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North to get Truth and Reconciliation Commission?
Read more about: Fianna Fail, Government, Irish Politics, Nationalism, Northern Ireland, Republicanism, Sinn Féin, Unionism
From Reuters last night, Bertie speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations suggested a mechanism not unlike South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission may be necessary to secure progress in community relations up North.
”I think we have to find some mechanism. … Otherwise it will never come to an end,” Ahern said. One commission already exists. The Police Service of Northern Ireland has established the Historical Enquiries Team to re-examine deaths between 1968 and 1998.
Ahern said the team had investigated some cases, but said survivors of the troubles may need some other system to end their trauma.
“A lot of these people want to know what happened. Why was our loved one killed? Who killed them? Was it investigated? So there’s an enormous number of people who want to go back into it. The difficulty is, you have try to end them somewhere. If you just go on and on and on and try to get to the truth about the past, it keeps up. We never want people to forget, but trying to always investigate the past will not help you to move on.”
One of the difficulties facing the HET is that the government won’t stump up the cash for DNA tests of evidence: http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/more-questions-about-historical-enquiries-team/
So instead of throwing a few million at a new quango, they should consider helping the HET with this.