hello, i'm sean murray, and this is the conversation where we take an alternative. look at political events and current affairs through anaries. in this show we hope to pick, probe, investigate and uncover the stories that you want to hear. we go, where mainstream won't go. this week we look at the of recent legacy bill that was passed at of westminster. how does this ni affect victims and what can be done to repeal it? my next guest is a columnist and regular political commentator on broadcast television. she is also deputy director of relatives for justice and national victim support ngo which

provides advocacy and therapy support for the bereeved and injured of the conflict. but before we speak to our next guest, let's get a quick overview on this week's topic.

as always we are joined by our resident co-presenter michelle gildernew. michelle is the current np for fermana south toron. she has served in the northern airland assembly as a former minister for agriculture and rural development and chairperson of the health committee amongst other things. michelle has been a shinfian activist since her teams and has been elected almost continuously since 1998. and today's guest is andre murphy. andre is human rights advocate, working on behalf of victims affected by political violence during the recent conflict. andre murphy, welcome to the show.

thank you sean, lovely to be here, great to see you, so andre, tell me a bit about your child, grown up, well, i was born in dublin, um, and the 1970s, grew up in um, what was, i suppose a really emerging ireland at that stage, you know, we it was very poor, there was a massive recession, especially during the 1980s, um, and we were just, you know, family affected by all of that economic environment, when i was 15, we um moved to tallo, which was at that stage a big sprawling housing estate where there was no footpaths, you had to go across fields to be able to get to a bus maybe every hour that ran, and i can remember it just being a of little bit grinding, you know that everything seemed in black and white in dublin, where everywhere else looked like it was in color, but i loved it and we always interested in human rights, so where did that come from? i think... um, growing up in dublin, and but

what i've just described where you'd be in a place where nobody had any money, and particularly women, and women at that stage had no effective rights in, you know, i can remember when the marriage bar went in the civil service, um, you know, my mother, because my parents split up, um, received a benefit called the deserted wives allowance, if you were a child, if you were unmarried at that stage. you got uh and you had children, you were you had a uh unmarried mother's allowence and whatever, that was the type of society we lived in, yet women ran everything while men were unemployed or maybe had to go away, women kept doubling running and the communities that we were in, and i can remember then that sense of you know we here have no money, we've no access effective education, we've not we've got women who are going through all of this and where's the

rights, where are we as equal citizens? there is no sense of equal citizenship, and you became the director of relative justice, what what kind of can you just for the audience sake tell us what kind of? services that victims can kind of avail of? yes, so raldovs for justice comes from families coming together to say us too, so people who were affected by state violence in particular their experience of violence and of violent bereevement was completely dismissed um where they weren't seen as equal victims and so all of our services whether it's um advocacy where they're pursuing legal justice through different avenues whether it's recording their own story, trying to break imposed date narratives or censored narratives, or whether it's um even seeking um support with the traumatic effects of that experience was very very difficult for many families, how do you

go if you've been affected by a state violation to an arm of the state and talk about your life falling apart, you're afraid that the state is also going to perhaps take your children, braid that you're going to be sectioned and taken away from your family, so for us our support came very, very organically where we were stepping into the places where the state had failed, families, how can you support someone going to inquest, for example, if they don't have money to be able to pay the rent or to to buy food, how can you engage in any sort of education if you can't even walk through the door at night because you're so afraid because your father was killed at night and you've never been able to cross the door since. those are the type of organic connected support services we're able to provide now. so andre, you've been nurturing victims for decades now, how do the people that you work with fail about

the the latest proposals that have been forced through the british government around legacy? michelle, i've been doing this for over 20 years with families who have seen the very worst of days. um, and the legacy bill is having an impact that i have never seen before, so for them, it is the british government saying their loved ones didn't matter, it's saying that what they did is completely okay, and it's saying they as living relatives and their experiences don't matter, it's saying that they are second class citizens, that they are not beneficiaries of our peace process in any way, shape or form, that they'... are inconvenient that they are to be dismissed, so for this is intergenerational, so we can think of people who when their brother or sister were killed when they were children, they will talk about on that day we lost our parents as well because the trauma was so

