• Text size  | | |
• Email this document
• Printable version

Amnesty International Report 1999 - Ireland

IRELAND

One person was shot in disputed circumstances. Asylum-seekers were deported under procedures which do not guarantee a full and fair determination of asylum applications.

In April the government signed the Multi-Party Agreement concerning the future of Northern Ireland. The Agreement proposed the establishment of three interconnected bodies: one within Northern Ireland; one between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; and a third between the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom. The Agreement also contained proposals for mechanisms to promote and protect human rights, and included commitments to review emergency legislation provisions (see United Kingdom entry).

New emergency provisions passed in September violate international standards. The Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act 1998 was passed in the wake of a bomb-blast in Omagh, Northern Ireland, which resulted in the deaths of 29 people. In trials for certain offences, including membership of an unlawful organization, the new law permits courts to draw adverse inferences from a suspect’s exercise of the right to remain silent during police questioning. The law also extends the period of detention without charge for certain offences and creates new offences, including collection or possession of information likely to be useful to members of illegal organizations, withholding information, and directing an illegal organization (see United Kingdom entry).

In May Rónán MacLochlainn was shot in disputed circumstances by officers from a special police unit while fleeing from the scene of an attempted armed robbery. Initial police statements reporting that he was killed during a shoot-out were subsequently retracted. The inquest into his death was pending at the end of the year.

Asylum-seekers were deported under procedures which were not independent, and which did not provide for a full and fair hearing of all asylum applications.

Amnesty International continued to urge the government to fully implement the 1996 Refugee Act and to ensure that all asylum-seekers, including those who arrived after travelling through other European Union countries, received full and fair hearings of their applications.

Amnesty International welcomed the repeated commitments to respect human rights in the Multi-Party Agreement, including proposals to establish a human rights commission for the Republic of Ireland; the commitment to consider incorporating the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms into domestic law; and the promise of a wide-ranging review of the Offences Against the State Act.

In September Amnesty International called on legislators not to adopt the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Bill 1998 which it believed violated international standards and was inconsistent with the government’s commitment in the Multi-Party Agreement to the early removal of emergency powers.

Amnesty International urged the government to ensure that all killings in disputed circumstances, including those of Rónán MacLochlainn and John Morris, who was killed in similar circumstances in 1997, were promptly, thoroughly and impartially investigated. The organization urged that the families be kept informed of the progress of the investigations and that the results of investigations be published.