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sample copy of submission
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CALL FOR WRITTEN SUBMISSIONS
Ambassador Haass and Dr. O’Sullivan recognise the diversity of opinion and the wide array of individuals and groups in civil society who can make a valuable contribution to this process. They are dedicated to conducting a process that is as inclusive as possible and will meet with as many stakeholders as possible during their visits to Northern Ireland. Given limited time before the December deadline, however, they welcome the written submissions of all interested parties.
Any individual, group, or organisation is welcome to send a submission to the Panel of Parties in the NI Executive. The Panel will treat all submissions as confidential throughout the process. At the end of the process, the chair and vice chair may seek the permission of some groups to make public their submissions; this will only be done with explicit permission.
Submissions can take any focus, although the Panel will draw the greatest value from ones that provide both background needed to understand the complexities of the issues and specific recommendations on any or all of the three issues for which the panel has an express mandate: parades and protests; flags, symbols and emblems, and related matters; and the past. Submissions will be received throughout the process, but the Panel urges those interested in making a submission to do so by 27 September. All submissions should be sent via this website or by email, ideally with clear contact information attached.
For other comments and queries, please write to info@panelofpartiesnie.com. Members of the media can contact the Panel at press@panelofpartiesnie.com.
Ambassador Haass and Dr. O’Sullivan,
Welcome to Ireland
I have been campaigning on several human rights issues with a view to justice, which is an essential element of long term Peace Regretfully I have to inform you at 61 years of age, after a lifetime dealing directly with the issues and people involved, that it is only with a basic form of justice will there be any long term peace in Ireland. I ask that you bring your attention to the issue of internment without trial in Ireland, which has plagued every generation in Ireland since the foundation of the two neo-colonial states.
Annie Machon MI5
A Peace Process Without Due Process is Oxymoronic. With regard to British Occupied Ireland a former MI5 British Secret Service agent has explained it best, in an article she wrote in the Huffington Post. It is a long article so I will quote the parts relevant to the failing Peace Process in Ireland.
Gestapo Courts
The concept of secret courts emerged from the official UK spook sector - MI5 and MI6 have been lobbying hard for such protection over recent years. Their argument revolves around a number of civil cases, where British victims of extraordinary rendition and subsequent torture have sued the pants off the spies through civil courts and received some recompense for their years of suffering.
The spies' argument is that having to produce evidence in their own defence would damage that ever-flexible but curiously vague concept of "national security".
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?
The spooks have traditionally used the "national security" argument as the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. It has never been legally defined, but it is unfailingly effective with judges and politicians.
Suspects are scooped up and interned in high security British prisons on the say-so of faceless intelligence officers. No evidence needed to be adduced, nor can it be challenged. The subsequent control order system is equally Kafkaesque.
That's not to say that certain interned individuals might not have been an active threat to the UK. However, in the "good" old days suspects would have had evidence gathered against them, been tried by a jury, convicted and imprisoned. The system was never perfect and evidence could be egregiously withheld, but at least appeals were possible, most notably in the case of the Birmingham Six.
All these historic common law principles seem to have been jettisoned with the enshrinement of "secret courts" they are already being used in the UK - the Special Immigration Appeal Commission (SIAC) tribunals hear secret evidence and the defendant's chosen lawyer is not allowed to attend. Instead a special, government-approved advocate is appointed to "represent the interests" of the defendant who is not allowed to know what his accusers have to say. And there was no appeal.
But all this is so unnecessary. The powers are already in place to be used (and abused) to shroud our notionally open court process in secrecy. Judges can exclude the press and the public from court rooms by declaring the session in camera for all or part of the proceedings. Plus, in national security cases, government ministers can also issue Public Interest Immunity Certificates (PIIs) that not only bar the press from reporting the proceedings, but can also ban them from reporting they are gagged - the governmental super-injunction.
So the powers already exist to protect "national security". No, the real point of the new secret courts is to ensure that the defendant and, particularly in my view, their chosen lawyers cannot hear the allegations if based on intelligence of any kind. Yet even the spies themselves agree that the only type of intelligence that really needs to be kept secret involves ongoing operations, agent names, and sensitive operational techniques.
And as for the right to be tried by a jury of your peers - forget it. Of course juries will have no place in such secret courts. The only time we have seen such draconian judicial measures in the UK outside a time of official war was during the Troubles in Northern Ireland - the infamous Diplock Courts - beginning in the 1970s and which incredibly were still in use this year.
As a former MI5 intelligence officer, I am not an apologist of terrorism although I can understand the social injustice that can lead to it. However, I'm also very aware that the threat can be artificially ramped up and manipulated to achieve preconceived political goals.
I would suggest that the concept of secret courts will prove fatally dangerous to our democracy. It may start with the concept of getting the Big Bad Terrorist, but in more politically unstable or stringent economic times this concept is wide open to mission creep.
We are already seeing a slide towards expanding the definition of "terrorist" to include "domestic extremists", activists, single issue campaigners et al, as I have written before. And just recently information was leaked about a new public-private EU initiative, Clean IT, that proposes ever more invasive and draconian policing powers to hunt down "terrorists" on the internet. This proposal fails to define terrorism, but does provide for endemic electronic surveillance of the EU. Pure corporatism.
Allowing secret courts to try people on the say-so of a shadowy, unaccountable and burgeoning spy community lands us straight back in the pages of history: La Terreur of revolutionary France, the creepy surveillance of the Stasi, or the disappearances and torture of the Gestapo.
Have we learned nothing?
Is mise le meas,
brionOclerigh
http://www.releasemartincorey.com
RICHARD N. HAASS
Dr. Richard Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the preeminent independent, nonpartisan organisation in the United States dedicated to the study of American foreign policy. Until 2003, Dr. Haass was director of policy planning for the Department of State as well as U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and U.S. envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process. He was also special assistant to President George H.W. Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council from 1989 to 1993. Dr. Haass is the author or editor of twelve books on American foreign policy and one book on management. His most recent book is Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order. A Rhodes scholar, he holds a BA from Oberlin College and both Master and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Oxford University. He has received honorary degrees from Hamilton College, Franklin & Marshall College, Georgetown University, Oberlin College, Central College, and Miami Dade College.
MEGHAN L. O'SULLIVAN
Dr. Meghan L. O’Sullivan is the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. Between 2004 and 2007, she was special assistant to President George W. Bush and also held the position of Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan from 2005 until the end of her tenure at the National Security Council. She spent a cumulative two years in Iraq throughout 2003-2008. Before this time, Dr. O’Sullivan was a member of the Policy Planning staff at the State Department and the chief advisor to the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland, Richard N. Haass, from 2001-2003. She is also currently an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a consultant to the National Intelligence Council, and a strategic advisor to Hess Corporation. Dr. O’Sullivan is a foreign affairs columnist for Bloomberg View as well as a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Aspen Strategy Group. Dr. O’Sullivan serves on the board of the German Marshall Fund, TechnoServe, and the Women’s Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute. She has been awarded the Defense Department's highest honor for civilians, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, and three times been awarded the State Department's Superior Honor Award. She has written numerous books and articles on American foreign policy. In 2008, Esquire named her one of the most influential people of the century. Dr. O'Sullivan received a B.A. from Georgetown University and a masters and doctorate from Oxford University.
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