Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Rubiya Kadeer is the US based Uighur separatist campaigner whom China has accused of fomenting disturbances in the province. On Sunday ethnic tension spilled over as members of the Turkic speaking minority went on a murderous rampage, with the bulk of 156 victims comprised of Han Chinese. Kadeer describes the violence as ‘a call for freedom and justice’. China has since imposed martial law on Urumqi, where the deadly riots took place. No doubt the Uighurs of Xinjiang have legitimate grievances against the Chinese government, but a bloody ethnic attack on neighbours should not be allowed to take on the complexion of a second Tiananmen Square. Whether China has an enlightened approach to its minorities or not, it is not helpful to contextualise ethnic mob murder as an outcome of government policy.

Secretary of State Shaun Woodward’s decision to rule out any possibility of a £12,000 payout to the relatives of everyone killed in the troubles (within the UK) is unsurprising. It was necessary, both to avoid justifiable moral revulsion and in order to salvage other recommendations contained in the Eames Bradley report. This one clause might otherwise have deemed an extensive report effectively worthless, had it not been swiftly and unequivocally kicked into the long grass by the government. What Eames and Bradley produced is not entirely without merit. It is imbued with an underlying desire to see closure which many people in Northern Ireland share. Putting a stop to endless calls for expensive public inquiries is plainly a necessary aspiration. Despite criticism, I also believe it makes a decent fist of suggesting structures which might enable victims’ families to hear the truth about what happened to their loved ones. However Tom Elliot articulates some objections which th...

As yet the piece does not seem to be available online, but one of Ireland’s finest contemporary historians writes in today’s News Letter , debunking the myth that Northern Ireland’s peace process offers a template for resolving other conflicts. In particular he challenges the notion, posited recently by both Peter Hain and Jonathan Powell, that ‘dialogue without preconditions’ is a prerequisite for edging terror groups toward peaceful means. He argues that previous unconditional engagement with Provisionals served only to intensify the movement’s violence, whilst progress was made when talks were clearly linked to the IRA calling a ceasefire. Patterson also draws attention to the manner in which victims of terror have been marginalised. Consideration of ETA’s campaign in the Basque region of Spain has crystallised his thoughts. In Spain, ’organisation of victims have had a much higher profile than victims’ groups in Northern Ireland’. Here ’the discourse and thinking about victi...

The Historical Enquiries Team, set up to investigate unsolved murders from the Troubles, has been forced to lose 75 staff due to a budget shortfall. In stark contrast to the Bloody Sunday investigation, for instance, money cannot be found to properly examine murders committed by terror groups. It is slightly ironic however that one of four Victims' Commissioners, Mike Nesbitt, is amongst the first to express concern. I share his unease, but one way to free up a little more government funding might be to get rid of three out of four of his commission.

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never read any Solzhenitsyn. The articles which have paid tribute to his work following his death have sharpened my resolve to do so. Open Democracy’s Russia site carries a particularly pertinent piece on behalf of Memorial, which since 1992 has campaigned for a public space in countries of the former USSR, to remember the victims of totalitarianism there and to retain an historical focus and contemporary understanding of the wrongs which were committed under oppressive regimes in those states. In June I wrote about historical memory in Russia , highlighting the importance of Memorial’s aims. Mikhail Gorbachev had offered his support to a campaign seeking to establish a ‘national memorial’ to the victims of Stalin’s purges, an initiative which a fine article in RIA Novosti had commended. On Three Thousand Versts I commented, “Krans, and Gorbachev too for that matter, are quite right to maintain that remembering the wrongs of the past is important, not...

RIA Novosti carries an opinion piece by Maxim Krans which examines Russia’s relationship with its Soviet past. Krans condemns an equivocal attitude towards the darker aspects of the USSR which has become increasingly prevalent as 1991 recedes into distant memory. In particular he is critical of the rehabilitation of Stalin which has crept into Russian textbooks and the teaching of history under Putin’s regime. Notably RIA Novosti is a state owned news agency and the article is published not only on the English language site, but also within the opinion section of the Russian language site . The debate has arisen as Mikhail Gorbachev and others have appealed for a ‘national memorial’ to be established in memory of those who lost their lives in Stalin’s purges. In addition Gorbachev has suggested that Lenin’s embalmed body be removed from the mausoleum on Red Square and buried in accordance with his own wishes. Although the commentator is rather disingenuous in implying from this ...

