Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Bloody Sunday pressure mounts: news, features, act

1.	Bloody Sunday pressure mounts
2.	Bloody Sunday evidence shows planned operation
3.	Twenty five years of cover-ups, by Mary Nelis
4.	Remembering Bloody Sunday, By Matt Morrison
5.      More Bloody Sunday Events and Activities
___________________________________________________
Bloody Sunday pressure mounts
The 25 year campaign to prove that Bloody Sunday was state
sponsored murder is now putting the British government under
enormous pressure to open a new public inquiry into the
deaths.
More and more evidence is being released to show that the
Parachute Regiment in Derry in January 1972 mounted a
planned operation to murder civil rights protestors. And
more evidence has been promised.
It is to the credit of the tireless campaigners - many of
them relatives of those who were murdered on Bloody Sunday -
who have gone back to original sources to put together a
picture of the events of that day. Their relentless search
for the truth is now shaking the British state. Justice
cannot be denied much longer.
For Britain to admit that Bloody Sunday was murder would go
to the core of their rule in Ireland because it was only the
first of many shoot-to-kill operations.
This key event in Irish history can never be considered a
closed chapter until the full truth of British army and
British government responsibility is revealed and
acknowledged by the guilty. Only then will justice have been
done.
_____________________________________________
Bloody Sunday evidence shows planned operation
By Peadar Whelan
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT STILL REFUSES to call a new inquiry
into Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972 despite
disclosures that the original Widgery Tribunal suppressed
evidence that a number of those killed were fired on from
Derry's Walls.
As well as statements given to the Tribunal by NICRA
(Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association), radio ham Jimmy
Porter submitted recordings of British Army radio traffic he
made on the day of the killings. These confirmed that the
British Army fired from the walls on the marchers. Widgery
rejected the tapes saying they had been obtained illegally,
despite the fact that the Brigade log for the day confirmed
them. Widgery also rejected the evidence of Dr Raymond
McClean who attended the dying and wounded on the day and
observed the official post mortems on behalf of Cardinal
Conway. Said McClean, ``I wrote a detailed submission to
Widgery and I was told my evidence would not be required''.
Speaking to An Phoblacht Don Mullan, the author of a new
book on Bloody Sunday, said, ``we could now call it the
`Bloody Sunday Ambush' as the [new] evidence points to a
wider military operation''. Mullan agreed that it is
possible that the British set up a crossfire into which they
drove the marchers.
Channel Four News on Friday 17 January reported that British
soldiers from the Anglian Regiment fired from the walls at
civilians in and around Rossville Street, possibly killing
three men, John Young, William Nash and Michael McDaid, at a
rubble barricade near Columbcille Court/Glenfada Park which
ran across to the multi-storey Rossville Flats.
And according to a document discovered in the Public Record
Office in London, the ``LCJ (Lord Chief Justice Widgery)
will pile up the evidence against the deceased....but will
conclude that he cannot find with certainty that any one of
13 was a gunman''. The document is believed to be suggesting
that the bulk of the 700 statements from eye-witnesses
collected by NICRA and handed over to the Tribunal be
ignored and only a small number be admitted as evidence. All
the statements that referred to firing from the Walls were
ignored.
A BALLISTICS EXPERT WITH 25 years experience in the New York
Police Department, Robert Breglio, is to come to Derry to
conduct an independent field investigation into the Bloody
Sunday killings. The announcement was made on 21 January at
a Belfast press conference in the Linen Hall Library where
the latest book about the killings - Eyewitness Bloody
Sunday - was being launched.
Breglio, who was consulted by the book's author, Don Mullan,
said in a statement to Mullan, ``after examination of
photographs and statements and inquest reports... in my
opinion the angles of trajectory of bullet wounds of three
deceased: William Nash, John Young and Michael McDaid,
originated from a height that would inflict wounds of this
angle trajectory''.
Breglio is due to arrive in Derry on 25 January where he
will conduct interviews with the surviving wounded and key
witnesses.
According to Don Mullan, Breglio's report ``will, in due
course, form part of the new evidence which will be made
available to the British government as part of the
relatives' demand for a new impartial and open inquiry''.
