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For
the most part, whether imposed or as the result of
self-censorship, a regime of silence has established
itself within many sections of the media since the
discovery of a body on a County Louth beach believed
to be that of Jean McConville, a victim of a 1972
war crime carried out by the post-Seamus Twomey Provisional
IRA leadership in Belfast. How that self-proclaimed
organ of professionalism and first class journalism,
and unrivalled purveyor of the truth in the face of
'yellow press' onslaughts, the Andersonstown News,
missed the scoop raises questions as to the raison
d'etre of the paper. After all it was first out
of the traps to interview Spookaticci. And if press
reports merit further consideration - including those
in the Sunday Business Post - he may be the
type of character that would find putting people like
Jean McConville 'down a hole' no more than a day’s
work. Yet not a line in the West Belfast tabloid pointing
to the discovery on Shelling Hill. Is it hopelessly
cynical to suspect that the management took its cue
from Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, who publicly
stated, 'I really think the least said about these
matters the better.'? So much for editorial independence;
not even an inkling of understanding Andre Vltchek’s
observation on East Timor that ‘''reconciliation''
based on silence never worked.’
Unfortunately
for the West Belfast MP, where the press has speculated
much of its focus alludes to his alleged role in this
war crime. The Irish Independent has claimed:
Jean
McConville was murdered by the Belfast Brigade of
the IRA. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, was
the leader of that brigade at that time. Did he
order her death? Did others disappear at his command?
Adams
has refuted any such thing, insisting that the 'allegation
is wrong.' And while the fact that he also denies
ever having been a member of the IRA damages his reputation
as an adherent to the truth it cannot be inferred
from one spoof that he is automatically lying on other
matters. We can hardly fail to acknowledge that the
majority of us simply have no way of knowing the identity
of the war criminal behind the disappearance of Jean
McConville. And for many, perhaps more so in West
Belfast, the notion that Mr Adams may have had a hand
in such a depraved act of ferocity, is such an 'appalling
vista' that suggestions to the contrary can only be
the work of securocrats and their allies. If the man
we return time after time to serve us in the British
parliament should rightfully be in the Hague what
does it say about us? How would the international
community view us given our very voluble discourse
on justice over the decades? The same perhaps that
the it felt about Austria when the country decided
to elect Kurt Waldheim as its president at a time when
he was suspected of having committed war crimes during
World War Two? As a constituency of victims we do
not want to go there and see our somewhat artificial
perception of ourselves subverted and the meaning
we inscribed into our struggle shorn of authenticity.
Security lies in the comfort of having sustained rather
than inflicted.
The
type of silence that has taken grip must cause reflection
in some quarters on the role of the so-called securocrats.
It is said that on one occasion when, after having
used the term in conversation Gerry Kelly was asked
to define a securocrat, he shrugged and said 'I don't
know what it means. Martin McGuinness used it and
the rest of us followed suit.' True or not, this is
hardly surprising for a movement that is leadership
led and mouths the line dutifully even if it means
mouthing the opposite of what was mouthed thirty minutes
earlier. No understanding is required, just an ability
to remember the lines, or a willingness to tramp on
the toes of somebody else when memory fails. But if
the securocrats really existed in some quarantined
space into which either the will or the interest of
the British Government fails to penetrate, where they
work day and night to sabotage the peace process,
now would seem the time for them to be making their
presence felt. Yet they hold their tongues on this
matter when, if they really wanted to shower acid
rain on the peace process, they could be adding their
voices as well as donating their classified security
files to the Sunday Independent's campaign
for a public enquiry. We have the strange phenomenon
of the dog that has not barked. Either the securocrats
exist and they want the peace process to succeed because
of the victory it hands the British state, or they
are the much needed imaginary bogey-man Sinn Fein
deploy to mask what the party really signed up for
in the Good Friday Agreement.
In
any event, securocrat silence is every bit as instructive
as the IRA call for a specified abandonment of silence
is obtuse. The organisation in a statement has called
on those with any knowledge about the disappearance
of Gareth O'Connor to 'make that information available
to the O'Connor family'. And if, as Sinn Fein argue,
'the families of those people killed during the conflict
have a right to justice' is the same courtesy to be
extended to the McConville family? Would the IRA find
itself in the contradictory position of arguing only
for information to be passed in the case of Gareth
O'Connor where it could result in hefty jail terms
yet withhold information in the McConville case which
in terms of punitive sanctions it would be rendered
negligible as a result of the Good Friday Agreement
providing a get out of jail free card?
But
contradictions are what we have come to expect of
Pinocchio O’Neill. The IRA in its recent statement
on the disappeared talks of execution and burials
quite impervious to the concept of war criminality.
This contrasts vividly with the position taken up
by An Phoblacht/ Republican News when it cast
its critical eye over Chile where the disappeared
is:
the
legacy of terror of dictator Augusto Pinochet ...
In Chile most of those responsible for murders,
torture and disappearances occurred during the dictatorship
have never been incarcerated ... Even more poignant
is the decision of Chile's political elite to grant
immunity to those responsible for the deaths of
their compatriots
The
paper further reported on the hunger strike of thirteen
relatives of the Chilean disappeared demanding that
the current government prosecute those responsible
for the crimes of the dictatorship: The relatives
are quoted as saying 'For our part, we are tired of
lies, promises and disappointments ... the political
authorities are resisting to accept these offences
as crimes against humanity.'
Just
drop Chile and this type of language becomes exactly
what has been hurled in the direction of republicans
since the discovery of the body on Shelling Hill.
The parents of the disappeared Gareth O’Connor
and Columba McVeigh, have launched stinging invective
at the IRA which the organisation finds difficulty
evading given its track record for lying.
But
it is not only here within our own conflict that the
corrosive effects of a corrupting peace process undermine
the attainment of justice for those least powerful.
One is forced to conclude that the peace process has
so hollowed out the notion of truth in both the media
and the body politic, leaving in its place a mere
regime of truth where the discourses of the powerful
determine what is. How else do we explain the inertia
with which the Dublin government has responded to
the mounting campaign by both European and other governments,
as widely dispersed as Japan and Canada, to seek justice
on behalf of the descendants of their own citizens
who were butchered or disappeared during the rule
of the generals in Argentina? Dublin's ambassador
to Argentina stated that his government had no intention
of seeking the extradition of anyone for the crimes
perpetrated on Irish citizens. The peace process sets
the scene in which the loudest and most legitimate
word in its vocabulary is 'hush' - even to the extent
that tactically keeping stum on war crimes carried
out on its own de jure jurisdiction means behaving
likewise when the war crimes are the handiwork of
Argentinean generals and their victims are Irish.
Whatever the short term merits of the peace process,
its corralling of public discourse into a darkened
cul de sac gives rise to the reign of the obscurantist
who will gleefully defoliate the public consciousness
of its intellectual sustenance. This is not the type
of closure the culture of inquiries was intended to
herald.
Republicans
for their part may feel an obligation to defend the
war that they prosecuted for so long. But such a defence
can only be plausibly mounted if the war is dissociated
from the war criminals.
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