Sir, - Back in the late 1970s and the 1980s, the extradition of prisoners from this country to face trial in the UK was strongly opposed, for very good reasons, by large sections of the population. It was something of a surprise, then, to find that so many voted in the recent referendum in favour of the International Criminal Court and the principle of extradition. To what extent, one must ask, was this an informed decision?
The basic document, the ICC Statute, is a substantial one, and there are many serious implications for our freedoms in our acceptance of it. Yet it was available only on the Internet. The Referendum Commission's commendable but brief "for and against arguments" were all that the general public had to go on. There was almost no debate. The rest was propaganda, and misleading propaganda at that.
The Government implied that the establishment of a permanent court (and with it a surrender of Irish judicial sovereignty), was necessary to bring war criminals to justice. But this is not the case. For example, a tribunal has already been established for the former Yugoslavia, and is currently looking for finance, not legal authority, to establish a snatch squad for war crimes suspects. Yet many people believed this could not be done without a new permanent court, and voted in favour of the proposal accordingly.
Nor has the public been told the whole truth. Apart from the issue of extradition, there are agendas for social change riding on the establishment of this court, and about which the public have been given no information whatever by the Government.
The Government has been aided in all this by the silence of one-time opponents of extradition, such as Sinn Fein and civil liberties groups. Amnesty, though having recently reversed its policy of non-intervention in domestic issues, was also silent.
What has taken place here is outrageous. The Government deliberately set out to confuse the public, and then misrepresented and withheld information. A Yes vote was achieved only by the perpetration of a monstrous fraud on the public.
The conduct and outcome of this referendum must be challenged. - Yours, etc.,
Richard Greene, Chairman, Irish Civil Rights Association, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.