Victims remembered in 'Troubles' roll-call

For the fourth time in Ireland the names of all who have died in the Northern Ireland conflict were read out at a special and unique Good Friday ceremony in the Unitarian Church on St Stephen's Green, Dublin, yesterday.

Interspersed with Buddhist and Taoist prayers, the reading of over 3,600 names began at noon and continued until 3 p.m., with each reader doing so for approximately five minutes.

Mr Chris Hudson, the Unitarian pastor who initiated the idea, said yesterday that in doing so he had intended the ceremony as "a virtual monument to all who had died" in the Troubles.

In 2000 the reading on Good Friday that year was intended as a once-off, he said, but people had been so moved by the experience it was decided to repeat it in 2001, and it had continued since.

"What we are trying to do here is to remember all the dead, without judgment," he said, and give to each equal recognition.

There existed a feeling that there was a hierarchy in the way the North's dead were remembered, he said, with seeming greater importance attached to the killings of people such as Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, for instance. That, particularly, was a perception among people in the North's Protestant community, he said.

One of his ambitions for the Good Friday ceremony is to involve republicans and loyalists in the readings, where each would also have to read out the names of the the dead from the other community as part of their contribution.

"It could mean, for instance, a loyalist reading out 'Bobby Sands' and a republican reading out 'Billy Wright'." He hoped to involve schoolchildren from next year, with them preparing drawings to accompany the readings, while also reading out names themselves.