Pilots Row, Rossville Street, Derry
12pm to 1.30pm
Facilitator: Mary Durkan
As the means by which the state and public authorities lie about their actions proliferate, campaigners for truth and justice must develop new ways to challenge and defy them.
All powerful institutions cover up wrongdoing and defeat attempts to hold them to account. Whether it is the deployment of police spies, churches embroiled in child abuse, hospitals accused of negligence, care homes of neglect or The Post Office wrongly prosecuting Sub Postmasters, officialdom is eternally determined to deny injustice. The universally reviled “Legacy Act” is just the latest in a long line of tactics deployed by the British state to avoid accountability for the abuses it has committed in the North of Ireland.
What can those of us engaged in trying to uncover the truth and obtain justice do to defy those lies and what can we learn from other attempts to secure accountability?
The event will be a discussion in the round, focused on confronting the official narrative about state abuses of human rights. We want a wide range of views, strategies and ideas to be heard along with updates from campaigns and families. It will be facilitated by barrister and campaigner Mary Durkan, with a brief to be as inclusive and participatory as possible.