Hurt from Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday runs deep

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland

A largely peaceful Northern Ireland goes to the polls on Thursday but despite years of reconciliation following more than three decades of conflict known as “The Troubles”, divisions about the past remain.

Anadolu Agency travelled to the northwestern city of Londonderry -- known as Derry by its majority Irish nationalist population -- to gauge feelings ahead of the election to Northern Ireland's regional assembly in Belfast.

Derry was the scene of an infamous massacre in January 1972 when members of Britain’s elite Parachute Regiment shot 27 unarmed people in a civil rights protest. Fourteen of the victims later died.

The killings hastened Northern Ireland’s descent into conflict between the British government and pro-British paramilitaries on one side and Irish republicans and nationalists on the other.

Anger over Bloody Sunday went worldwide as it was recorded by TV crews and it generated a wave of new recruits for a resurgent Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The U.K. government initially claimed the soldiers were responding to gunfire from nearby buildings -- a finding that was supported by an early investigation called the Widgery Report.

However, after years of pressure from the victims’ families, the 12-year Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry, later found that the victims had not posed a threat to the soldiers.

In June 2010, then Prime Minister David Cameron issued an official apology for the killings on behalf of his government, confirming that those shot dead were innocent victims.

Despite the apology, increasing numbers of veterans of the British security forces have emerged in recent years to protest.

They complain that investigations against soldiers and police officers amount to a witch hunt while many former paramilitaries were released from prison under the 1998 Good Friday peace deal.

Last month, a group calling itself Veterans for Justice U.K. had planned to hold a rally in Derry in support of former soldiers and policemen, leading to outrage from relatives of those killed on Bloody Sunday.

‘Costs too much to hide a lie’

Julieann Campbell -- niece of Jackie Duddy, a 17-year old victim -- told Anadolu Agency that the decision to march in Derry on March 4 was “a pure provocation”.

Campbell, the former chairwoman of the Bloody Sunday Trust, said the veterans “knew exactly what they were doing” in choosing Derry as a location.

She said: “They can march in a lot of places but they can’t march in Derry. There was outrage and hurt. There was almost disbelief that they would have the balls to come here and do that.

“It is not just Bloody Sunday, there are so many families involved in state killings here. It is such a raw wound that will never heal… after one day of bombarding the press, they cancelled.”

Campbell -- an award-winning writer and played Geraldine Richmond in Jimmy McGovern's 2002 drama-documentary Sunday about the 1972 killings -- said the “people of Derry now enjoy peace”, adding that the younger generation is untroubled by the past.

However, despite the veterans’ march being moved to nearby Coleraine town, many Bloody Sunday relatives remain upset.

“It is very provocative but my own opinion is that we should have totally ignored them,” Jean Hegarty, the sister of 17-year-old Kevin McElhinney, who was shot from behind on Bloody Sunday, said. “I firmly believe that it was a set up.

“It is a good thing it has been cancelled, because unfortunately people would have reacted.”

Hegarty was living in Canada when her younger brother was killed and still remembers the day. “I was skating that afternoon and when I came home I saw the news,” she told Anadolu Agency.

“But the news said they killed gunmen and bombers… I was not really concerned because my brother was not a gunman or a bomber.” Jean learned about his fate the next morning when her aunt called to break the news.

Hegarty thinks if a proper inquiry had been launched straight away and reported the truth, many more deaths in Northern Ireland could have been prevented.

‘Witch hunt’

“People have accepted the historic apology by then-Prime Minister David Cameron,” she said. “For a few families, that was all they wanted to hear. For my own family, it was a very welcome announcement.

“The government does not need to find out more about the day, because it knows everything about the day. Somebody told me that it costs too much to tell the truth but I think it costs too much to hide a lie.”

In January, U.K. Premier Theresa May told parliament her government was considering moves to increase investigations into paramilitary-linked killings in Northern Ireland.

Her government had come under pressure from lawmakers and the British media unhappy at soldiers and police being probed over Troubles-related incidents.

“There are a number of investigations by the PSNI [the Police Service of Northern Ireland] into former soldiers and their activities in Northern Ireland,” May told parliament.

“I think it’s absolutely right that we recognize that the majority of people who lost their lives did so as a result of terrorist activity and it is important that that terrorist activity is looked into.”

Back in Derry, there are still fears that some groups opposed to the region’s fragile peace process could latch on to any “provocations”.

Campbell, now the director of the Museum of Free Derry, thinks a march, if held in the city, could have resulted in violence.

“There would be clashes,” she said. “Organized groups -- dissident republicans who still believe in the armed struggle -- would have encouraged young people to get involved.”

Such IRA splinter groups remain active in Derry. Last week a bomb was found underneath a car belonging to a police officer in the city’s Culmore area.

However, for now most are content to look to the future. “Derry is very progressive in terms of divisions, there is no difference between Catholics and Protestants anymore,” Campbell said.

Although the region’s most recent election campaign to fill the local devolved parliament has been hard-fought it takes place in a very different atmosphere to previous decades.

The peace deal -- dubbed the Good Friday agreement -- largely saw the end of Troubles-era violence in which more than 3,500 people lost their lives.