Justice Delayed, Justice Denied

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"Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto", 1994 World Cup, 2004 World Series, bombings, Boston Red Sox, Giants Stadium, Good Friday Agreement, Ireland, Irish DIASPORA, John Hewitt, New Jersey, North Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland, Omagh, REAL IRA

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“It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

After almost 25 years, the British government has announced it will hold an independent statutory inquiry into the 1998 Omagh bombing that claimed 29 lives and injured hundreds in the County Tyrone market town on 15 August 1998.

For the families affected, this is a momentous decision that comes two years after a High Court judge ruled there were “plausible arguments” that there existed a “real prospect” of preventing the atrocity. As they brace themselves for next steps and at least two more years during which they will be re-traumatized by festering questions about the bombing, I am drawn back to the summer of 1998. A brand new mother, I had taken my baby daughter back home to Northern Ireland, my lovely, tragic Northern Ireland. Between my father, my brother, and a handful of relatives who could keep a secret – and this is no small feat in rural County Derry – we had planned a “This is Your Life” style surprise to celebrate my mother’s sixtieth birthday. It was delicious. We had all swallowed the same secret, and my all-knowing mother was completely in the dark.

The Troubles had tainted previous visits home, but this time was different. We believed it was over, that there would be no bombings, no shootings, no army checkpoints. There was something symbolic, magical even, in returning home with a baby in my arms to a brand new optimism fueled by The Good Friday Agreement signed only four months before.

It had been different four years before. That trip had coincided with Ireland’s qualifying for the World Cup. The country was ecstatic – factories, offices, shops, even banks, all closing early so everyone could make it home, or to the pub, in time for kick-off at the Ireland v Italy match being televised live from Giants Stadium in New Jersey. My brother and I had considered going to the pub to watch the first-round match, but daddy convinced us to stay home, have a few tins of Harp, maybe a half ‘un of Whiskey and watch from the comfort of the living room. So we stayed at home and watched on telly – in joyous disbelief – as Ireland went up 1-0 against Italy at Giants Stadium. When the lads in green scored a goal, we roared with pride even as we were afraid to look, not unlike Boston Red Sox fans prior to the 2004 World Series.

The second half of the match was well underway when two men, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, stormed into a tiny packed pub, The Heights Bar, in the village of Loughinisland, County Down. With an AK47 and a Czech made rifle, they shot madly and indiscriminately at the sixteen men gathered around the bar watching Ireland beat Italy. They killed six of them. According to witnesses, the two gunmen laughed as they made their getaway. The first killed, Barney Green, was in his eighties, someone’s grandfather, and as I recall from the stories that later poured from that heartbroken village, he had put on his best suit to mark Ireland’s making it to the World Cup.

It chills me still to think of Barney Green struck down with such savagery in the very moment as that jubilant Irish squad burst out of an American football stadium, awash in green, buoyed by the chanting of 60,000 supporters, anticipating champagne and a night of revelry, only to be silenced and sickened by the hideous dispatch from a country pub back home. Surely that would be the last time we would hear of such horror. No. It would not. Omagh was just up the road.

For many Northern Ireland families, mine included, the youngest generation had known only a country in conflict. But in 1998, my daughter would witness a new country, a country at peace. The people – including my parents who had voted for the first time in their lives – wanted it, and said ‘yes’ to the question “Do you support the Agreement reached at the multi-party talks on Northern Ireland and set out in Command Paper 3883?” It was a resounding yes from the people, in anticipation of the brand new day Northern Ireland deserved.

When my mother’s 60th birthday arrived that year, I telephoned in the morning with love and good wishes and a promise that I would arrange a trip home soon. Yes, she had received the flowers I’d sent, and she was looking forward to going out for dinner with daddy that evening. On their way to a favorite restaurant, he took a detour for a quick visit with my Aunt Sadie, where delighted shrieks of “Surprise!”exploded from the well-hidden gathering of family and friends whose cars were parked on another lane, far out of sight. One of my cousins assumed the role of This is Your Life host, Eamonn Andrews, complete with the big red book and related the story of my mother’s life to all assembled. When she reached the part about my mother becoming a grandmother for the first time just eight months earlier, she suggested calling me so I could at least be part of the celebration by phone. Naturally, I was unavailable, given that two days earlier, I had flown in to Belfast with Sophie, and had been holed up at my Aunt Sadie’s house enjoying secret visits with my dad and my brother, the three of us delighting in the fact that my mother was oblivious to all the subterfuge.

Naturally, ma was disappointed when the phone went to voicemail, but she was quickly distracted by the doorbell ringing. Thinking it was yet another cousin or a friend with a birthday present, she opened the door, where, looking up at her from a nest of pink blankets, was her beautiful baby granddaughter. A perfectly executed surprise, planned down to the very last minute, it was one my mother would cherish always, a jewel in a box.

At about the same time, another plan was coming to fruition, a diabolical scheme, that would just a week later, rip asunder the tiny market town of Omagh in the neighboring county of Tyrone, devastating families from as near as Donegal and as far away as Madrid, Spain, and reminding us all that Northern Ireland’s Troubles were far from over.

I don’t know all the details. I’m afraid of them.

