Mon 14 Sep 2020, 09:23 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member
Much has been written about the Kremlin and Putin’s attempts to use the state to silence political opponents. The Tories are fond of attacking Russia and many other states for their record on human rights, yet they remain silent when human rights violations are committed on home soil. RT Documentaries recently ran a short series on state collusion with sectarian killings in both Northern and Southern Ireland.
It began with the Dublin bombings of May 1974. Over 30 people were killed and it was believed that those responsible were the ‘Glenanne gang’, a Loyalist paramilitary group. However, their main activity was in Armagh and Dungannon in the North, an area described as the ‘murder triangle’, because more people were killed per population here than anywhere else. The Glenanne gang were responsible for over 120 deaths, yet there were no arrests.
Loyalist gang murdering Catholics
The gang didn’t just target IRA sympathizers; it murdered ordinary Catholic workers. The programme heard from the son of Trevor Brecknell, who, he said, worked in the Rolls Royce factory in Belfast. But when his work ‘colleagues’ discovered that he was Catholic, he was forced to leave. Later, he was forced to leave his house in Belfast and ended up in rural Armagh. Despite this, he was gunned down with others in a bar. Ann Cadwallader, a journalist and author, began investigating the deaths in the ‘triangle’, but when she tried to bring her findings to the main media outlets, they weren’t interested.
In August 1975, after two men were thought to have been killed at a checkpoint in Armagh by the Ulster Defence Regiment, there were complaints. Old footage was shown of a Catholic priest, who said he had over 40 letters complaining about state collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries. He claimed that Dungannon was a no-go area for the RUC because it had failed to arrest anyone for the murders. A one-hundred percent failure rate certainly has to take some explaining and many believe that the so-called security forces were giving terrorists free access to the area.
Justice of the Forgotten
Paul O’Connor, the Director of the Pat Finucane Centre, said that they were primarily working on seeking Justice for the victims of Bloody Sunday, but one day, the son of Trevor Breaknall walked into the centre to explain about his father’s death in Dungannon and since then other relatives and survivors of the Glenanne gang murders come forward, including a woman whose husband was murdered at her front door. In 1996, they formed Justice of the Forgotten. When they demanded an inquiry the British Government refused, so they set up their own inquiry, involving experts from the UN s War Crimes Tribunal and South African members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Douglass Cassel, a former Director for the Centre for Civil and Human Rights, believed that there was ‘overwhelming’ evidence of collusion between Loyalist Paramilitaries and state forces.
The RT documentary can be seen on its live feed, here.
