News supplement to No.325, January 2025

Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP): The work continues apace

The AVP community facilitated 41 workshops across the country in 2024, engaging a total of 416 participations. Two community gatherings were held to reflect on its work and community, to reconnect with one another, and welcome new volunteers. It has also been busy supporting volunteers through inductions, further training, check-ins, and debriefing sessions. In July a new coordinator was appointed, Lisa Oelschlegel, who has a wide variety of relevant experience. AVP Ireland is a community of volunteers inside and outside prisons who run experiential workshops in conflict resolution and restorative practices; AVP is for anyone who wants to learn to build better relationships, prevent conflict and resolve it when it occurs and who is willing to share his/her skills and experience. Workshops are non residential and are run mostly in prisons around Ireland and during week-ends. Contact at info@avpireland.ie and a new website should be available soon at https://www.avpireland.ie/

Close Collins Aerospace’ demo at Shannon

Following regular events at Collins Aerospace in Cork calling for its closure, an event will take place at Shannon at 12 noon on Friday 10th January at Collins Aeospace, Unit 1, Brookvale, East Park, Shannon, also calling for its closure. Collins Aerospace is a subsidiary of RTX, USA weapons manufacturer of weapons used by the IDF in Gaza. Organised by East Clare for Palestine https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=east%20clare%20for%20palestine

Video on feminist, antimilitarist view of peacekeeping

At https://kroc.nd.edu/news-events/events/2024/12/05/intersectional-beginnings-and-abolitionist-endings-decolonial-feminist-and-anti-militarist-theorising-on-peacekeeping/ Prof Marsha Henry discusses some of the issues in her book “The End of Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention”. Source: Mitchell Institute, QUB, January 2025 Newsletter.

Mairead Maguire nominates Prof Qumsiyeh for Nobel Peace Prize

Mairead Maguire has nominated Prof Mazi Qumsiyeh of Palestine for the Nobel Peace Prize. She states that “the pressures of the Israel occupation on his people and the pressure on the environment that culminated in genocide and ecocide ensured Qumsiyeh pursued a life focused on peace-making, non-violent resistance, service to people, and service to nature.” More details at  https://www.peacepeople.com/nobel-peace-prize-professor-mazin-qumsiyeh-bethlehem-palestine/

Adi Roche given honorary degree by UCC

Adi Roche of Chernobyl Children International (CCI) received the honorary Doctorate of Arts from UCC in recognition of her work as ‘a humanitarian and educator of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, campaigner for peace and leadership as an anti-nuclear advocate’. The ceremony took place at UCC on 11th December and those attending included Anna Gabriel, Raisa Carolan and Marharyta Marozova, all of whom were abandoned to a children’s institution in Belarus as infants, suffering from a wide range of Chernobyl related disabilities and illnesses but whose lives were transformed thanks to the intervention of Irish humanitarian support. Adi Roche has led CCI to deliver over €108 million of humanitarian aid and services to the Chernobyl affected regions and the charity is already in preparation for the 40th Anniversary commemorations in 2026. https://www.chernobyl-international.com/

Irish CND welcomes Nobel Prize for A & H Bomb survivors

Irish CND has welcomed the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations, with the award presented at the annual ceremony in Oslo on 10th December. The award recognizes Nihon Hidankyo, in the words of Nobel Committee, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” Irish CND congratulated Nihon Hidankyo on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, “recognizing the power of their courage and determination in exposing the ghastly truth about nuclear weapons, often while battling the personal scars of ill-health, social stigma and advancing age.”   However their statement went on to say “If nuclear weapons are ever used again, the scale of destruction will inevitably be far greater than that which caused such suffering to the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Far too many “near-misses” have already been documented. While nuclear warheads remain ready to fire, life on earth as we know it remains just minutes away from an apocalyptic end. We have been dependent on luck to avoid that fate for too long. Sooner or later, whether through malice, machismo, miscalculation or malfunction, that luck will run out”. Irish CND then called “on all states to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We call on the leaders of nuclear-armed states, in particular, to heed the call of those who have experienced the utter depravity of nuclear warfare, and to put their countries’ stocks of nuclear warheads out of use forever.”

CAJ: Paramilitary transition, policing Sperrins activists, protest rights

Material in the December 2024 issue of the CAJ/Committee on the Administration of Justice publication Just News includes a piece by Prof Kieran McEvoy on information recovery from armed groups in the context of the Northern Ireland Troubles, and a piece by Marie Breen-Smyth on universal human rights and paramilitary transition. There is also a piece looking at an independent CAJ report on PSNI policing of environmental protesters/protectors in the Sperrins regarding gold mining with a number of areas of concern raised; this report, Policing the Protectors: A Narrative Report of PSNI Policing of Environmental Protest in the Sperrins”, was launched in September 2024 and is available at https://caj.org.uk/publications/reports/policing-the-protectors-a-narrative-report-of-psni-policing-of-environmental-protest-in-the-sperrins/ The December issue of Just News is available at https://caj.org.uk/publications/our-newsletter/just-news-december-2024/ Meanwhile CAJ, PILS, EJNI and FoE in the North have launched a 44-page Know Your Rights’ Guide to Protest” in Northern Ireland, with clear information and contacts for different areas of concern. Download at https://caj.org.uk/publications/submissions-and-briefings/know-your-rights-the-right-to-protest/ The links include https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Know-Your-Rights-Protest.pdf which is the ICCL equivalent guide, “Know your right – The right to protest”, for the Republic.

Garda dossiers on children

ICCL/Irish Council for Civil Liberties has highlighted the issue of An Garda Síochána creating thousands of unlawful intelligence files on children under the age of 12 – some for infants as young as 42 days old – between 1999 and 2023.  This followed a Garda Inspectorate report in early December. Olga Cronin, ICCL Enforce Senior Policy Officer, said:  “……this is yet another unfortunate example of An Garda Síochána demonstrating a poor grasp of data protection legislation and does not augur well for Garda use of powerful technologies such as facial recognition technology.” Fuller details and links at https://www.iccl.ie/news/thousands-of-unlawful-garda-surveillance-dossiers-created-about-children-including-infants/

Journalists unlawfully spied on

In a further stage of a long running saga, in mid-December the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that the PSNI and the London Metropolitan Police illegally spied on journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey who were involved in the programme No stone unturned looking at police collusion in the Loughinisland pub massacre of 1994. It was already established that the PSNI acted illegally in arresting them and seizing computer and other materials in their hunt for the source of leaked information. This was a further case regarding what was decided to be unlawful covert surveillance. More information online and in other media.

Death of Tom Hyland

We regret to record the death of Tom Hyland, founder of the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign (ETISC) in 1992 where, in President Higgins’ words he made “a deeply significant contribution to the independence struggle and establishment of Timor-Leste” – which formally got its independence in 2002 from Indonesia and its genocidal level of violence, this followed a referendum in 1999. ETISC was effective at both Irish and EU levels. A bus driver by profession, Tom Hyland was also a co-founder of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He died in Dili on 24th December. Warm tributes included that from President José Ramos-Horta. Further information is available by using a word search.