I want to acknowledge the frustration and anger that exists throughout the community about the level and consequences of anti-social and criminal activity.
Given what people have come through – the decades of conflict and oppression – it is understandable that we are outraged by the anti-social and criminal behaviour of a tiny minority, including the recent brutal murders of citizens.
All of us have a responsibility to deal with this unacceptable behaviour. Parents, policing and justice agencies, educators, the media, public representatives, all of us have a duty to bring about greater community safety.
How do we do this? Let’s be frank about all of this.
The RUC was never a police service, neither before 1969 and not afterwards.
Family and community values and solidarity were the strength of communities and the basis for community safety, and it worked in the vast majority of cases. Even at the height of the war, crime in nationalist and republican areas was low.
But there were those who pushed drugs, broke into people’s homes, stole cars, intimidated and harassed, and organised criminal gangs. And there were the death riders who killed our neighbours and our neighbours’ children.
After the brutal murders of Harry Holland and Bap McGreevy I heard some people say that they want the IRA back to deal with anti-social behaviour and criminality.
Well, let’s get real. That’s not going to happen.
The IRA made its position very clear when it instructed its Volunteers to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means.
And this is what activists who were in the IRA are now doing. They are active in Sinn Féin, supporting and developing our strategies and actions.
They are working in their communities on the streets, day in and day out, and they are dealing with the PSNI in an effort to make it politically non-partisan and accountable to the public whom it serves.
This opportunity was created after years of successfully negotiating the changes to policing and justice.
Of course, no police service is perfect. And constructing a police service which reaches the high standards we have set is difficult given the legacy of bad state policing under unionist and then British control. But we knew that.
It is a big job of work.
But already republican efforts have achieved significant changes and improvements.
The Upper Springfield experience is a case in point.
The Upper Springfield Safer Neighbourhood Forum and Intervention Project have been very successful in tackling crime, improving relations between the community and the PSNI, and in creating a safer environment for residents.
It has radicalised and revolutionised that community’s engagement with policing and the criminal justice agencies and with the other statutory bodies.
It is working and republicans are playing a key role in its development.
Sinn Féin is also working closely with the Upper Springfield Safer Neighbourhood Forum and others locally to roll this model out into other parts of west Belfast, including the Falls area where Bap McGreevy was murdered several weeks ago.
Can I take this opportunity to commend the McGreevy family for the great dignity they showed after Bap’s murder. Our thoughts are with them, and the families of Harry Holland and John Mongan, and all other families who have been bereaved at the hands of thugs.
Already, because of the work of local republican activists and others, over 100 people have come forward to give witness statements in respect of Bap’s murder. That is a positive development.
I also want to commend all of those who work every day in the communities and voluntary sector, in our schools, youth sector and sporting organisations, sometimes in very difficult circumstances. All these people are making west Belfast a better place to live in.
To be effective, the Safer Neighbourhoods projects will need more resources, including more active participa

Remembering the Gibraltar and Milltown martyrs
Events to be held to recall the sad and bloody events of 1988
Andersonstown News
By Roisin McManus


A series of events has been organised to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the killings of the Gibraltar and Milltown Martyrs.

Events will be held across West Belfast during the period of the anniversaries of the March 1988 murders.

On March 6, 1988, unarmed IRA Volunteers Mairead Farrell, Sean Savage and Dan McCann were gunned down by the SAS in Gibraltar.
IRA Volunteer Kevin McCracken was shot dead in Turf Lodge by a British soldier on March 14, 1988.

IRA Volunteer Caoimhin MacBradaigh and civilians John Murray and Thomas McErlean were shot by loyalist gunman Michael Stone who launched a gun and grenade attack on mourners at the funerals of the Gibraltar Three on March 16, 1988 in Milltown Cemetery.

Mural

A mural which commemorates those who were killed has been completed on the former Andersonstown Barracks site.

An event to officially launch the mural will be held next Wednesday, February 27, and will be attended by the families of the seven who were killed. West Belfast MP Gerry Adams will lead the proceedings.

Posters have gone up locally in the past few days detailing the main events which will take place over the period of the anniversaries.

A Gibraltar/Milltown 20th Anniversary Committee has been organised across the city to commemorate and celebrate the lives of the republicans who were killed.

