Mac Cionnaith - "After Sean Graham Commemoration, Sinn Féin And SDLP Must Now Withdraw Support For The PSNI"
As outrage and anger continues at the PSNI’s treatment of relatives and survivors of the infamous Sean Graham’s Massacre on Belfast’s Ormeau Road, Breandán Mac Cionnaith has said it is time for Sinn Féin and the SDLP to withdraw their support for the PSNI.
Speaking from Portadown the Éirígí spokesperson said, “First and foremost the PSNI, as Britain’s police force in Ireland, has no moral right to harass, attack, arrest or detain any Irish citizen or group of citizens as it did on the Ormeau Road on Friday last.
Both Sinn Féin and the SDLP, with the full support of the political establishment in the Twenty-Six Counties, have repeatedly claimed that the era of political policing and British injustice effectively ended with the re-branding and restructuring of the RUC.
Collectively, those parties have repeatedly and publicly endorsed the PSNI and have encouraged our young people to join the ranks of that same organisation.
Those same parties have also made extensive efforts to integrate the PSNI into nationalist and republican communities, repeatedly facilitating PSNI incursions into community centres, schools and other facilities.
It is simply not good enough for those parties to suggest that a small rump within the PSNI is responsible for political policing. Any such suggestion is far too close to the ‘few bad apples’ line that was trotted out by the apologists for the RUC in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
The scene following the 1992 attack which left five men dead and several others critically wounded. The PSNI and other British forces were working hand-in-glove with the unionist deaths squads that carried out this and many other attacks on unarmed civilians.
It is worth highlighting just some of the political policing methods regularly used in the Six Counties.
• The PSNI’s continued prevention of effective investigations into the deaths of Irish citizens at the hands of British-controlled death squads.
• The PSNI’s continued obstruction of, and causing unnecessary delays to, inquests into many of those same deaths as a matter of routine.
• The PSNI's continued withholding of information, documentation and intelligence files from the families of those who died as a result of British state terrorism.
• The PSNI’s re-employment of many ex-RUC Special Branch personnel who could well be implicated in the murders of Irish citizens and other serious human rights abuses.
Based on these indisputable facts, the PSNI has continuously shown its true nature as the RUC’s successor. Nor should it be forgotten that large numbers of PSNI personnel routinely operate under the shadowy, direct control of MI5.
One report by an internationally recognised human rights organisation has previously indicated that one third of the PSNI’s total manpower may fall under such control - which would confirm the formal establishment of an unaccountable ‘force within a force’.”
Mac Cionnaith continued by highlighting the consistency of Éirígí’s view of the PSNI over the last fifteen years,
“Éirígí’s analysis of the PSNI has remained consistent since our foundation in 2006. The primary function of the PSNI, like all police forces in capitalist societies, is the maintenance of the state and the socio-economic status quo.
It is the height of political naivety to believe that cosmetic changes like the creation of Policing Boards, so-called Policing and Community Safety Partnerships or adjusting the religious make-up of the PSNI would affect the inherent nature of British policing in Ireland.
In that respect, comments made this weekend by Mark Thompson, the spokesperson for Relatives for Justice, should serve as a wake-up call to those who would claim that policing in the Six Counties has changed for the better.
Mark Thompson stated, “What we need is a major re-think on policing......on paper it looks fine in terms of accountability but in reality none of it works”.
There is no person in a better position to know or acknowledge that reality as, on a daily basis, Mark works with and represents the relatives of many victims of state violence across the Six Counties.
Éirígí has been consistent in stating the simple but stark fact that all efforts to ‘reform’ British policing and justice in Ireland have failed. The two constitutional nationalist parties in the Stormont Coalition must publicly acknowledge the abject failure of their policing projects and withdraw their support from the PSNI and the British courts.
They need to remove all of their party members and supporters from the Six County Policing Board and from the Policing and Community Safety Partnerships.
By retaining their positions on such bodies, Sinn Féin and the SDLP are condoning, supporting and legitimising the continuation of political policing and political injustice in occupied Ireland. Selective criticism of some elements of political policing by the PSNI is simply not good enough.”