Europe

Documentary implicates UK gov’t in torture

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The torture of Northern Irish nationalists at the height of the conflicts known as the Troubles in the 1970s was sanctioned by the British government, a new documentary has uncovered.

The Troubles refers to the violent thirty-year ethno-nationalist conflict that began in Northern Ireland with a civil rights march in Londonderry on October 5, 1968, and ended with the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998. The constitutional status of Northern Ireland is said to have been at the heart of the conflict, which spilled over into England, the Republic of Ireland and even into other parts of Europe.

A documentary, which was broadcasted on Irish RTÉ television on Wednesday, revealed a memo at the British National Archives in Kew, showing that the British administration approved the torture of prisoners in the North of Ireland in 1971.

It also showed that London covered up the mistreatment of detainees in a bid to avoid being branded as one of the states involved in the illegal practice.

In 1971, Ireland took the case to the European Court on Human Rights, alleging that Britain had breached the Convention on Human Rights. It said hundreds of Catholic nationalists were taken to detention camps at army bases. Twelve men, who became known as the Hooded Men, were subjected to several techniques of “deep interrogation,” including hooding, sleep deprivation, and subjection to noise.

Britain’s then Prime Minister Edward Heath banned the techniques in March 1972 amid public uproar, with civil rights’ leaders calling for an immediate response to the allegations.

Patrick Corrigan, Northern Ireland Programme director of Amnesty International, said, the “revelations underscore the need for a comprehensive means of dealing with our troubled past, and the need for all parties to come clean about their role in human rights violations and abuses.”

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