Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Recognising RacismAuthor(s): Sheila HamiltonSource: Fortnight, No. 309 (Sep., 1992), pp. 8-9Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25553583 .

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Is anybody listening?

AS a body appointed by the British

government, the Standing Advi

sory Commission on Human Rights has always had a question mark

over it. For many, this watchdog was a stuffed rottweiler, but in view

of the work of the commission in

the past few years, as illustrated by its 17th annual report*, this view is

no longer valid.

The test of an organisation such

as SACHR is the degree to which its thinking is informed by interna

tional human rights standards rather

than by domestic sensitivities, re

flected in the extent to which the

commission's recommendations

mirror those coming from the inter

national human rights organizations such as Helsinki Watch and Am

nesty International.

By these standards, the 17th an

nual report fares pretty well. Its

recommendations on inquests (fol

lowing a paper by Tom Hadden)

make reference to the 1991 Hel

sinki Watch report, and are clearly

designed to bring the law on the

subject into line with the United

Nations Principles on the Effective

Prevention and Investigation of

Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Sum

mary Executions. Security-force witnesses should be compellable and 'verdicts' (such as unlawful

killing) should be reintroduced.

A useful section on European and international interests criticises

the government for trying to limit

the applicability ofthe monitoring mechanisms of the Conference on

Security and Co-operation in Eu

rope ('the Helsinki process') within

the UK. It also calls for clarifica

tion of SACHR's powers to make

submissions to other human rights bodies such as the European Com

mission of Human Rights?a clear

signal that the leash must be fully removed.

A paper from Robbie McVeigh on racism and travelling people

highlights the UK's failure to meet its international obligations. In

SACHR's view, travellers, and

other ethnic minority groups, should be brought within the scope of race relations legislation appli cable to Northern Ireland.

On education, the commission

recommends substantial steps to

redress any imbalance in provision and performance in science, as be

tween Catholic and Protestant

schools and between boys and girls, and calls for greater monitoring by the Department of Education. Well

researched reports by the Cormack,

Gallagher and Osborne team illus

trate the extent of the problem. Other proposals include:

a specific statutory code of con

duct to govern the use of lethal

force, with a charge of manslaugh ter available in appropriate cases;

permission for lawyers to attend

interviews in Castlereagh holding centre;

determination of police complaints to be decided 'on the balance of

probabilities', thereby increasing RUC accountability; and

an independent review body to

advise the secretary of state on re

ferrals to the Court of Appeal.

Recently, the government re

jected calls from the Independent Commission for Police Complaints, in its triennial review, for a com

pletely independent tribunal to hear

police disciplinary charges. If it continues to ignore recommenda

tions from its own review bodies, it

may find itself sinking in increas

ingly hostile international waters.

The Seventeenth Report of the

Standing Advisory Commission on

Human Rights, available from HMSO. ?26.80.

Colm Campbell

Taking a

beating HELSINKI WATCH reported last year on Human Rights Abuses in

Northern Ireland {Fortnight 300),

recommending, among other

things, the recording on video of all

interrogations. This time around*

it has focused on the abuses of

children by both the police and

army and the paramilitaries. The report contains substantial

accounts of beatings, and of coer

cive interviewing of young people without the presence of a solicitor,

in Castlereagh holding centre. Al

though much of the evidence is

anecdotal and anonymous, it is sub

stantiated by the most respected

community and rights bodies in

Northern Ireland.

In April the US-based organisa tion was told by human rights law

yers in the north that complaints of

violence in interrogation centres

had stopped. It attributed this to the

international campaign around the

case of Damien Austin?Mr Aus

tin (17) was allegedly beaten,

choked, humiliated and burnt in

Castlereagh?but it remained fear

ful that beatings could resume if

the legal safeguards it recom

mended weren't adopted. Helsinki Watch says the most

common complaint it received was

of abuse of young people by sol

diers and policemen on the street. It

recounts instances of police pros

ecuting young people who have

complained, so that the charge can

be traded off against the complaint. But Helsinki Watch says that

the police should be more, rather

than less, active in troubled areas,

where it claims they have abdi

cated their role to paramilitaries. The compilers of the report heard

from a Northern Ireland Office

source that the resources of the

Royal Ulster Constabulary would

have to be tripled to enable "nor

mal policing" to be carried out.