The row over victims’ commission legislation which has broken out in the Northern Ireland Assembly lends particular pertinence to novelist Glenn Patterson’s sardonic piece, on Comment is Free today, accusing the twin nationalisms axis of “a consensus of crowing” . DUP / SF have of course achieved remarkably little since forming a government, despite their indulgence in constant self-congratulation. And in the unravelling of a deal which the carve-up were attempting to impose, we gain a startling insight into the high-handed fashion by which business is conducted by these two parties. In January it was announced that rather than appoint one victims’ commissioner (which would have cost the public purse approximately £250,000 annually) a victims’ commission comprising 4 commissioners would instead be appointed (at the cost of approximately £750,000 per annum). The ludicrous pretence used to justify this decision being that the First and Deputy First Ministers had been so overwhelme...

I was watching the local news earlier in the week and it covered a story about an aggrieved woman who was being evicted from her house to enable an extension to the runway at Derry City Airport. She tearfully explained the extent of the injustice which had been dealt her; casting around for a comparison for her predicament, she cited one of a series of religious wars fought throughout Europe in the mid seventeenth century. “It’s just like Cromwell” she proclaimed. This woman is not atypical and nor did it seem likely that she was a scholar of that period of history. In Northern Ireland it seems fairly unexceptional for someone to invoke a perceived hurt from 350 years previous to exemplify the unfairness of a local spat over compulsory purchase. Bearing this in mind, it is questionable whether we really need a museum to pour over the details and complexities of our recent Troubles. That said, not all the ideas being floated by the Healing Through Remembering group actually in...

In Northern Ireland we become so accustomed to the anodyne platitudes of Sinn Fein that it is possible simply to become inured to the noxious agenda which lies behind them. Thus when we hear the well-worn cliché that there cannot be a “hierarchy of victims” trotted out by West Belfast MLA Jennifer McCann to defend an event she is attempting to organise in Stormont’s Long Gallery, it is important not to forget that not only is the event which she is proposing offensive and disgraceful, but McCann is quite aware that this is the case. Of course every right thinking person will recognise that not only should there not be any equivalence between all of those who now claim or are claimed to be victims of the violence in Northern Ireland, but that it is deeply immoral to suggest that that equivalence should exist between those who died or were injured going about their legitimate business and those who died attempting to engage in acts of terrorism. In so far as establishing a “hierarchy o...

Newton Emerson’s withering cynicism over the four newly appointed Victims Commissioners is forged into amusing analogy in his latest Irish News column. Meanwhile the new Commission itself has got as far as an introductory press release before providing persuasive evidence for the view that its composition belies a revisionist agenda. Patricia MacBride is one of the four appointees who so compelled the First and Deputy First Ministers with their excellence at interview, that the number of available posts were quadrupled. In her mini-biography for the delectation of press and public she describes her brother Tony as an “IRA volunteer who was killed by the SAS on active service in 1984”. Justifiably this description has provoked a good deal of anger . Tony McBride was killed whilst attempting to plant a bomb with the intention of maiming and killing. Now I will not attempt to argue that the McBride family are not therefore victims of the Troubles. They were robbed of a relation by ...

Alex Kane is in good form in his Newsletter column this week. Having thoroughly excoriated the Bill of Rights project and examined its fallacious suppositions and disingenuous motivations he moved on to consider the appointment of four victims’ commissioners rather than one. Kane is justifiably cynical about the need for four commissioners and the reasons behind such an appointment. “It will, as the other creations have done, attempt to impose an equality agenda upon the matter in an effort to convince us that everyone is deserving of equal treatment because everyone is equally guilty.” Kane’s conclusion is particularly pertinent. “Am I the only one left in Northern Ireland who believes that the blame for most of the problem should be placed upon the doorsteps of republican and loyalist paramilitaries? And am I the only one left who believes that these "former" paramilitaries exploit the existence of commissions, consortiums and consultations entirely for their own self-jus...

What is a qualified apology worth, from the murderers of your child? The Parry family may be pondering this question after Gerry Adams’ platitudes at Canary Wharf on Wednesday evening. Adams’ was apologising for the death of their 12 year old son, Tim, in the Warrington bomb back in 1993. Nick Robinson raises Adams’ abject failure to provide any rationale for his organisation leaving two bombs in a busy shopping area. The Sinn Féin leader extended his apologies for the death of the Parrys’ son, whilst couching this apology in familiar republican doublespeak. The Parrys receive an apology because their son was a “non combatant” and his killing was a “mistake”. The supposedly contrite Adams then delivered a lengthy apologia for republican violence ; including the manifestly contradictory notions that “whilst (he) never thought a military solution was possible” he nonetheless still believes steadfastly that the IRA’s violence was necessary. It seems that whilst Sinn Féin and the repub...