horrendous and the silence descended on their families, so for them to be able to then 10, 20 years later in the context of a peace process pursue justice. record narratives, say let's have um due process for for my brother or my sister, the and their parents pass away and pass a mantle to them. for this to happen now with this legacy legislation is telling that family that they are not only letting down their brother and sister, they're also letting down their parents and the devastation, i'm sorry, back out of nowhere, i'm really sorry. "the devastation for that family is not about a piece of law, it's not about whether they can get into a court, it is about the erasing of the memory their child, of their brother, sister, their spouse, their parents, that's what this is

doing, and what that does to family and its impact, can only be seen through our phones the day after, where people are expressing. suicidal thoughts, they're not just saying, "i am traumatized, i'm not coping, they're saying, i want to take my own life, because the life, my life is no longer worth living, not only was the life of my loved one taken away, but my life is no longer worth living. chris heaton harris was quaffing champagne the night this was past, because they think they've done a good thing, because they don't have to look in the eyes of these mothers who do they are going to die, who are going to die before their children's justice is delivered, the truth about their child, who was not a gun man or a gun woman, who was not someone that the british army could just take away and snuff out their life and then cover up the files and hide them away for until

2064 or 2070, those women know they're going to die without having any of truth and without any justice, christon harris doesn't have to look at any of their eyes and it doesn't matter if it was the british army or the rc or the ira or loyalist that took those lives, those loved ones mattered, and those families. matter and what this is doing is inhumane in in an extraordinary way that no one in a developed country in 2023 should even be cognicent of and andre so so what can we do i mean what can the general public do or what can we do to repeal this or or for to have this reversed? it occurs to me that there are many people who don't even know it's happened. i think maybe people in the north and these six countries know, people in the south don't know, people in mainland britain certainly don't know, unless their

loved one happen to be in in some way caught up in the conflict, maybe as a british soldier who died here, or if they were caught in bombing committed by the ira in in britain, that's the only way that they would know, because there has been no, there has been no conversation about this, it hasn't impacted, you can tell even that the politicians who pas ask this haven't thought twice about it, because they don't matter, irish lives haven't mattered, for people to get involved, they need to start saying these people matter, they need to they need to find out the names of those who've killed, so the julie livingstones, the carolin kelly's, they need to find out those names and then they need to go to the mps, they need to sit in front of them and say this is wrong, they need to say to the irish government who are currently in fairness saying this was a unilateral a outside the terms of the good friday agreement in a breach of the peace process. the irish government needs to know

that they have the back of people that people have their backs when they say we could take this to the european um court of human rights as an interstate case. they need to go and do that and they know they need to go and do it, but they need to know that they have the support of people when they go and do it because it's a very very significant step to take. people in america need to really tell the british government this is going to... have implications, we said during brexit that that would have it financial implications when the british government acted unilaterally because it threatened the good friday agreement, why isn't that same pressure coming on the british government now from america? why why isn't the same pressure coming on from citizens here? we need we need to stand up for not only the dead but also for the families who are living so that they don't feel that they need to that their lives are not worth worth living. we facilitated. in westminster with some of the victims families and um there to be honest there

wasn't a lot of interest from mps in britain um what do you think is next for the victims in in terms of the next practical steps practically we need to we need to put the pressure on the irish government we need to we need to say to them about an interstate case that goes to the european court there are some families who are working with their lawyers in effectively where the law firms where there are going to be challenges that go through the domestic courts, this won't go away, you know, it will just mean that the parents will all be dead, most of the spouses will be dead, it will be the children and grandchildren of those killed, and we are sentencing our two countries to perpetual trauma if we don't resolve this. just moving on slightly uh andre, you spoke uh recently about uh censorship and the... media now we're seeing a change in landscape obviously with proliferation of digital and social media, but just for the audience say just to

give them an awareness of high draconian legislation was here for marginal ays voices and i think on sax and 31 in particular, can you give the audience a sense of what that what that was like? it was so much more than just a piece of legislation, it was a way of thinking. section 31 had always been part of the broadcasting act in the south, but in the early 1970s there was a decision by the government along with new rta to decide how they would report the north, who they would ex, whose voices they would exclude. we only ever talked about ireland as the 26 countries, so the north was excluded. the conflict that was raiding, the human rights violations that were happening were completely under reported, to the point that you know the dublin and mon went off when i was baby, right? i grew up not knowing that

