Thar Saile

NEWS and Recent Events

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Letters to the Editor, Refusing a man's journey home

Thursday, June 16, 2011
G.B. Walters - Affton at STLToday.com

Refusing a man's journey home
Bill McClellan's column "St. Louisan's Troubles linger despite peace" (June 12) took a deft and well-deserved jab at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' refusal to act on Matthew Morrison's request to visit Northern Ireland. Mr. Morrison wants only to visit the land where he was born, long after the British rulers of Northern Ireland and Irish Republicans concluded a settlement of their 30-year war... Read more here...

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Remembering the Hungerstrike

Sunday, June 12, 2011 12:00 am
Bill McClellan - bmcclellan@post-dispatch.com, 314-340-8143 STLtoday.com
Read more at STLToday.com

In July 2009, Matthew Morrison applied to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for permission to visit Northern Ireland. To be more accurate, he was seeking permission to be able to return to this country after leaving it.
He was required to pay a $305 processing fee. The government cashed his check on July 8, 2009.
He is still waiting for a response. What could be so confusing about his case?
Chester Moyer, field office director for the local office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is familiar with it. So are regular readers of this column.
Morrison grew up in Derry. He was Roman Catholic. In January 1972, he marched in a civil rights demonstration. British soldiers fired on the demonstrators, killing 13. The day became known as Bloody Sunday.
Morrison joined the Irish Republican Army, which was seeking to reunite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. In 1975, he was arrested for trying to shoot a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. He was released after serving 10 years in Long Kesh prison.
He married an American woman with whom he had corresponded while in prison. He came here on a tourist visa and overstayed that visa. He paid taxes using a tax number the IRS issued him. Still, he was essentially underground.
In November 1991, he asked for permanent residency status. The request was denied, and deportation proceedings began.
It was a long process and often looked bleak. The IRA was considered a terrorist organization.
Actually, the IRA compared itself to the Spear of the Nation, the armed wing of the African National Congress. I can remember Gerald Kelly making that comparison. He was in St. Louis visiting Morrison. He said the IRA saw South Africa as a template for the future, a model of how to get from armed struggle to governance.
Kelly visited St. Louis in 1999. By then, the world had changed. The Good Friday Peace Accord had been signed a year earlier. The IRA had indeed gone into governance. In fact, Kelly, who had done time for a bombing in London, had been elected to the new Northern Assembly.
Meanwhile, as part of the peace process, the U.S. had agreed to stop the deportation proceedings against Morrison and five other former members of the IRA.
Morrison was allowed to visit Northern Ireland in 2000. That is, he was given permission to return.
Nine years later, he applied for permission again. What had he done in those nine years? He's a registered nurse. For most of the nine years, he has worked with children with mental problems.
In short, he has worked, paid taxes and avoided trouble.
So why hasn't he been able to get an answer on his request to travel?
By the way, the request was made correctly. Morrison has a lawyer, Suzanne Brown. She has a thick file on the case. She has written letters to Moyer and to people in Washington.
She told me she cannot get an answer. Not a yes, not a no, and certainly not an explanation for what is now a 23-month wait.
I have dealt with Moyer over the years. I called him and left a message. The next day, I received a call from Tim Counts, a spokesperson for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I asked why Morrison can't get an answer.
Counts said he could not comment on a specific case. He cited concerns for privacy.
Privacy? Morrison is very open about his past. He gives lectures about Northern Ireland. He was recently on a panel at Case Western Reserve University's law school. He had his lawyer give me his records. He is not concerned about his privacy.
"Our policy remains that we don't discuss individual cases," Counts said.
Generally speaking then, if a person makes a request in July 2009, how long should he have to wait for a response?
"We process applications as expeditiously as possible, but each application is adjudicated on its individual merits and sometimes an application takes significantly longer than typical," Counts said.
Like indefinitely?
"Don't finish my thoughts," Counts said.
To the people of Northern Ireland, the Troubles are over. A peace accord has been signed. Protestants and Catholics share power.
But for us, the war never ends. The past always trumps the present.
"What kind of message are we sending to the people of the Middle East when we won't accept peace?" I asked Counts.
"I can't speculate on that," he said.
I can.

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Northern Ireland police seek access to Troubles tapes

Police in NI have launched a legal bid for access to confidential Troubles archives held by an American college.

13 May 2011
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland

The recordings, held by Boston College, are of former republicans and loyalists talking about their actions in the Troubles.
They are being sought by detectives investigating cases of people murdered and secretly buried by the IRA.
Interviewees were promised that their accounts would not be published until after they had died.
The interviews were carried out by researchers working on an oral history project at Boston College in the late 1990s.
In return for honest accounts, they promised their interviewees confidentiality and assured them their accounts would not be made available until after they had died.
Now, however, prosecutors in Northern Ireland want the material to be handed over.
This is the first time they have tried to use the Boston College oral history collection to build criminal cases.
The subpoena seeks accounts from two former IRA members who accused Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams of running a secret cell within the IRA that carried out the kidnappings and disappearance - something Gerry Adams has denied doing or having any knowledge of.

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Remembering the Hungerstrike

April 3, 2011
By Matt Morrison

Just as those of us who are old enough to remember where we were or what we were doing when JFK was shot, I remember where I was when Bobby Sands died on Hunger Strike. I was about one hundred yards away from Sands, a prisoner of the British in the Cages of Long Kesh. We Republican POWs in the Cages had the political status that the British had so arbitrarily denied our comrades in the H Blocks and Armagh Prison.
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE!!!

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Remembering the Hungerstrike

April 3, 2011
By Gretchen Bales

It is hard to imagine it has been thirty years since the word hungerstrike became a headline in the news. I was not raised in a traditional Irish American household, yet as an eighteen year old, I vividly remember the day Bobby Sands died. I also remember sitting in a classroom at the end of my senior year of high school when a teacher made the comment, if the fools want to starve to death, just let them. Now, thirty years later I still remember those words and the effect it had on me. The Sunday morning following Sands’ death, I can recall sitting in mass, no one mentioned the hungerstrike or what was happening in the north. I don’t know why, but I didn’t get out of my seat to take communion, all I did the entire service was weep and it was something odd that I can’t describe, but an anger was growing inside me, an anger that motivated me later in my life as an adult to never again remain silent and allow insults against the Irish people.
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE!!!

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Remembering the Hungerstrikers

An Interview with Terry Kirby, Former Blanketman Written

Monday, March 28, 2011
By Bobby Lavery

Not one single day goes by without thoughts of our ten heroes of the 1981 Hunger Strike and the smashed hopes of the 1980 Strike.
The 1980 Strike looked to be a success with the Brits promising an end to the Strike and a new approach from them. With at least one of the strikers near to death we hadn’t a lot of choice, the strike was called off and the rest is history. What followed was a total devastation, and it was a feeling we were soon to get used to during the next year. To survive without losing our sanity was nothing less than a miracle.
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE!!!

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