Beattie's Frankenstein Justice

New York Attorney-At-Law, Martin Galvin, with a letter that featured in today's Irish News.

A chara,

Doug Beattie believes crown force members, who committed murders should face murder charges. He believes in British justice, courts and judges. When British inquests and investigations threaten to uncover proof to charge British forces in British courts, Beattie shouts "Frankenstein justice" outside Belfast City Hall.

Mr. Beattie's reference may be truer than he thinks. Frankenstein, of course, was a fictional character, destroyed by the monster he himself created. The British created monstrous injustices to legalize murders over decades of conflict. If inquests, criminal trials and investigations fought for by victims' families go ahead, the truth about these monstrous injustices may destroy decades of lies at the heart of British rule.

How does an inquest into the Ballymurphy Massacre fit Beattie's "Frankenstein justice"? Along with Saoradh, the Ballymurphy Massacre families took to Belfast's streets on Good Friday, perhaps wondering why Beattie thinks their loved ones unworthy of a legal inquest. 

Anyone who understands these families knows they have not campaigned for nearly 46 years, because of some farsighted political plot or Irish fondness for inquests. 

These families contend that eleven of their loved ones, were murdered openly by British troops in August 1971.The dead including a Catholic priest and forty-five year old mother, were unarmed. Some shot as many as 14 times.

British Royal Military Police then declared British Paratroopers innocent and branded their innocent loved ones guilty. Eyewitnesses were not allowed to dispute the British account, nor ask why no British casualties were inflicted, or weapons recovered from so many dead IRA gunmen.

British military strategists, like Brigadier General Frank Kitson, were writing how:

Law should be used as just another weapon in the government's arsenal... little more than a propaganda cover for disposal of unwanted members of the public - (Low Intensity Operations)

Such policies required an undeclared immunity for troopers disposing permanently of unwanted members of the public. It worked so well in Ballymurphy that the British decided to do a replay five months later in Derry. There British troopers, who Mr. Beattie boasts, defend our right to protest, defended us by shooting down protestors, with the troublesome mistake of too many witnesses on Bloody Sunday. 

The Ballymurphy Massacre families are entitled to put their sworn testimony to an inquest where, unlike Mr. Beattie, they need not fear the truth. Many victims' families have that right. 

There is no mystery here. The British created and rubber-stamped monstrous injustices like Ballymurphy as a matter of policy. They hide behind the DUP, or empty words like 'imbalance' and 'pernicious counter-narratives'." Frankenstein justice" just means they fear seeing their lies being destroyed by the monster they created. 


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