- Peru's ex-president Toledo gets 20 years for corruption
- Chile launches vaccine that neuters dogs for a year
- Toxicology tests show Liam Payne had 'multiple' drugs in system: reports
- WNBA players union opts out of deal, now set to end in 2025
- Harris woos on-the-fence Republicans, Trump tours storm damage
- Henderson howler hands Forest victory over Crystal Palace
- Yankees and Dodgers to renew epic rivalry in World Series
- Stock markets mostly slide, oil jumps as China cuts rates
- Parents of Venezuela minors held after election ask UN to intervene
- NBA and Nike extend partnership deal for 12 years
- Israel strikes 300 Hezbollah targets as US urges war's end
- Tourist dreams turn sour after Cuba lights go off
- Italy PM seeks to save Albanian migrant deal amid spat with judges
- Tagovailoa returns to NFL practice Wednesday after concussion
- US infant mortality spiked after right to abortion overturned: study
- Blinken back to Middle East to push for Gaza truce
- Neymar returns for Al Hilal in Al Ain thriller
- TGL set for January start as Woods-McIlroy might meet Jan. 27
- US Grand Prix - three things we learned
- Welsh rugby's future more important to Gatland than saving his job
- Venezuela arrests ex-oil minister accused of US links
- President Biya lands back in Cameroon after health rumours
- Watson out for NFL season with ruptured Achilles tendon
- Disney expects to name Iger's successor in early 2026
- Emery wants to 'break barriers' at transformed Aston Villa
- Hezbollah-linked financial firm an economic lifeline for Lebanese
- London trial probes 2015 Brazil mine disaster
- Police in Mozambique disperse vote protest
- Ancelotti wants goals over pressing from Madrid star Mbappe
- Major crypto, diamond fraud trial opens in France
- Electricity restored to 50% of Havana after nationwide blackout: Cuba state media
- How much aid is getting into Gaza?
- King Charles caps Australia trip with Opera House bash
- England's Buttler out of West Indies ODI series
- Moldova president hails EU referendum win after Russia meddling claims
- Van Dijk talking to 'right people' over Liverpool contract
- Vietnam's top leader pushes anti-corruption fight
- Arteta urges Arsenal to use Bournemouth 'pain' against Shakhtar
- Rabada fastest to 300th Test wicket, as Bangladesh all out for 106
- Erdogan rival Gulen dies in exile at 83
- Man Utd's Ten Hag relishing Europa League clash with Mourinho
- Amnesty says migrant workers exploited at Carrefour Saudi stores
- Fethullah Gulen: ex-Erdogan ally who became public enemy number one
- Seoul demands 'immediate withdrawal' of North Korean troops in Russia
- WHO to evacuate 1,000 Gazan women, children for urgent medical care
- Erdogan's rival Fetullah Gulen dies in exile aged 83
- Gauff-led USA pitted with Canada at season-opening United Cup
- Sanofi pursues sale of painkiller after political controversy
- Rabada takes 300th wicket as Bangladesh stumble to 60-6 at lunch
- Alpacas, hecklers and climate warnings: King Charles visits Australia's capital
RBGPF | 1% | 61.11 | $ | |
JRI | -0.53% | 13.15 | $ | |
BCC | -2.78% | 137.9 | $ | |
NGG | -1.45% | 67.03 | $ | |
RYCEF | -0.68% | 7.4 | $ | |
CMSC | -0.53% | 24.65 | $ | |
SCS | -0.93% | 12.89 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.68% | 24.87 | $ | |
RIO | -0.63% | 64.95 | $ | |
RELX | -1.13% | 47.63 | $ | |
BCE | -0.45% | 33.39 | $ | |
VOD | -1.35% | 9.63 | $ | |
AZN | -1.06% | 77.44 | $ | |
GSK | -1.02% | 38.16 | $ | |
BP | 0.44% | 31.47 | $ | |
BTI | -0.73% | 34.25 | $ |
'No justice': N.Ireland marks 'Bloody Sunday' amid Brexit backdrop
The Northern Irish city of Londonderry commemorates one of the darkest days in modern UK history on Sunday when, 50 years ago, British troops opened fire without provocation on civil rights protesters.
The anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" comes with Northern Ireland's fragile peace destabilised by Brexit, and with families of the victims despondent over whether the soldiers involved will ever face trial.
Charlie Nash saw his 19-year-old cousin William Nash killed by one of more than 100 high-velocity rounds fired by members of the British Parachute Regiment on January 30, 1972.
"We thought there might be rioting, but nothing, nothing like what happened. We thought at first they were rubber bullets," Nash, now 73, told AFP.
"But then we saw Hugh Gilmour (one of six 17-year-old victims) lying dead. We couldn't take it in. Everyone was running," he said.
"It's important for the rest of the world to see what they done to us that day. But will we ever see justice? Never, especially not from Boris Johnson."
- Amnesty? -
The UK prime minister this week called Bloody Sunday a "tragic day in our history". But his government is pushing legislation that critics say amounts to an amnesty for all killings during Northern Ireland's three decades of sectarian unrest, including by security forces.
Thirteen protesters died on Bloody Sunday, when the paratroopers opened fire through narrow streets and across open wasteland.
Some of the victims were shot in the back, or while on the ground, or while waving white handkerchiefs.
At the entrance to the city's Catholic Bogside area stands a wall that normally proclaims in large writing: "You are now entering Free Derry."
But this weekend, as relatives of the victims prepare to retrace the 1972 civil rights march, the mural says: "There is no British justice."
After an initial government report largely exonerated the paratroopers and authorities, a landmark 12-year inquiry running to 5,000 pages found in 2010 that the victims were unarmed and posed no threat, and that the soldiers' commander on the ground violated his orders.
"We in the inquiry came to the conclusion that the shootings were unjustified and unjustifiable," its chairman Mark Saville, a former judge and member of the UK House of Lords, told BBC radio on Saturday.
"And I do understand, people feel that in those circumstances justice has yet to be done," he said, while expressing concern that with the surviving soldiers now elderly, the government should have launched any prosecution "a very long time ago".
Then as now, Londonderry -- known as Derry to pro-Irish nationalists -- was a largely Catholic city. But housing, jobs and education were segregated in favour of the pro-British Protestant minority.
Simmering tensions over the inequality made Londonderry the cradle of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland starting in the late 1960s, which finally ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
- 'Reckless' -
The UK's divorce from the European Union has unsettled the fragile post-1998 consensus.
Protestant unionists want Johnson's government to scrap a protocol governing post-Brexit trade for Northern Ireland, which treats the province differently from the UK mainland (comprising England, Scotland and Wales).
The government, which is in protracted talks with the EU on the issue, is sympathetic to their demands.
Heading into regional elections in May, some nationalists hope that Brexit could help achieve what the Irish Republican Army (IRA) never did -- a united Ireland, a century after the UK carved out a Protestant statelet in the north.
Sinn Fein, which was once the political wing of the IRA, is running ahead of the once dominant unionists in opinion polls.
"Northern Ireland finds itself again in the eye of a political storm where we appear to be collateral damage for a prime minister whose future is hanging in the balance," said professor Deirdre Heenan, a Londonderry resident who teaches social policy at Ulster University.
"The government's behaviour around the peace process has been reckless in the extreme," she added.
Protestant hardliners have issued their own reminders of where they stand: leading up to the anniversary, Parachute Regiment flags have been flying in one unionist stronghold of Londonderry, to the revulsion of nationalists.
"How can they do that, this weekend of all weekends? These are innocent boys killed by the Paras," said George Ryan, 61, a tour guide and local historian.
"Will any of the troops ever stand up in a court of law?" he added.
"It's looking more unlikely than ever, but it's important as ever."
X.Matos--PC