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The Spread of British Hypocrisy, From Gerry Adams and Northern Ireland to Syria
If arresting Adams just before the European elections was not political,
then surely the British refusal to inquire into the slaughter in
Ballymurphy was.
By Robert Fisk
May 11 2014
"ICH " - "The Independent"
- The law is the law is the law. So I was taught as a child. But it's
all baloney. Take the case of Gerry Adams, `arrested' and then
released after chatting to the Northern Ireland police - I notice the
cops did not use the old cliché about `helping the police with their
inquiries' - about the torture and murder and `disappearance' of Jean
McConville.
It is, to quote Fintan O'Toole, that wise old bird of Irish philosophy,
`an atrocity that cries out for accountability' - in which Adams has
consistently denied any involvement. Sinn Fein announced that Adams's
`arrest' was political, a remark that got the usual tsk-tsk from
Unionists and British alike.
But alas, Theresa Villiers, the latest in the hordes of Northern Ireland
secretaries to be visited upon Belfast, also announced, a wee bit before
Adams's `arrest', that there would be no independent inquiry into the
killing of 11 unarmed civilians in Ballymurphy in August 1971 by soldiers
of the Parachute Regiment, the most undisciplined British military unit to
be sent to the province, which later killed another 14 civilians in Derry
on Bloody Sunday. In the Ballymurphy shooting, the Brits managed to kill a
Catholic priest carrying an improvised white flag and a mother of eight
children who went to help a wounded boy. The deaths of Father Hugh Mullan
and Mrs Joan Connolly were also deaths that `cry out for accountability'.
But of course, there will be none. Ms Villiers has seen to that.
She also ensured that there would be no inquiry into the fire-bombing of
the La Mon hotel in 1978, when the IRA burned 12 people to death. Families
of the dead have their suspicions that transcripts of police interviews
with IRA suspects to this crime were removed from the archives to protect
important people involved in the `peace process' in Northern Ireland. No
complaints about that, needless to say, from the IRA. But you can see the
problem: if arresting Adams just before the European elections was not
political, then surely the British refusal to inquire into the slaughter in
Ballymurphy - assuming the soldiers involved have not died of old age - was
political. After all, the Brits know who these soldiers were, their names,
their ages and ranks. They have much more than the statements of two dead
IRA supporters - the `evidence' against Adams =80` to go on.
Now you may argue that the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday cost far too
many millions of pounds to warrant another investigation into the
Ballymurphy deaths. But then you may also ask why the soldiers who gave
evidence to the original inquiry were given the cover of anonymity. This
was something Gerry Adams was not offered - nor, given the favourable
political fallout, was he likely to have asked for it. But then it would
also be pleasant if the Brits who know something about the Dublin and
Monaghan bombings during the worst days of the Irish war could pop over to
Dublin and give a little evidence about this particular atrocity. No chance
of that, of course.
And you don't have to stick in Ireland for further proof of legal
hypocrisy. Take our beloved Home Secretary's decision to deprive British
immigrants of their British passports if they go to fight Assad's regime in
Syria. Quite apart from the fact that William Hague, the Foreign Secretary,
and his friends originally supported the armed Syrian opposition, there are
problems with the passport story. Many British supporters of Israel, for
example, have fought on Israel's behalf in Israeli uniform in that
country's wars. But what if they served in Israeli units known to have
committed war crimes in Lebanon or Gaza? Or in the Israeli air force, which
promiscuously kills civilians in war. Are they, too, to be deprived of
their passports if they were not born in the UK? Of course not. One law for
Muslims, another for non-Muslims - not unlike Spain's offer of passports to
the descendants of those driven from their homes in the 15th century, a
generous act somewhat damaged by the fact that only Jews (not Muslims) may
take advantage of it.
