Anniversary

[shadowkitty]

It's twenty five years since the end of the IRA hunger strike. The lessons learned then aren't being applied now; that if you call something a war, the people you capture are prisoners of war, not criminals; that internment without trial is not something any civilised country should do. These aren't difficult concepts.

My parents were pulled over by the police on the way to a memorial service for one of the hunger strikers, a man my father played football with & maintains to this day did nothing wrong, that a gun was planted on him. If they had admitted where they were going, that would have been it. Go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect £200. No trial, nothing.

That wasn't the only close call they had, either. I remember being permanently scared when I was small. Scared of the people in this country, the ones who drew a swastika on our shed. As far as I could see, that was all of them. They all would have happily got rid of us. The neighbours were suspicious of us, with our strange accents & sports, when we frequently consorted with others of our sort at the parish centre (oh, & if they could have seen what went on in there! The collection plates going round for 'The Cause').

It saddens me that muslim children are still forced to feel how I felt.

Comments

[waywardgaze.livejournal.com]

The way that they handled the IRA (and various other sectarian three-letter acronyms on either side) here and in Northern Ireland leads me to have very little faith in their restraint in 'fighting terrorism' now. Especially given that the UK is supposed to be the more reasonable end than the US. Sigh, barbarians indeed. I can't imagine growing up under that kind of fear.

[shadowkitty.livejournal.com]

The one hope I have is that whenever something happens, the authorities immediately say 'do not take this out on the local muslim population. They didn't do anything.'

Which is a real improvement from the implicit encouragement to 'beat up the micks'.