Sir, – In her column on the controversy surrounding John Finucane’s address at the South Armagh IRA commemoration in Mullaghbawn, Justine McCarthy refers to President Michael D Higgins’s “masterclass in how to live with the past, and his message that reconciliation “was not simply about tolerating others; it was about engaging with them” (“Sinn Féin has a point. Nobody is entitled to veto anyone else’s story”, Opinion & Analysis, June 16th).
As she says, “Staying schtum – whether it is by choice or enforced by others – is bad for the health of individuals and for communities”. It was in fact “a method of denial”.
But the reality is that there is no statute of limitation on murder, or grievous bodily harm, the two most egregious violations of human rights during the ethnic conflict that engulfed Northern Ireland for almost 30 years and spilt over into the Republic and England during the Troubles.
That is why we need a truth recovery process based on conditional amnesties for former combatants who are willing to engage with victims through a mediation system rather than in the arena of the criminal courts. It would not deny victims and survivors the right to seek truth and justice through the courts, if they so wish, but it would offer an alternative based on reconciliation rather than retribution. – Yours, etc,
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‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
PADRAIG YEATES,
Portmarnock,
Dublin 13.