Gibraltar

This week the Andersonstown News spoke to the Chairperson of the committee, Bobby Storey, about the events in Gibraltar and Milltown.

“What happened in Gibraltar was the outworking of a British government policy that had its inception years earlier and which was about executing republicans, either by the British army and the RUC in the shoot-to-kill period, or in collusion with loyalist death squads who the state also armed,” he said.
The local republican said that the events in Gibraltar and Milltown are like a snapshot of every element of state repression.

“It used its SAS murder gang to kill three unarmed republicans,” he said.

British media

“The British media not only covered it up, but also told lies about the events, the eyewitnesses who told the truth were demonised and vilified.

“State forces harassed the remains on their route home, loyalists were allowed to stone the hearses,” he added.

“When the remains were enroute a young volunteer from Turf Lodge was shot dead by the British army near Sean Savage’s home as he prepared to defend a community.

“At the funerals of Dan, Sean and Mairead, loyalist gunman Michael Stone attacked the funeral.

“He was armed with weapons brought in from South Africa by the British agent Brian Nelson.

“Stone attacked the funeral, killing three young men and wounding over 30 men, women and children.

“He later admitted that the aerial photographs and maps that he had originated from the RUC.”

Collusion

Bobby said that the funerals, for the first time in several years, were not flanked by the usual hundreds of RUC and British army personnel, a sight familiar at republican funerals of the period.

“Why not? Collusion is the answer,” he said.

“Every element of the state’s dirty war was played out in these short weeks.
“Paradoxically, the community shone as they defended themselves, our youth fought Michael Stone with their bare hands and captured him.”

Bobby said that the West Belfast community not only defended itself physically and personally, it also defended itself against the media onslaught and the propaganda .

An Irish-speaking Sinn Féin cumann will also be launched in the name of Caoimhin Mac Bradaigh as part of the series of events.

A DVD which depicts the British state’s role in the events in Gibraltar is also due to be launched.

“There has never been an inquest for the three victims of

The Hemicycle, European Parliament,
Strasbourg - 12.12.2007:

The President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council and the President of the European Parliament gather to sign the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which will replace the European Convention on Human Rights. The Charter forms part of the "Lisbon Treaty", recently known as the "reform treaty", or the redesigned Constitutional Treaty.

A number of Members of the European Parliament (MEP) rose in protest against the "Lisbon Treaty" (signed by the 27 Heads of State and Government on 13.12.2007).

The "Lisbon Treaty" establishes the same EU Constitution that was rejected by the French and Dutch referendums in 2005.

This violates the principle of unanimity, where all Member States must consent to each treaty.

As Italian interior minister, Giuliano Amato said at the London School of Economics last February, "The good thing about not calling it a constitution is that no one can ask for a referendum."

As a result, the French and Dutch votes were ignored, and five governments have cancelled a promised referendum (Czech Rep., Denmark, Poland, Portugal, UK).

Only Ireland will have a referendum. The other 26 Member States will ratify the treaty in parliament without asking the people.

The Future of Europe can be different than the centralised monolith which the EU Constitution creates. The 'single market' (the 'four freedoms of movement') does not need to be governed by an EU bureaucracy which plans the economy and regulates our lives.

EU romanticism must stop. The EU is not what it seems to be.

Have your say on the Future of Europe.
Go to http /x09.eu and sign for a REFERENDUM in your country.

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Participating: MEPs from the Independence/Democracy Group, the GUE/NGL Group (Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left) and the Non-attached. The UEN Group (Union for Europe of the Nations) is also critical of centralization of EU power and the majority of members are against the EU Constitution. It is not known whether any UEN members participated.

To view the Political Groups in the European Parliament go to: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members...
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Note: The European Parliament has 2 buildings, one in Brussels (the main) and one in Strasbourg, where most of the plenary sessions take place. So for 5 days a month nearly the whole Brussels Parliament moves to Strasbourg (5.5 hours by train). This monthly move costs European taxpayers over 250 million euros a year.

EU Member States:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Soain, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, United Kingdom

Other states in Europe:
Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Faroes, Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Transdniestria (Transnistria), Belarus, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro.