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FEBRUARY 2002
NORTHERN IRELAND ROUND-UP
Bloody Sunday Portrayed in Two Powerful Films
DERRY - In the weeks leading up to the 30lh anniversary of the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry, two films about the events opened to critical acclaim. The first film, Bloody Sunday, which stars Irish actor James Nesbitt, was screened initially before relatives of the 27 people who were shot on the day. While it left many families in tears, the emotional audience gave the film a massive vote of approval.
Jimmy Nesbitt, who played civil rights activist and former Stormont MP Ivan Cooper, said the audience's reaction was very important to him. He said, "It has been the greatest day of my life." A Broughshane Protestant, Nesbitt added that making the film had been a "humbling" experience.
Ivan Cooper said he found the film extremely difficult to watch and it brought back a lot of memories. "It was very harrowing, especially for the families who watched their loved ones being shot dead. People were weeping and a lot of people were emotionally effected.
"The film has been made with great integrity. It will show people from a Unionist background that those of us who marched weren't Communists, weren't Republicans, we were people looking for civil rights and it's a very important film from the perspective of a British audience," he said.
At the Sundance Film Festival in the United States, Bloody Sunday was awarded Best World Cinema Award. The judges, including actress Patricia Arquette and director John Waters, hailed the Paul Greengrass film as "a groundbreaking work."
Organizers of the Sundance festival emphasized the award was not intended as a political decision to support the film's version of the events in which 13 civilians were shot dead during a civil rights march. Instead the film was congratulated for its tight plot and use of hand-held cameras to give the audience the sense of watching a documentary covering real events as portrayed.
The second film, simply called Sunday, marks the end of a four-year collaboration between Jimmy McGovern and Derry-based production company Gaslight. Regarded among the best contemporary British screenwriters, McGovern also wrote the highly acclaimed Hillsborough documentary.
The film is based on factual memos from the Stormont and Westminster governments, the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. What results is a powerful and chilling portrayal of what it must have been like in Derry's Bogside on January 30, 1972, and in the weeks leading up to the march.
McGovern asks uncomfortable
questions about the authorities of the time. He also met members of the Parachute regiment involved in Bloody Sunday as well as the families of the dead men. His script pulls no punches about where responsibility for the victims' deaths lie and he said that the four years he had spent writing it were "four years of a moral dilemma."
"I love being an Englishman and I find that very hard to reconcile with what happened on Bloody Sunday. The families have been living with this for 30 years. I've only had four years of a moral dilemma."
McGovern said he expected the film to come in for a lot of criticism in England. "I found it quite hard as an Englishman doing this in Derry. I'm aware I come from a country that has inflicted this terrible harm on this community but at the same time I love my country."
- Sources: The Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph
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BLAIR DEFENDS COST OF INQUIRY
LONDON - Facing questioning in the House of Commons over the spiralling cost of the Saville Inquiry, British Prime Minister Tony Blair defended the cost of the inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shooting, saying that it was important in the context of the peace process.
Blair said both lives and money had been saved in Northern Ireland as a result. "The reason for the inquiry was that it was important to lay to rest some of those claims that have been made over many, many years. But it was important in the context of Northern Ireland and the peace process there that we made progress and had such an inquiry."
The Prime Minister said public inquiries cost a lot of money, with the probe into BSE costing stg£30 million. The Bloody Sunday inquiry is expected to cost the British taxpayer at least stg£100 million.
The figure was condemned as "appalling" by Conservative spokesman on the North, Crispin Blunt, who said the investigation had led to an "unacceptable" diversion of public money away from health, education and the police.
Northern Ireland Secretary Dr John Reid said the inquiry was important as it would "close the chapter" on Northern Ireland's "troubled history."
John Hume Testifies at Saville Inquiry
DERRY - In giving testimony before the Saville Inquiry, which is investigating the events of Bloody Sunday, former SDLP leader John Hume said the incident was "the worst day in the history of this city in my lifetime."
He called on the British government to release classified papers relating to the killings saying that the key to the truth lay in discovering who had sent paratroopers to Derry. The Nobel peace prize winner did not attend the civil rights march in January 1972, when 13 unarmed civilians were shot dead by British soldiers, and had advised others not to do so.
Hume said the papers, protected under the 30-year rule, should be made public to determine what orders were given to the paratroopers sent to the march and who issued those orders.
"That is the question that this inquiry should find out immediately and I believe if they do, they will get the real results of this inquiry. When soldiers appear in any one place, they don't decide to come by themselves. They're sent there. My question is: Who sent them and what orders were they given to do when they were there? The central point is who sent them on to the streets?"
Hume, who was applauded after he had completed his hour in the witness box in the Guildhall, said he had campaigned against the Bloody Sunday march because of the violent actions of paratroopers the previous weekend at Magilligan beach near Derry.
"If a peaceful march proceeding in a non-built up area on a beach with no stones resulted in a violent confrontation, I shuddered to think what would happen in the built-up streets of Derry," he told the inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville.
Hume said that because of his opposition to the Bogside march, he was not involved in its organization, nor did he have contact with the IRA. "I was then, and have always been, totally opposed to them. I had no lines of communication with them and therefore knew nothing about their intentions for the march prior to the event, nor do I know nor have I heard from anyone connected with the IRA as to what they actualty did on the day."
Hume said the IRA was "a very secret organization" and the only "certain name" identified with them at the time of Bloody Sunday was the Sinn Fein representative Martin McGuinness who has admitted that he was the second in command of the Provisional IRA in Derry on Bloody Sunday.
Sinn Fein to Take Westminster Offices
LONDON - Sinn Fein's four Westminster MPs are to get more than £100,000 each in expenses along with office facilities in the British parliament. They will each be entitled to take on two full-time assistants and claim up to £70,000 a year to employ them.
Their assistants will be able to apply for security passes to the Commons, although anyone convicted of terrorist crimes in the past has to declare their record when applying for a pass. But British government officials said that there would be no automatic ban on former IRA activists, even those with criminal convictions, provided they support the Good Friday Agreement.
Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty and Michelle Gildernew will also be allowed to claim up to stg£ 19,469 a year towards the cost of living in London and up to stg£18,000 for incidental expenses. They will be supplied with telecommunication equipment worth an estimated £3,000, and will be entitled to free travel between London and their constituencies.
So far the Sinn Fein MPs have refused to take their seats as it would mean swearing an oath of loyalty to the Queen. And they will not be paid their parliamentary salaries or certain other benefits while they abstain. But the scale of the expenses, which could amount to a subsidy of almost £500,000 for Sinn Fein, is an embarrassment for the Labour government.
Robin Cook, the Leader of the House of Commons, faced the anger of opposition MPs as he insisted that offering parliamentary facilities to the four Sinn Fein MPs was necessary to help further the peace process.
Cook told MPs "There is no logic in saying to them that, as a result of the peace process to which we are party, they can attend, speak and vote in Belfast, but in Westminster we will not even allow them to cross the door."
- Sources: The Irish Independent and Daily Telegraph, (London).