Meanwhile, John Kelly Chair of the Bloody Sunday Justice
Group told the press conference, ``we are not campaigning
for apologies - the time for apologies has come and gone. No
one should ask for one on our behalf''.
After the press conference Kelly confirmed that the Campaign
would disclose new documentary evidence that will condemn
the British paratroopers for their actions on Bloody Sunday.
``The new evidence condemns the Paras outright,'' Kelly
said.
Martin McGuinness will be the main speaker at the London
Bloody Sunday rally on Saturday 25 January. Other speakers
at the rally include Tony Benn MP, Gerry Duddy of Bloody
Sunday Relatives for Justice, and Declan Bree TD Irish
Labour Party.
The rally takes place at 3pm at Caxton House, Archway and
will be preceded by the annual Bloody Sunday March which
assembles at 12 noon at Highbury Fields.
______________________________________________
Twenty five years of cover-ups
By Mary Nelis
A reporter contacted me last week regarding Bloody Sunday.
She wanted to know how the people of Derry would respond if
the British government apologised. Would that be enough for
the people to lay to rest the ghost of Bloody Sunday, to
really bury our dead, once and for all?
People who don't live in Derry or who have never been here,
ask questions like that. They haven't seen the blood flowing
in the street, they haven't smelt the fear. They haven't
witnessed the raw courage of those crawling along the ground
to the aid of the wounded and dying. They haven't tasted the
silence which hung over this city for three whole days, and
they do not understand that Bloody Sunday was not just about
the murder of innocent people. Nor was it just about killing
off the Civil Rights Movement by shooting the masses on the
street.
Bloody Sunday was more than that. It was about testing the
theory that in the interests of national security the state
could murder anyone and cover it up.
It was a while before the people of Derry realised that the
Bloody Sunday cover-up was but a fine tuning for the
cover-ups to come, for Bloody Sunday was a declaration of
war by the British government on us, the nationalist
community, in the last remnants of its Empire.
It was a while before we understood the implications of that
terrible day, for we had to bury our dead and we had to
mourn. We mourned the loss of fathers, husbands, sons and
friends and we mourned the loss of our innocence.
It was also a while before we saw clearly that the cover-up
of mass murder and the part played in that murder by the
British government of the day, was planned in advance. For
it is only in recent years that evidence has emerged which
shows that the success of the cover-up hinged on a ``first
strike'' PR operation by senior British Army personnel. The
dead had to be robbed of their reputations. They were not
human beings, they were nail bombers and gunmen.
By the time the Widgery Tribunal began, we knew that this
British Lord would preside over the greatest cover-up in the
long and bloody history of British involvement in Ireland.
And some of us knew that this would be the shape of things
to come.
By the time the first anniversary of Bloody Sunday came
around, the British government was already engaged in
intimidation and terrorisation of the working class
communities in the nationalist areas of the North, and
another Lord - Diplock - was preparing the way for the
cover-up of torture in the RUC interrogation centres.
The years after Bloody Sunday were one of the darkest
periods in the North's history. Those were the years of the
Shankill Butchers, the Dublin, Monaghan bombings, the
psy-ops operations. Those were the years of pain and
isolation for the relatives of Bloody Sunday.
But by the 10th anniversary the tide was beginning to turn
against the British and cracks began to appear in their
elaborate cover-up operation. The death squads operations
during 1982-85 when thirty five people were murdered, twenty
three of them in undercover operations, again focused
attention on state killings in the name of national
security.
International pressure forced the British government to set
up yet another enquiry.
It began much the same as Widgery, as a vehicle by the
British for the cover-up of death squad operations but ended
in disaster for Sampson, who became the victim of an
elaborate RUC cover-up of his investigations.
The then Attorney General, ``cheer up'' Paddy Mayhew,
announced that there would be no prosecutions of the RUC men
involved on the grounds of national security. The wheel had
come full circle from Bloody Sunday. National security,
enquiries, the Official Secrets Act, the whole cult of
secrecy and cover-ups of Britain's dirty war, were now
exposed for the world to see.
The 20th anniversary of Bloody Sunday saw 30,000 people
march through the rain-soaked streets of Derry still
demanding justice for the dead, and the truth for the
living. The rainbow which stretched across the skies of
Derry, the skies which wept on the day we buried our dead,
became a symbol for hope and for peace, and a message to the
British soldiers looking down from Derry Walls. There would
be no more Bloody Sundays, no more cover-ups.
