the point of super – states appear to resemble the very non-democratic type of regimes they espouse to oppose, which was the case in the north.
This part of Ireland lies between two jurisdictions with unarmed police services and in a Northern European context that means human rights must take primacy. Emerging from armed conflict and in a peace process means securing proper policing methods, particularly when policing has been political, partisan and down right bad and when principally plastic bullets were almost exclusively against one section of the community within a politically divided society. Getting policing and criminal justice right is the key – that means human rights are the only guiding principles. Only then will the most vulnerable in our society namely our children be protected and cherished.
Plastic Bullets have not furthered peace. If anything they have prolonged the conflict. Plastic bullets remain a huge barrier preventing young nationalists from joining the policing service. The policy of impunity that occurred in every single plastic bullet fatality must never be permitted to happen again. There should be no line drawn under the past only lessons learned - lessons that will enable all of a more just future and us to build a better future for all our children.
In recent days there has been more announcements pertaining to a proposed consultation on dealing with our past. With respect to plastic bullets any mechanism developed as a result of consultation must deal firstly with the legacy of impunity. We must have historical clarification as part of our transition from conflict to peace with truth and justice. It is with such examination that the awful legacy of plastic bullets, their use and intent, will be exposed which will consequently lead to the only logical and feasible conclusion – that they have no place here.
However, we can start that process now by ensuring no more children loose their lives leaving tragedy and heartache behind and no more people left permanently scared and disabled for life. Human rights must underpin that process and introducing more lethal weaponry runs contrary to this. Plastic bullets have no place in a transitional society emerging from armed conflict – they must go and go now. ENDS
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