the bombs happened, let alone many people blaming the ira for those bombs having gone off, even though it was the largest single atrocity in the entire of our conflict, and that was the impact of section 31, it said that the north was other, the voices of those being harmed where other, dangerous, something you didn't want to be engaged. and it meant then that peace was much harder to achieve, it meant that you, i think we're still recovering from the imposition of a form of partition where people. are you know the same of same citizens, same background, same history, an example might be something like the rte program, the late late show, seen on the entirety of this island a friday night, the biggest show on the island on both sides of the border, has a competition and it excludes the the six countries, puts map up,

a physical map where it's like the sea is there instead of the northern six countries, has say to all of the citizens who are here, it's saying there other, but it also says to the citizens in the 26th countries, they are other, it was so effective in doing that, but i think most agregously what it did was, it said to a people who were under militarization, who were experiencing daily violations that their voices could be silenced, it wasn't just members of the ira, it wasn't just members of shin fene who were censored, it was also the entire community from which they came, and that was totally deliberate, it was total political onslot against a community and who were engaged in resisting military occupation, resisting the orange state, resisting discrimination and basic human rights abuses, and you know it went way beyond law, it was much more of

mindset, when it was introduced in the british broadcasting act too, it compounded the idea that people who were representative of and representing those who had been marginalized and discriminated against could be silenced, so that meant that those violations were silenced too, that they were considered dangerous and somehow illegitimate, it illegitimized an entire community, and then when that community would kept on saying, but we want the conditions for peace, we want to build the conditions where there are universal human rights, not partial, not something that was something for one community and not another. then that in some way could be silenced as well, and i think it made the peace process far harder to achieve, sustain and flourish, and then so there's a very real and lasting legacy of the legislation, do you think is it still difficult? um, is the landscape still difficult for those marginalized to voice their opinions? do you think that, even

though the act itself is gone, the impact is still felt? i think you absolutely see it, you know, i think i think that during the conflict there was an idea that state collusion with loyalist paramilitaries for instance was republican propaganda. since those days we've had repeated state, state reports, evidencing that collusion, but even still today you will have people who can say that there there doesn't need to be accountability for those crimes, there doesn't need to be any sense of the british government. doing anything more than saying, we apologize, and then moving on, and so they can still form the narrative that this was two communities in fighting with each other, the british government was in some ways some neutral agent, you know, this legislation is a really good example of that where they pretend they are neutral and they are only trying to bring reconciliation between these

warring communities, when in fact there's something very very different at work, vested interests in saying what this conflict looked like and what their involvement in this conflicts looked like perpetuate those myths all the time, so it is twice as hard, if not 10 times as hard for victim of state violence or of collusion to be heard as legitimate voice compared to someone who's perhaps affected by republican actions, and that is really regrettable, because of course we don't want to create a disparity between victims in any way shape or form, but my goodness we see words like innocent coming in or we see all kinds of different variations of how we will treat victims and survivors or how we will treat narratives of the conflict in any way shape or form and that that hampers our recovery. so so and we we all know what the british have been trying to do with this bill uh we've suffered it within our own communities uh british state of

pression for many many years we've we've understood the alfiscation we've understood them hating uh truth perfect. for for for many many years, this leg this uh legacy bill only cover fastens what we already know, but thinking uh from uh more international sense of things and this could be another view, how do you see that the this corner legacy bill and an intern international dynamic uh, for example the british abroad and how that effects, maybe atrocities being committed in the future abroad, absolutely, so um, i think a big turning point for the debate. was when article 2 was applied to iraq where there were british there were victims of british state violence in iraq in holding centers essentially and so the article. article 3 and article two of the echr was applied and so all of sudden you had vested interests in britain then saying oh we we thought that we

