The event, organized to raise funds to support the 20th anniversary commemorative conference ‘Pat Finucane; His Life and Legacy’, in Trinity College Dublin next month, took place at the waterfront restaurant Harbour Lights and was hosted by the Brehon Law Society.
Newly elected president of the society, Robert Dunne, told the gathering that it was poignant that they were gathered on the “birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King,” as both he and Pat Finucane had “fought passionately” for equality and civil rights and both had been shot down for this.
“Martin Luther King famously wrote ‘an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ Pat Finucane was murdered because he represented a threat to injustice wherever he found it,” said Dunne.
Dunne said the Brehon Law Society would be calling on President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to support a full, independent, public inquiry into the murder and that the “fight will continue until it happens.”
The pledge to hold the new president to his promise was echoed by Brehon vice-president Niall MacGiollabhui who said after almost 20 years, a fully independent public inquiry into Finucane’s murder was long overdue.
In a statement read out at the event, the murdered lawyer’s brother, Martin Finucane, relayed his thanks on behalf of the Finucane family to the organizers for their support of the Dublin conference.
“It is 20 years since my brother Pat was killed and my family and I have traveled a very long road,” he said.
The murder, he said, went to the heart of the security services, the judicial system and indeed government. “It is a prominent example, perhaps the most prominent we have yet witnessed, of collusion, the state’s policy of murder by proxy, using Loyalist assassins as the killers.
“Pat’s case is the very definition of an everyman crime because his murder was something that could have happened to any of us if the whim or ‘interest’ of the state decreed it,” Finucane said.
“The British government,” he added, “made a commitment to implement the recommendations of Judge Cory and I believe that they are breaking that commitment by delaying the commencement of an inquiry. It is not difficult to understand the motivation for this. The British government is trying to postpone the day when it will be exposed to the world as having engaged in the murder of its own citizens.
“It has delayed the establishment of an inquiry for 20 years, despite calls from distinguished individuals and organizations worldwide that such an inquiry is necessary. It is vital that a full public judicial inquiry is established and that Judge Cory’s recommendations are not allowed to be watered down through use of any lesser mechanism,” Finucane said.
Speaking at the event, one-time client of Pat Finucane’s, Sean Mackin, said that anywhere Pat Finucane had seen injustice, “he wouldn’t put up with it. Internment was a nightly occurrence. You were arrested to ID you. It was just harassment.”
But, Mackin said, Pat Finucane’s refusal to put up with all this hadn’t been done before.
“He said he had to stand up and do this. He knew what it meant. He was under no illusion, he knew his life was in danger; it’s a tribute to the man,” Mackin said.
Irish Deputy Consul General, Breand_n