One of the pitfalls facing any one researching paramilitary po

licing is the semi-plausible, rosy account of it that comes from Sinn

Fein, and the academic credibility it has been given by some seriously

negligent writers. Joe Austin's evi

dence to Helsinki Watch is simply a PR job for the republican move

ment. Both the IRA and the UDA, as far as one can calculate, now

expend more bullets in 'punish ment' shootings than they do against

their declared enemies.

This report isn't a rigorous test

ing of paramilitary claims, but it

should raise eyebrows abroad. At

home, it should open a door into

daily life in the ghetto for those who think kids started getting an

easier life when they stopped being kids themselves.

* Children in Northern Ireland: abuse

by security forces and paramilitaries, available from Helsinki Watch, 485

5th Avenue, New York

NY 10017-6104

Malachi O'Doherty

Harassment on the streets is a common complaint

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Recognising racism 'IMMIGRATION to Northern Ire

land from outside the British Isles

continues to be insignificant and

there has been no race relations

problem to date ... where no prob lem exists legislation is not re

quired." So the British government,

addressing the United Nations

Committee on the Elimination of

Racial Hatred, justified its refusal

to extend the 1976 Race Relations

Act to Northern Ireland. Ireland, north and south, is the only region of the European Community with

no anti-racism legislation. A Committee on the Adminis

tration of Justice report*, arising from a CAJ conference on racism,

argues that there are racial minori

ties in Northern Ireland?both in

digenous (travellers) and of

immigrant descent?and that they do suffer from racism, whether from

institutions or individuals. And even

if ethnic minorities in Northern Ire

land are small?there are no accu

rate figures because the census,

unlike that in Britain, has no ques tions on ethnicity?that is no rea

son why they should be denied the

protection of the law, it says. Niall Crowley of the Dublin

Travellers' Education and Devel

opment Group believes that the

absence of racial minorities does

not mean the absence of racism.

"Saying that it is the presence of

black people that causes racism is a

racist position.," he said.

Travellers often face the addi

tional problem of not being seen as

an ethnic minority with traditions

of their own. The report contains

personal accounts of racism in

Northern Ireland from representa tives of both the travelling and the

Chinese communities.

It also exposes the government's violation ofthe International Con

vention on the Elimination of All

Forms of Racial Discrimination, to

which the UK is a signatory. And it

outlines the weakness ofthe British

Race Relations Act, compared to

8 SEPTEMBER FORTNIGHT

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the (religion-orientated) Fair

Employment Act: maximum com

pensation is ?9,000 in racial dis

crimination cases, for instance,

compared to ?30,000 for success

ful claimants of religious discrimi

nation in Northern Ireland.

The conference recommended

(more adequate) anti-race discrimi

nation legislation for Northern Ire

land, with a monitoring agency, modelled on the Comission for

Racial Equality. And it concluded

that all relevant legislation would

have to include travellers expressly, with their special circumstances

taken into account:

'designation', by which quotas are placed on travellers in each

council area, should be scrapped; there should be proper plannning

for travellers' acccommodation, with site provision obligatory;

existing incitement to racial ha

tred legislation?the Public Order

Orderof 1987?should be amended

to include travellers;

there should be a question on

ethnicity on the census form;

discriminatory 'signing on' pro cedures for unemployed travellers

should be abolished;

the Northern Ireland Housing Executive should take responsibil

ity for travellers' accommodation, so that it is no longer a political football for local authorities;

official literature should be avail

able in minority languages; and

public bodies should adopt anti

racist policies and train their staff

accordingly. Race relations legislation for

Northern Ireland may well be in the

pipeline (Fortnight 301). The risk is that it will simply be a copy of the

Race Relations Act, and without an

independent monitoring body.

