Amnesty International have denied that they will be in the six-counties at the behest of David Trimble to investigate paramilitary punishment beatings alone. A spokesperson for the human rights group said that Amnesty had been planning to talk to the incoming six-county assembly about the administration of justice.

State Injustice

Since the inception of the six-county state the nationalist and republican working class community have been subjected to systematic denial of our human, political and civil rights on many occasions after direct rule from Westminster. The British Government have been brought before the European Court of Human Rights, pre 1971, the old Stormont regime practiced sectarian discrimination as a matter of government policy.

The nationalist working class community has been subjected to a wide-ranging abuse of rights including denial of voting rights, gerrymandering, economic, housing and employment discrimination, state-sponsored political assassination, forced evictions, torture, mistreatment of political prisoners, plastic bullets, curfew, marginalisation and demonisation. All these tactics they have used with impunity. On many occasions the nationalist and republican community has appealed to the international community to intervene, to no avail.

The IRSP support the intervention by Amnesty International and call on them to take an active responsible role in the investigation of the murders of Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill and Pat Finucane and the role played by British military forces in these murders.