could just go to all of these foreign places and we thought that we could do whatever we wanted and never be held accountable and then the accountability thing starts to happen where it isn't just that people release reports or concerns they actually start to be held to account for their actions quite like here and so then they change... what they can do, so first of all they thought they could get away with foreign theaters, they thought that the if they committed the violations in afghanistan or iraq, they would just create an environment of amnesty for those actions, but then they realized that they would have to do it here as well, because families were securing tiny, tiny measures of accountability for british state actions on this island, so they've created amnesty for all of it, and that has got to be of concern to the international. community, the idea that sovereign nation, who is a founding signatory to the european convention, to the international conventions on human rights, that they would be able to circumvent all of

their human rights obligations, go to any country, carry out the most agregous of violations and then count themselves completely unaccounttable, surely that has to worry the entire international community, but unfortunately we haven't heard enough condemnation, and and i think that's where we need to, that's the next step, i think you're right, i think that you can see the human rights community, so the united nations have said this is terrible, this um european commissioner for human rights has voiced concerns, but the nation states haven't, we haven't seen that engagement from the states and that's the difference to brexit, where there was a rogue state attitude around leaving the eu and their their way of leaving the eu, the states got involved because they could see that it was in there. just to do it on this, families have been completely abandoned and human rights have been completely abandoned by the nation states and that's who we need to, you know, it would

make a quantifiable difference if we saw the kinds of commentary that we had seen from the likes of luxembourg or from the swedish nation or whatever around brexit, we started seeing that around legacy, i think it could make a big difference, well we're all very proud of your work, the work that you and mark relations. justice and want to thank you for coming in today, it's always good to see you. thanks so much for having me, thanks. this week we take a look at the use of censorship during the recent conflict. both section 31, enacted in the irish republic as well as the british broadcasting bond were deployed to margilize growing support for shinfian. with the party as popular as ever with voters as they've ever been, was censorship away's desation and hands said. censorship has been witly deployed as a tool to silence radical or... alternative voices during the recent conflict. in 1971, fanified minister for justice jerry collin invoked section 31 of the republic of ireland's broadcasting bond, forbidding broadcasters to

interview or report statements by anyone speaking on behalf of number of organizations, the most prominent of which was shin fein. the labour party minister connor cruz further strengthened the ban in 1977, an effort to help the increasingly sophisticated media communication skills of the party. similar bond was replicated by britain in october 1988. the restrictions announced by the home secretary douglas herd covered 11 organizations based in the north of ireland. broadcasters quickly found ways around the bond chiefly by using actors to dub the voices of band speakers with the renowned actor stephen ray becoming the voice of jerry adams. the restrictions caused difficulties for british and irish journalists who spoke out against censorship imposed by various other countries such as iraq and india. after the legislation around section 31 laps in january 1994 in the republic of ireland, the british prime minister john major lifted the broadcast bon

on the 16th of september 1994, a fort night after the first provisional irish republican army cere declared on the 31st of august 1994. for the first time in many years a level political playing field so marginal and alternative voices emerged from the cold and does it for another week, we love for you to join the conversation by sharing the link to today's program to help us grow our audience across all our social media platforms. i'd like to thank our special guest andre and our resident co-host michelle gildernie. in the meantime, the conversation will be back next week with more investigations and analysis. i'm sean murray, bye for now.

"the us pushed one-sided mark of a ceasefire announced in northern gaza comes as a direct result of the failure of the israeli occupation army to achieve any significant battlefield accomplishments that could be used in negotiations. this suggests that the israeli regime may soon be forced to reconsider its objectives to align with the outcome of the battles on the ground where they seem to send in their soldiers and they never return. nevertheless. netanyahu and his cabinet are still unwilling to agree to a ceasefire before achieving success that would alleviate the accountability they expect to face at the end of the war in the aftermath the heroicsa flot operation and the failure the grand operation in gaza. displacement or death this week on the mediest stream.

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that lines palestinian resistance group say the us is a partner and the crime israel is committing at chifa hospital and is fully responsible for its consequences. hamas rejects the us's claim about. using gas as hospitals as military bases saying it's a green light to more israeli attacks on medical facilities and the eminy forces fire barrage of ballistic missiles at israeli target saying their operations will continue until the regime's aggression against skaz stops.