Racism in Northern Ireland: the need for legislation to combat racial discrimination in Northern Ireland, available from the Committee on the

Administration of Justice. 45/47

Donegall St, Belfast BT1 2FG (?31 1R?3.50)

Sheila Hamilton

APOLOGY The 'Whose City?' supplement enclosed with this issue of

Fortnight should have contained a

piece by Frank Gaffikin, respond

ing to the speech by the minister, Robert Atkins. Due to a breakdown of communication on my part, however, it will now appear instead in the next issue ofthe magazine

proper. My apologies to Frank?ed.

CORRECTION On the contents page of Fortnight 308, the recent book on the Maas tricht treaty published by the Institute of European Affairs was mistitled. Its correct title is Maastricht and Ire land: what the treaty means.

Security apparatus talks obstacle

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| Last month's ANC 'mass action' strengthened Nelson Mandela's hand

AT long last the international com

munity has woken up to the threat

posed by political violence?in

which more than 7,000 have died

since Nelson Mandela's release in

February 1990?to the transition

in South Africa. The massacre at

Boipatong in June was the turning

point. There was no dispute that most

of the killings were carried out by Zulu hostel-dwellers and support ers of Inkatha. Nevertheless, gov ernment ministers loudly blamed

the African National Congress' re

sort to mass action for creating the

climate for violence.

At the same time, there were

eyewitness accounts of white in

volvement in the Boipatong at

tack, and claims that security-force vehicles had transported the hos

tel-dwellers to the scene of the

massacre. These left most blacks

in no doubt that the killings were

intended to deter support for the

campaign of mass action which

the ANC had launched after the

breakdown of negotiations on the

election of a constituent assembly. Parts of the press suggested a

more banal explanation?that the

massacre's origins lay in the

desire of the hostel-dwellers for

personal revenge for previous in

dividual killings by the squatters. But opinion on responsibility for

the massacre tended to polarise

along racial lines?making the re

sumption of negotiations between

the president, F W de Klerk, and

Mr Mandela impossible. The threat of a breakdown of

that relationship, however?cru

cial as it is to the transition?ulti

mately persuaded the United

Nations Security Council to send

in UN monitors, to oversee the

efforts being made by the parties themselves to curb the violence.

Whether 30 or so international

monitors will really have much

impact is questionable, but their

presence opens the way to further

international involvement in the

transition if necessary?though within limits, given all the UN's

other commitments.

Politically, the situation eased

somewhat last month, making pos sible the resumption of 'talks about

talks', and there is an expectation of substantive negotiations soon.

This is largely due to the success of

the ANC's two-day general strike

and of its mass demonstrations,

including a march on Pretoria.

The ANC's capacity to mobi

lise the urban African population so effectively, in the face of con

certed opposition by the govern ment, has greatly strengthened its

bargaining position. This has been

reflected in a softening of the gov ernment's anti-ANC rhetoric. But

too much should not be taken for

granted in a year that has seen so

many ups and downs in the nego

tiating process?particularly as

violence continues to erode trust

between blacks and whites.

Before the whites-only refer

endum in March, Mr de Klerk's

failure to reform the security forces

could be attributed to political weakness. Following his triumph

in the referendum, it has become

harder and harder to explain why he has done so little to deal with 'third force' elements in the secu

rity apparatus, even when their ac

tions have severely embarrassed

the government. An extraordinary example was

the plot, revealed by the Independ ent, to murder a South African

police defector in London in April. This apparently involved three

members of a loyalist paramilitary

group and two South African

agents?including, amazingly, the

personal assistant of the chief of

military intelligence. There could hardly be clearer

evidence that parts of the South

African security apparatus are out

of control. Until this problem is

dealt with and the mystery of Mr

de Klerk's inaction is solved, anxi

ety about the possibility of a de

scent into anarchy in South Africa

remains justified.

Adrian Guelfre

FORTNIGHT SEPTEMBER 9

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