The Eames/Bradley chaired Consultative Group on the Past are about to hold another series of public meetings. But today they met with the First and deputy First Ministers, perhaps to ask how much of their past they would tell the truth about, and Robin Eames declared afterwards that, “It is very wrong to suggest that anything that has been mentioned has been decided or will find favour” – so much for anonymous sources.. Meanwhile one set of victims’ groups held a press conference at Stormont to call for an “independent international truth commission”. Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams welcomed “this important contribution”, whereas previously, ahead of his march for half-truth, he would only commit the party to “look carefully at” such a proposal. Mark Devenport discusses the ‘immunity’ attached to the proposal here, and at the press conference one of the spokesmen for one of the groups elaborated on the difference between their proposal and the South African model. [RealPlayer file – approx 45 sec in]
“We are calling for a process which is tailor-made to our circumstance. We’re talking about largely private hearings. Talking about an organisation that can mediate that process of truth recovery from those who have it to those who need it and deserve it.”
Which, in my sceptical way, I interpret to mean ‘not for [general] public consumption..’
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