OLDEST IRISH AMERICAN NEWSPAPER IN USA, ESTABLISHED IN 1928
Category: Archive

Trimble calls rights groups ‘complicit’ in terror acts

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Trimble’s remarks came at an international conference of terrorism victims in Madrid on Wednesday, after the UUP leader had made a speech about the treatment of victims of terrorism.
“One of the greatest curses of this world is the human rights industry,” he told an Associated Press reporter. “They justify terrorist acts and end up being complicit in the murder of innocent victims.”
Trimble’s remark drew angry criticism from two of the world’s largest human rights groups, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
“It is extraordinarily regrettable and disappointing that, above all, a man like that says something like this,” said Steve Crawshaw, director of the London office of Human Rights Watch. “His own emphasis, together with other politicians in Northern Ireland, on the fact that violence against civilians on all sides in any conflict cannot be justified has been so important in recent years.”
For Amnesty International, which has monitored the Northern Ireland conflict in recent years, UK director Kate Allen said, “David Trimble should remember that human rights organizations have condemned killings and other abuses by terrorist groups all over the world, while at the same time criticizing governments who use the ‘war on terror’ as a pretext to abuse their citizens.”
Trimble expanded on his comments on Monday and said that he had been referring to what he saw as the tendency of human rights groups to focus on the actions of governments and not terrorist groups.
“I was bemoaning this fact, that the human-rights industry looks in only one direction, toward the state, but not towards terrorists,” he said. “Terrorists are committing massive human rights violations.”
“The quote,” Trimble continued, referring to his original remark, “was a little distant from what I actually said.”
And he acknowledged the potential for ambiguity in understanding terms such as victim or terrorist: “What about an activist who dies as a result of their own actions? You may not think of that individual as a victim, but they have a husband or a wife or children.”
Trimble won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1998 jointly with SDLP leader John Hume. Some observers called for him to be stripped of the award after his remarks, but a spokesperson for the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo said: “We don’t comment on what former laureates say. We have no reaction to that.”
Groups such as Amnesty International have documented human-rights abuses around the world since the 1960s. In the context of Northern Ireland, Amnesty has documented what it sees as abuses by both state and paramilitary groups.
In 2002, Amnesty reported: “Serious human rights violations took place in the context of the United Kingdom [UK] authorities’ response to the 11 September 2001 attacks in the USA. In Northern Ireland there were at least 12 paramilitary killings, the majority of which were committed by Loyalists. Members of armed groups were also responsible for ‘punishment’ shootings and beatings and sectarian attacks.”
In Madrid, the conference that Trimble attended was opened by Spanish Crown Prince Felipe, who told victims in the audience that their speaking out was fundamental for the defeat of terrorism.
Terrorist victims from seven countries attended: Spain, the United States, Colombia, Algeria, Israel, Northern Ireland and France.

Other Articles You Might Like

Sign up to our Daily Newsletter

Click to access the login or register cheese