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A L S O+T O D A Y
"You start to think that he's dead"
T A B L E+T A L K Should the Clinton administration reconsider its policy of reconciliation with China? Draft policy in the Headlines area of Table Talk
R E C E N T L Y The question that won't go away The China syndrome The danceable tragedy Can Amtrak survive? Gun smoke - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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-----A death foretold
BY MARGARET SPILLANE | Less than a year ago Rosemary Nelson of Lurgan, Northern Ireland, told me she worried that her three children might see her murdered, just the way the children of a fellow human rights lawyer, Pat Finucane, had seen their father gunned down at the dinner table back in 1989. The worry would not go away. Just a few weeks ago, when Nelson was leading demands for an inquiry into alleged collusion between British security forces and loyalist paramilitaries in the Finucane assassination, she asked Prime Minister Tony Blair's office for protection. She was denied it, causing her to lie awake nights contemplating scenarios of her own violent death. On Monday, Nelson was murdered. After a weekend fishing trip with her husband, she was heading for work when a bomb strapped to the underside of her car tore her legs off and ripped through her abdomen. Her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah, was on lunch break in her school yard, less than 50 yards away. Nelson's sister, a teacher at the same school, spoke with Rosemary as firefighters cut through the twisted metal that pinioned the victim. Nelson lived two hours longer. According to Dolores Kelly, deputy mayor of nearby Craigavon, Nelson "took the issues nobody else wanted to touch," representing clients in both Catholic and Protestant communities. Last month Nelson went to Blair's office at 10 Downing Street to discuss the persistence of harassment by Northern Ireland's Royal Ulster Constabulary, intimidation intended to discourage her from providing people with republican politics their right to legal counsel. She described how members of the RUC had repeatedly issued death threats against her because her large, cross-community clientele included Colin Duffy, a man who'd been acquitted of murdering two RUC members; the family of Robert Hamill, a Catholic walking home from a dance who was kicked to death by a loyalist mob while four RUC officers watched from their Land Rover; and a group of 200 nationalists trapped in their neighborhood by a contingent of hard-line loyalist Orange Order members who'd set up camp there, whom police would not remove in spite of legal directives forbidding the encampment. A tiny group of professional killers called the Red Hand Defenders have claimed responsibility for Nelson's death. But Northern Ireland's police chief, Ronnie Flanagan, admitted Tuesday that the faction lacked the technical resources to pull off this car-bombing alone, suggesting collaboration with other more expert assassins. The killers' twofold goal was to silence one of the most visible crusaders against police intimidation in the six counties and to undermine the year-old Northern Ireland peace process by provoking a cycle of violent reaction. Nelson's assassination comes at what was already a delicate moment for a peace process that began with the signing of the Good Friday accord last year: The new Northern Ireland Assembly's first minister, David Trimble, has made clear that he will require a commitment that the Irish Republican Army is ready to begin decommissioning of weapons before he will permit the two Sinn Fein delegates to take their seats. On Wednesday, President Clinton will meet with Irish officials and leaders from the North and South, to try to push the peace process forward. The horror at Nelson's murder will either stabilize the process -- or set it back dramatically. Yet in spite of Monday's horrifying event -- and of the nearly three dozen murders in Northern Ireland over the past year -- it is still possible to declare that the bomb and the gun are no longer decisive in Northern Irish politics. Last spring voters on both sides of the Irish border voted overwhelmingly in support of the Good Friday accord, an extraordinary document that established new cross-border legislative and judicial bodies jointly representing the Republic of Ireland and Britain as well as calling for reform in key areas of contention -- including policing.
N E X T+P A G E+| Beyond Catholic vs. Protestant polarities |
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