Taoiseach Micheál Martin has warned there should be no amnesties for Troubles killings and that any soldier responsible for Bloody Sunday deaths should be prosecuted.
Mr Martin, who laid a wreath in Derry yesterday, also said it would have been “helpful” if unionist parties had been represented at some of the Bloody Sunday 50th anniversary commemorations.
Thousands of people attended separate commemoration events in Derry to mark the 50th anniversary of the killing of 13 men and boys by British troops on January 30 1972. A fourteenth victim, John Johnston died later from his wounds.
The Taoiseach said: “I don’t believe there should be any amnesties for anybody. I believe that the full process and justice of the courts should be deployed. All of the parties in Northern Ireland are very clear that they do not want amnesties; they want due process to apply. It is important because time is moving on too for many, many families and families need closure.”
He later told journalists he believed it would have been helpful if unionist politicians had joined some of yesterday’s events.
“I think it’s important that we all recognise others and people who are not from one’s own community that that would have been helpful,” Mr Martin said.
The Taoiseach was joined by Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney and other senior politicians, including Sinn Féin president, Mary Lou McDonald, deputy first minister, Michelle O’Neill, SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood and Alliance Party deputy leader, Stephen Farry. The political leaders laid wreaths along with relatives of the dead at an inter-denominational prayer service yesterday morning.
Representatives of all the main churches attended as well as the Muslim faith while a message of support from the Jewish community was read out.
A message was also sent by President Michael D Higgins who said Derry stood as a “beacon of hope and justice”.
“We honour the men who died. And we continue to honour them into the future by our continued commitment to the rights that were won at such great cost,” President Higgins said.
In a joint statement, the Bloody Sunday families vowed to continue their fight to have the soldiers responsible brought before the courts. Michael McKinney, whose brother William was killed, said the British government was trying to deny them justice through their plans to ban legacy legal actions.
“We send a very clear warning to the British government as they pursue their proposals, the Bloody Sunday families will be ready to meet them head on. We will not go away and we will not be silenced.
“We will expose them for what they are, an embarrassment to any democracy founded on the rule of law,” Mr McKinney said.
A second Bloody Sunday march yesterday afternoon, again attended by thousands, was addressed by activists, Bernadette McAliskey and Eamonn McCann. Ms McAliskey said Bloody Sunday would never be forgotten.
“If I don’t see the British government in the Hague (war crimes court), my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren will them in it some day,” she said.
Mr McCann said Bloody Sunday was a Derry atrocity but was a world event.
“The Black and Tans were born again on this piece of land right in front of us now but it was more than that,” he said.
