State Violence Read Online Free PDF

loyalist gangs, where houses on numerous occasions have been systematically wrecked by police and soldiers, where nearly every able-bodied man has been interned or imprisoned? Who built that ugly ghetto in the first place?

Listening to the poor
    Liberation theology has something relevant to say to us here. It can be summed up in the phrase ‘Listen to the Poor’. The rich have an attitude, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Can anything good come out of Ballymurphy? Can anything good come out of Ballyfermot? The poor want no plan handed down to them, neither from the USA government, nor from the Northern Ireland Office, nor from Leinster House, nor from the Irish Episcopal Conference, nor from the National Conference of Priests of Ireland, nor from the International Funds. What are the poor saying themselves? Come down and listen to them. They don’t want people telling them, ‘What you want is ...’
    Northern Ireland mirrors the world-wide problem of the rich and the poor, the resource-hungry northern hemisphere devouring the southern hemisphere. If oil or any other aspect of economy is a problem then the powerful, in the name of democracy and the free world, will bury the weak with great earth-movers. The creed of secular liberalism, materialism and capitalism provides the philosophy to do so.
    Secularism can be a pseudo moral voice that offers us more and more to eat and drink, comforts us with block-buster bestsellers with sex and violence on every page, assassinates the characters of other moral voices in competition and shields the sins of media bosses. It wrecks the unity of the family and aborts children from the womb. Its bland monotonous sameness provokes the revolt of the small nations and cultures anxious to preserve their national heritages. It threatens non-conformists with nuclear and chemical weapons and aspires to star wars. But what about the enemy within? Could it be that as the ghettos expand in this brave new world we will live to see the poor rise again in a new socialist revolution? Who says socialism is dead?
    Where does the world of the sacred stand confronted by the pervasive dominance of this heady secularism? Does it respond by tirelessly proclaiming the old virtues – disciplined prayer, disciplined charity, disciplined chastity, conservative authority?
    Or will the sacred try to survive in dialogue with the secular and content itself with small committed Christian communities, bright faith globules in the darkening pagan sea?
    Priests in the field have no time to answer. Every day a desert boy hands them a satchel of bread and fish. Every day they find Adhmed Kassim lying wounded on a stretcher. Like Jesus they have learned their lesson.
    A response to papers read at the 1991 AGM of the National Conference of Priests of Ireland. Published in Good News in a Divided Society (1992).
The Ghetto Poor and Human Rights

    A Chathaoirligh, a dhaoine uaisle, is mór an phribhléid dúinne, lucht feachtais agus gaolta ar son na cóire bheith i láthair ag an bhFóram agus bheirimid buíochas daoibh as an fhaill seo a thabhairt dúinn labhairt.
    Madam Chairperson and members of the Forum,
    Thank you for the privilege of addressing the Forum as chairperson of Relatives for Justice and chairperson of the Campaign for the Right to Truth. The Campaign is an umbrella group of eight organisations. There are six speakers on this panel and there are some thirty members present at the Forum. You will meet many of them informally and hear their stories. We are happy that you are willing to listen to poor, humble and vulnerable people who have suffered at the hands of the state in the past twenty-five years. You will have heard, and doubtlessly will hear more testimonies from victims and their relatives who have suffered grievously at the hands of the paramilitaries. We sympathise with these victims and encourage you to do all you can for them. Today we are