We will not dwell upon all the other hypocrisies of the Middle East =80` the
outrage at any Iranian interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, for example,
when another country in the region has an awful lot of nuclear weapons; or
US fury at Russian annexation of Crimea but no anger at all about the
annexation of Golan or the theft of Arab land in the West Bank, which are
equally illegal under international law. Upon such foundations is
aggression built: the illegal invasion of Iraq, for instance.
I contemplate all this because of a little research I'm undertaking about a
Moroccan air force colonel who, in 1972, tried to stage a coup against the
brutal King Hassan who was also, by the way, quite an expert on
`disappearances'. Mohamed Amekrane flew to Gibraltar and threw himself upon
the dodgy mercy of Her Majesty. He pleaded for asylum (after all, the coup
had failed) but we packed him off back to Morocco because, while the
European Convention on Human Rights gives anyone the right to leave his or
her own country, no international treaty obliges a country to give that
person asylum. So back Amekrane went - and was, of course, put to death.
His widow eventually got £37,500 from the British government - ex gratia,
needless to say, out of goodwill not guilt, you understand - and Colonel
Amekrane was then erased from history. Interesting to see what happens to
the ex-Brits who lose their passports for going to Syria - and have to go
back to the country of their birth. They might be better off - and
live
longer lives - if they to go off to fight in another jihad.
The Great War's forgotten victims in the Levant
Horrors of the Great War you will not read about this year: among the
casualties were another million dead, the men, women and children of the
Ottoman Levant - for which read modern-day Lebanon and Syria =80` who died of
famine, victims of both the Allied blockade of the east Mediterranean
coastline (which is why we ignore these particular souls) and of the
Turkish army's seizure of all food and farm animals from the civilian
population; all this in addition to the million and a half slaughtered
Armenians of 1915. Many Lebanese remember parents who ate nettles to stay
alive, just as the Irish did in the famine. I have a book by Father Antoine
Yammine, published in Cairo in 1922, illustrated with photos of stick-like
children and of a priest in his habit lying dead on a Beirut street,
another of a baby suckling at his dead mother's breast outside their front
door. `And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished as though
they had never been"
If arresting Adams just before the European elections was not political,
then surely the British refusal to inquire into the slaughter in
Ballymurphy was.
By Robert Fisk
May 11 2014
"ICH " - "The Independent"
- The law is the law is the law. So I was taught as a child. But it's
all baloney. Take the case of Gerry Adams, `arrested' and then
released after chatting to the Northern Ireland police - I notice the
cops did not use the old cliché about `helping the police with their
inquiries' - about the torture and murder and `disappearance' of Jean
McConville.
It is, to quote Fintan O'Toole, that wise old bird of Irish philosophy,
`an atrocity that cries out for accountability' - in which Adams has
consistently denied any involvement. Sinn Fein announced that Adams's
`arrest' was political, a remark that got the usual tsk-tsk from
Unionists and British alike.
But alas, Theresa Villiers, the latest in the hordes of Northern Ireland
secretaries to be visited upon Belfast, also announced, a wee bit before
Adams's `arrest', that there would be no independent inquiry into the
killing of 11 unarmed civilians in Ballymurphy in August 1971 by soldiers
of the Parachute Regiment, the most undisciplined British military unit to
be sent to the province, which later killed another 14 civilians in Derry
on Bloody Sunday. In the Ballymurphy shooting, the Brits managed to kill a
Catholic priest carrying an improvised white flag and a mother of eight
children who went to help a wounded boy. The deaths of Father Hugh Mullan
and Mrs Joan Connolly were also deaths that `cry out for accountability'.
But of course, there will be none. Ms Villiers has seen to that.
She also ensured that there would be no inquiry into the fire-bombing of
the La Mon hotel in 1978, when the IRA burned 12 people to death. Families
of the dead have their suspicions that transcripts of police interviews
with IRA suspects to this crime were removed from the archives to protect
important people involved in the `peace process' in Northern Ireland. No
complaints about that, needless to say, from the IRA. But you can see the
problem: if arresting Adams just before the European elections was not
political, then surely the British refusal to inquire into the slaughter in
Ballymurphy - assuming the soldiers involved have not died of old age - was
political. After all, the Brits know who these soldiers were, their names,
their ages and ranks. They have much more than the statements of two dead
IRA supporters - the `evidence' against Adams =80` to go on.
