During the Troubles, a report by international human rights specialists suggests that the UK displayed a wide-ranging, systematic, and inherent disregard for human rights. There was state participation in killings, torture, and collusion, indicating a severe institutional failure. The evidence didn’t just signal “a few rotten apples”, as noted in the report.
The Legacy Act, which replaces criminal and civil cases and inquests with its own inquiries, was also strongly condemned in the report. The Act, which takes effect from the first day of May, has been noted as a facilitator of ongoing impunity for state security forces.
The report points out that the Act seems to hinder efforts towards reaching a holistic sense of accountability and truth. The report entitled “Bitter Legacy: State Impunity and the Northern Ireland Conflict” is a 200-pages long document scheduled to launch in Belfast on Monday morning.
It is authored by an international team of academics gathered by the University of Oslo’s Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the request of Northern Ireland human rights organisations, CAJ and the Pat Finucane Centre. The report revealed that the UK government had not fulfilled its international human rights commitments by not conducting “fair and effective investigations” of state killings. It failed to provide families the right to truth, justice, and reparation.
Uninvestigated claims of security force torture, ill-treatment, and collusion allegations were excessively common. Collusion, it noted, was considered a valuable strategy by the British state. The report proposed that sufficient proof existed at the time to accuse suspects involved in collusion.
The report suggested that adherence to correct procedures during the conflict could have spared an unspecified number of lives. As per the report, the state’s failure to provide accountability, truth, reparation, and assurance of non-recurrence has had a consistent negative impact on victims, families, communities, and societies.
The panel suggested an absolute repealing of the Legacy Act and a return to the Stormont House Agreement, which was endorsed by the UK and Ireland back in 2014 but has never been enacted.
The report proposes that the Irish Government pass legislation to institute a Historical Investigations Unit (HIU), recommending a separate, independent international commission to scrutinise human rights abuses and acts of impunity during the Troubles. This commission should span both nations. Although state policies and operations were the primary focus of the report, it advised that any forthcoming framework for reviewing the conflict must also scrutinise the conduct of non-governmental armed groups, holding them to internationally accepted standards and ensuring appropriate compensations for their victims. The report underscored certain shortcomings of the Irish Government, relating to the handling of victims and survivors of assaults committed under its jurisdiction. In relation to connivance, it indicated that investigations into cases dating back to the early 1970s were clearly inadequate.