Opinion

Claire Simpson: Good Friday Agreement anniversary raises tricky questions

Key figures from the Good Friday Agreement negotiations at Queen's University. (back row left to right) Jonathan Powell, Lord John Alderdice, Lord David Trimble, Sir Reg Empey, Lord Paul Murphy of Torfaen and (front row left to right) Professor Monica McWilliams, Seamus Mallon, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Senator George Mitchell and Gerry Adams. Picture by Mal McCann
Key figures from the Good Friday Agreement negotiations at Queen's University. (back row left to right) Jonathan Powell, Lord John Alderdice, Lord David Trimble, Sir Reg Empey, Lord Paul Murphy of Torfaen and (front row left to right) Professor Monica Key figures from the Good Friday Agreement negotiations at Queen's University. (back row left to right) Jonathan Powell, Lord John Alderdice, Lord David Trimble, Sir Reg Empey, Lord Paul Murphy of Torfaen and (front row left to right) Professor Monica McWilliams, Seamus Mallon, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Senator George Mitchell and Gerry Adams. Picture by Mal McCann

The 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement has raised some tricky questions, not least why we haven’t had a functioning assembly for the last 15 months.

Seeing last week’s line-up of statesmen who helped broker the accord drew unfavourable comparisons with our current crop of politicians.

The legacies of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern may have been somewhat tarnished by their later actions but the importance of what they did still remains.

For those of us who believe the agreement was the best possible deal that could be done at that time, the anniversary has encouraged us to reflect on what an achievement it actually was.

As the leaders of the Catholic and Anglican churches in Ireland have said, the document may have been both complex and controversial but its explicit rejection of violence and emphasis on mutual respect has transformed our society.

“Nothing remotely its equal has been outlined then or since…” they said.

In his recent documentary, comedian Patrick Kielty said he voted in favour of the landmark accord despite knowing that it would lead to the release of the UFF killers who murdered his father Jack in 1988.

During an interview with Mr Kielty as part of the BBC programme, DUP leader Arlene Foster said she rejected the agreement for that same reason - the release of paramilitaries.

"How can you allow people who have committed some of the most hideous crimes just walk free as if they had done nothing?" she asked.

She later said that some people wanted justice, while others wanted retribution.

"That's why, 20 years later, we're talking of the legacy of the troubles and struggling with how to deal with it,” she said.

But who is to say that other countries have handled their troubled histories any better?

In Spain, people are still trying to come to terms with General Franco’s 39-year fascist dictatorship.

When Franco died in 1975, his followers agreed to give up power in return for a promise that no one would be tried or even reminded of the tens of thousands of killings and abuses carried out under his rule. Two years after the dictator’s death, an amnesty law was signed to make sure no one would be held to account for the regime’s terror. Yet, despite the ‘pact of forgetting’, archaeologists are still uncovering mass graves dating from the 1936-39 civil war and the ensuing dictatorship. Relatives are still searching for missing family members. New generations who did not experience the regime are now questioning why their country’s past was never addressed and why turning a blind eye to abuses has meant some of their relatives were never laid to rest.

Anyone who saw The Act of Killing, that wonderful and terrifying 2012 documentary about the Indonesian mass murders of 1965-1966, will have an idea of the complexities of that conflict.

The anti-Communist purge caused the deaths of anything between half a million and three million people. It also led to the establishment of an authoritarian and highly corrupt regime which lasted for three decades. One of the questions that documentary asked was what was the relationship between the killers and their victims? In the film, murderer Anwar Congo, who alone was responsible for around 1,000 deaths, describes the killings and makes scenes dramatising his own experiences. It is only when he plays a victim that he really begins to understand what he has actually done.

The film itself prompted widespread debates in Indonesia about the crimes and the need to hold people accountable. A subsequent human rights tribunal in The Hague found the Indonesian state guilty of crimes against humanity - a ruling the state rejected. There are many more examples, from Chile to China, where atrocities have never been addressed.

Arguably we’ve done a better job of facing up to our past than some. Our challenge isn’t how to forget the past but how to recognise it without allowing it to infect our future.

Twenty years on, it’s clear that the Good Friday Agreement did not signal a complete end to violence. Despite the huge strides made since 1998, many in our most marginalised and vulnerable communities are yet to experience the promised ‘peace dividend’.

The agreement also failed to remove much of the bitterness from our politics. I was a teenager when the agreement was signed yet the constant negativity in political debates still remains. The Church leaders are right when they say nothing the equal of the agreement “has been outlined then or since”.

The question, and challenge, is if it ever will be.