Washington DC May 11….
The Irish American Unity Conference welcomes today’s verdict by the Northern Ireland Coroner, who ruled that all ten civilians murdered by the British Army in August 1971 were unarmed and innocent. Mrs. Justice Siobhan Keegan, after examining extensive evidence presented by the families, found that the victims were “all entirely innocent of any wrongdoing on the day in question.” The verdict vindicates the grieving families who have been campaigning for decades to clear the names and reputations of their parents and grandparents who were brutally murdered in what is known as The Ballymurphy Massacre.
Alice Harper, the daughter of Danny Teggart and sister of lead campaigner John Teggart, expressed the relief felt by the Families. “We always knew they were innocent, but now it has been proven, and for what our family has been through, not just our family but all the families, I’m overwhelmed today.” The UK has propagated a false narrative for 50 years that the civilians killed were armed gunmen, thereby grievously rubbing salt in the deep wounds of the victims’ families. Today’s ruling definitively puts the lie to that stance. The Coroner stated that it was “wrong” that those killed had been described as gunmen. “These rumours should be dispelled,” she declared.
The Irish American Unity Conference first hosted representatives of the Ballymurphy Families at a forum and fundraiser in Washington on December 7, 2010, helping to kick off the US arm of the Ballymurphy Campaign. John Teggart, Alice Harper and Briege Voyle met with a number of Congressional offices and Irish American organizations at that time to begin their campaign in earnest. The families returned to Washington three months later in March 2011 to testify before the Helsinki Commission. In December 2011, the Attorney General for Northern Ireland ordered that an inquest be re-opened, giving new impetus to the Families’ search for justice. Representatives of the Families have returned to Washington and New York on numerous occasions in the intervening time to testify before Congress and speak about the pain suffered by the relatives as compounded by British lies about their loved ones. Today’s verdict was possible only because of their long, determined, and difficult campaign. In light of Justice Keegan’s findings, the IAUC calls on the British Government to promptly correct its official line of propaganda, accept the Coroner’s verdict, and issue an unconditional apology to the Families for their suffering.
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