Now you may argue that the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday cost far too
many millions of pounds to warrant another investigation into the
Ballymurphy deaths. But then you may also ask why the soldiers who gave
evidence to the original inquiry were given the cover of anonymity. This
was something Gerry Adams was not offered - nor, given the favourable
political fallout, was he likely to have asked for it. But then it would
also be pleasant if the Brits who know something about the Dublin and
Monaghan bombings during the worst days of the Irish war could pop over to
Dublin and give a little evidence about this particular atrocity. No chance
of that, of course.
And you don't have to stick in Ireland for further proof of legal
hypocrisy. Take our beloved Home Secretary's decision to deprive British
immigrants of their British passports if they go to fight Assad's regime in
Syria. Quite apart from the fact that William Hague, the Foreign Secretary,
and his friends originally supported the armed Syrian opposition, there are
problems with the passport story. Many British supporters of Israel, for
example, have fought on Israel's behalf in Israeli uniform in that
country's wars. But what if they served in Israeli units known to have
committed war crimes in Lebanon or Gaza? Or in the Israeli air force, which
promiscuously kills civilians in war. Are they, too, to be deprived of
their passports if they were not born in the UK? Of course not. One law for
Muslims, another for non-Muslims - not unlike Spain's offer of passports to
the descendants of those driven from their homes in the 15th century, a
generous act somewhat damaged by the fact that only Jews (not Muslims) may
take advantage of it.
We will not dwell upon all the other hypocrisies of the Middle East =80` the
outrage at any Iranian interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, for example,
when another country in the region has an awful lot of nuclear weapons; or
US fury at Russian annexation of Crimea but no anger at all about the
annexation of Golan or the theft of Arab land in the West Bank, which are
equally illegal under international law. Upon such foundations is
aggression built: the illegal invasion of Iraq, for instance.
I contemplate all this because of a little research I'm undertaking about a
Moroccan air force colonel who, in 1972, tried to stage a coup against the
brutal King Hassan who was also, by the way, quite an expert on
`disappearances'. Mohamed Amekrane flew to Gibraltar and threw himself upon
the dodgy mercy of Her Majesty. He pleaded for asylum (after all, the coup
had failed) but we packed him off back to Morocco because, while the
European Convention on Human Rights gives anyone the right to leave his or
her own country, no international treaty obliges a country to give that
person asylum. So back Amekrane went - and was, of course, put to death.
His widow eventually got £37,500 from the British government - ex gratia,
needless to say, out of goodwill not guilt, you understand - and Colonel
Amekrane was then erased from history. Interesting to see what happens to
the ex-Brits who lose their passports for going to Syria - and have to go
back to the country of their birth. They might be better off - and
live
longer lives - if they to go off to fight in another jihad.
The Great War's forgotten victims in the Levant
Horrors of the Great War you will not read about this year: among the
casualties were another million dead, the men, women and children of the
Ottoman Levant - for which read modern-day Lebanon and Syria =80` who died of
famine, victims of both the Allied blockade of the east Mediterranean
coastline (which is why we ignore these particular souls) and of the
Turkish army's seizure of all food and farm animals from the civilian
population; all this in addition to the million and a half slaughtered
Armenians of 1915. Many Lebanese remember parents who ate nettles to stay
alive, just as the Irish did in the famine. I have a book by Father Antoine
Yammine, published in Cairo in 1922, illustrated with photos of stick-like
children and of a priest in his habit lying dead on a Beirut street,
another of a baby suckling at his dead mother's breast outside their front
door. `And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished as though
they had never been"