The truth, which the relatives have demanded for the last 25
years, will out and it will set us all free.
``The gentle rainfall drifting down, over Colmcille's town,
could not refresh, only distil, the silent grief from hill
to hill''. Thomas Kinsella - Butcher's Dozen.
We still grieve.
_____________________________________________________
Remembering Bloody Sunday
By Matt Morrison
(The Irish People, 25 January 1997)
There are many persons in my hometown of Derry, I am sure, who have
more-detailed memories of Bloody Sunday than I have. I must admit to
feeling that I was more an observer of the event than a participant in it.
I suspect, twenty-five years along, that I am still grappling with the
enormity of that day....
It was on a beautiful, sunny, winter afternoon that I, my father Paddy,
Liam, a cousin, and I set out on foot from Shantallow for the staging area
of the march, up in the Creggan. We were all able walkers and were moving
at a good clip up the fairly steep incline that is Rosemount Hill.
As we were striding by the park, we met a British-army foot patrol. The
sergeant, waving his rifle as a teacher would a pointer, indicated that he
wanted us to stop and stand at a particular spot. We knew the drill. We
were spread-eagled against the cold iron perimeter railings of the park.
The cold metal reminded me that there was no heat in the low-lying winter
sun. We were warm because of the fast pace that we had been maintaining in
order to reach the assembly point at the common ground known as the
Bishop's Field.
I can still recall the strong smell of waterproofing on the Brit's uniform
as he gave me a "rubdown" that was anything but perfunctory. I can still
see my father raise his eyebrow in a quizzical manner as this same soldier
warned us to be very careful today.
We were now late. When we arrived at the Bishop's Field, the main body of
civil-rights marchers had already departed en route for Free Derry corner.
We were part of a tardy rear-guard of stragglers who decided to take a
shortcut through the city cemetery so that we could more quickly catch up
with the rest of our friends and neighbors.
Already, at sixteen years of age, I was a "veteran" of numerous
civil-rights marches and numerous active protests, including a stint at the
barricades during the Battle of the Bogside in August 1969. Rather
ironically, however, Bloody Sunday was the first time that I had actually
accompanied my father with his permission. The normal drill was that my
father would leave the house for a march. I would give him a few minutes to
be on his way, and then I, too, would leave for the same march, being
careful of course, not to let him see his first-born at any stage in the
proceedings.
ROOFTOP SNIPER
As we walked down William Street, I noticed a Brit sniper walk up towards
the apex of the roof of Stevenson's bakery. I commented to Paddy and Liam
that even if the Brits wanted to shoot us all today, they wouldn't have
enough ammunition, because there was such a large crowd of us.
The first person shot on Bloody Sunday was actually shot by that sniper.
John Johnston died about a year later of his wounds.
That said, we were all in good spirits as we moved towards Rossville Street
and our final destination of Free Derry Corner. The marchers were bantering
in what I regard as a typically Derry way. Everyone knew almost everyone
else there-by sight, as they say, if not by name. There was almost a
carnival atmosphere, reflective in many ways of the hope, the optimism, the
joy inherent in even painful struggle.
Somehow or other, I became separated from my father and cousin. I couldn't
see them in the vicinity of the Free Derry Corner, where a truck bed was
being used as a platform from which various speakers were addressing the
rapidly assembling crowd, so I decided to backtrack to the corner of
William Street and Rossville Street to search for them.
A small group of teenage stone throwers and a much larger group of
spectators were there. We were a tightly packed crowd, especially in the
narrow alley where I was. A British-army water cannon showered us with
purple dye. Then, when they shot tear gas, I could not manage to get my
hand up to my eyes, such was the crush. I decided it was time to move on.
I was about one-third of the way up Rossville Street when I heard the
distinctive sound of rifle fire. Looking back over my shoulder, I could see
British paras crossing some open ground. They were running forward, some
pausing to shoot, and were sweeping the crowd before them. I crouched over
low and started to run. I knew that if I fell, I would be trampled in the
forward surge of the crowd.
In a brief, surreal moment, I saw an old man sitting on a low, brick garden
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