It frightens me to consider the machinations of minds that could craft a plan to load a nondescript red car, plate number MDZ 5211, with 500 pounds of explosives, park it in the middle of a busy shopping area, and place two phone calls to the local television station, one to the Coleraine Samaritans, with a warning 40 minutes before the bomb inside it exploded. There was confusion as the police evacuated the shoppers – mostly mothers and children on back-to-school shopping sprees. Thinking they were moving them away from the Court House to safety, the police moved people to the bottom of Market Street, where the bomb was about to be detonated.

I wonder if they felt that familiar relief, the kind you know from past experiences of bomb-scares and hoaxes, if they felt they were out of harm’s way and just in time, believing that it would all be alright. Maybe they told themselves it was just a bomb scare, like old times, and not to be taken very seriously, but they would of course cooperate with authorities so they could get back to their Saturday afternoon shopping, seeking out bargains for backpacks and books, new uniforms and lunch-boxes, full of the promise that accompanies the start of a new school year.

Spaniard Gonzalo Cavedo and child posing by the car carrying the bomb that killed 29 people, many of whom are in the picture, including the photographer. Mr. Cavedo and the child survived. (Source: Belfast Telegraph)

Mere seconds after this photo was taken with a camera later retrieved from the rubble, the 500 pound bomb inside the red car exploded, blowing the vehicle to bits. Like a butcher’s knife, the blast cut through the row of little shops. I recall the harrowing accounts of witnesses, unable to unsee blood flowing in the gutters and pieces of people in the street, unable to put words to the savagery, the carnage before them. Little Omagh was a killing field.

We weren’t listening to the radio that afternoon, so we didn’t hear the news. My brother, his girlfriend, and my baby girl were driving around the North Antrim coast, listening to CDs of Neil Young and Paul Brady, occasionally breaking into song as we took in the wild scenery around us. We stopped occasionally so Sophie could see up close the horses and cows peering at us over gates on country roads. It was a beautiful, windy Irish day, and we were happy.

We had no reason to believe anything was wrong, until, heading home at dusk, we were stopped at a police checkpoint and told to take a detour. Instantly we knew. It had happened again. My parents were at home, stunned by the same old story on the news and they were worried sick. They had no idea where we were and paced the floor until their driveway was lit up again with the headlights of my brother’s car.

There was no peace.

Another atrocity. Another day on the calendar for the people of Northern Ireland that would leave us wondering how we would ever recover from the maddening, wrenching anguish that visited us once again. My country is so tiny – I’ve been told it fits into one third of the state of Kansas – that I imagine everyone knew someone who knew someone maimed or killed in the largest mass murder in its history. A relative of an Antrim barman had been killed in the Omagh bombing, and I remember wondering what I could possibly say to him by way of condolence, knowing there are no adequate words.

Like so many others, I had dared to believe that peace had come to the country I had left but still loved. I should have remembered what I know can never be forgotten from The Isle of Innisfree – that “peace comes dropping slow.”

Nothing had changed, and everything changed at 3:10PM in Omagh when the bomb exploded, injuring over 300 and killing 29 people and unborn twins. Until this past week, there has been – and little reason to believe that there would be – justice. No one has been convicted.

The Omagh list of dead “reads like a microcosm of Troubles deaths, and left no section of Irish life untouched. The town they attacked is roughly 60:40 Catholic:Protestant, and the dead consisted of Protestants, Catholics, a Mormon and two Spanish visitors. They killed young, old and middle-aged, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and grannies. They killed republicans and unionists, including a prominent local member of the Ulster Unionist Party. They killed people from the backbone of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They killed unborn twins, bright students, cheery shop assistants and many young people. They killed three children from the Irish Republic who were up north on a day trip. Everyone they killed was a civilian. The toll of death was thus both extraordinarily high and extraordinarily comprehensive.”

May we never forget them or the thousands of families still seeking justice and information about what happened to their loved ones during The Troubles. May we stand with them and protect their path to the truth, to justice, and to peace. They need us more than ever – especially now – as the British government is also advancing its wretched “legacy” legislation that would grant immunity from prosecution to those who cooperate in investigations of unsolved killings from the three decades of the Troubles. “We can’t bring anybody back from the dead,” said Monica McWilliams told the New York Times this week “But it’s a very timely announcement, given that there’s so much angst surrounding the legacy legislation.” It is.

Bear in mind these dead.

“Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto” by John Hewitt

So I say only: Bear in mind

Those men and lads killed in the streets;

But do not differentiate between

Those deliberately gunned down

And those caught by unaddressed bullets:

Such distinctions are not relevant . . .

Bear in mind the skipping child hit

By the anonymous ricochet . . .

And the garrulous neighbours at the bar

When the bomb exploded near them;

The gesticulating deaf-mute stilled

by the soldier’s rifle in the town square

And the policeman dismembered by the booby trap

in the car . . .

Patriotism has to do with keeping

the country in good heart, the community

ordered by justice and mercy;

these will enlist loyalty and courage often,

and sacrifice, sometimes even martyrdom.

Bear these eventualities in mind also;

they will concern you forever:

but, at this moment, bear in mind these dead.