After the publication of the inquiry into Bloody Sunday last week, the Ballymurphy Massacre Campaign, local MPs, and the relatives of those killed, are asking once again for an international, independent inquiry into the killings carried out by the 1st battalion of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment (1 Para).
1 Para is the same Army unit investigated in Lord Saville’s Bloody Sunday Inquiry.
Previous requests for an investigation have been referred on by UK governments to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The PSNI, formally the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), was considered to be biased towards Protestant, unionist factions while those killed were from areas affiliated to Catholic, republican groups.
Bloody Sunday might not have happened if the Belfast shootings by British soldiers had been acknowledged with an independent report, say those asking for international involvement.
On the Families for Justice website, Briege Voyle, whose mother Joan Connolly was one of those shot dead, writes, “The chain of evidence indicates that some of the same Para’s were involved in both massacres.”
They dispute the findings of Lord Saville who exonerates General Ford, the commander of 1 Para on Bloody Sunday. According to the Observer, they say that General Ford would have known how troops reacted in Derry six months previously and should, therefore, not have used troops to supervise a civilian march.
They also say there is documentation that the Army were to be used as a cosh for the west Belfast community.
On the Families for Justice website, Briege Voyle says, “Official governmental and military documents uncovered in London prior to sending in the Para’s cite directives to use ’shock and stun' tactics.”
On the day of the Ballymurphy massacre, internment, the power to indefinitely detain suspected terrorists without trial, was reintroduced to Northern Ireland after 10 years. The announcement of the decision, by UK Prime Minister Ted Heath, was delayed while 300 suspects were rounded up in dawn raids.
The internment law was against the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights of the Council of Europe, to which Great Britain signed up in November 1950.
In a statement made on the day after the massacre, Mr Brian Faulkner, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland at the time, said Northern Ireland was “quite simply at war with the terrorist”.
Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president, is now Member of Parliament (MP) for the district. Sinn Fein had strong links with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Troubles. Sinn Fein MPs remain absent from Westminster in protest of a foreign power on Irish soil.
Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) leader and South Down MP Margaret Ritchie is said to have asked David Cameron to launch an inquiry.
