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Now that the enemies of Ireland have vented their righteous indignation, it is time for us to say a few things about Ballykelly. There is a war in the north of Ireland. We are one army fighting that war. We attacked soldiers who are occupying our country, who are using arms against our people. Ballykelly was an act of war.
Now let us talk about terror. The Irish National Liberation Army are the only army in the north who have never attacked innocent civilians, nor carried out random bombings or shootings. Every armed action in the history of our movement has been against a specific military or political target. The English army, on the other hand, have carried out 800 years of random terror against our country. You have randomly killed millions of our people through starvation. Your army have killed civilians randomsly, using plastic bullets and live ammunition. You have framed and gaoled our people through courts that have no juries. English SAS men have shot pregnant women in Aden. England stopped relief supplies to starving victims of the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea, killing millions, and then welcomed Pol Pot to the United Nations. English troops killed people in Zimbabwe beause they were black. England moved the whole nation of Diego Garcia on coffin ships to Mauritius, killing many people on the treacherous journey, so that their country could be sold to the United States as a military base. AND YOU SPEAK TO US OF TERROR! Our people have suffered in their ghettoes from your terror. We have suffered more than enough. It is now past time to take the war to the English and their cohorts in their own areas. The INLA is not prepared to tolerate English troops or let them live in this land in any way or form, and we will pursue them as the enemies of the people they are. But we will not fight by your double standards. You put a missile into an Argentinean ship, killing over a thousand, and your bloodthirsty newspapers rejoiced with headlines of "Gotcha!" We do not rejoice at the killing of eleven soldiers, we see the horror. But we will kill your soldiers for as long as you keep them in our country. We will not fight this war by the rules of your English government and English press, who do not seem to mind if we kill your soldiers one by one, but cry "massacre without mercy" when the deaths become too numerous or too frequent. Leave our country and let our people start the work of setting up a government of peace, with justice and the right to determine our own economic and social affairs. --Saoirse, 10 December 1982 |