PSNI chief Jon Boutcher recently labelled the deaths of RIC men killed during the Tan War as ‘terrorism’. Ironically, the comments were made to a committee in Westminster, the heartland of British colonialism, during a briefing regarding the conclusion of the Kenova Report – a so-called ‘investigation’ into MI5 directed state-terrorism.
Pádraic MacCoitir, a Lasair Dhearg spokesperson and political ex-prisoner, said, “These comments come as no surprise. The PSNI is nothing more than a rebadged RUC – ideological successors and direct inheritors of the role of Britain’s frontline occupational force in Ireland. It will shock no one that the head of Britain’s armed militia in Ireland is once again criminalising the Republican struggle. Westminster’s Ulsterisation strategy is public knowledge – its objectives simple: ‘primacy of the police’, ‘normalisation’ and ‘criminalisation’.”
Just a week later it emerged that thirty six PSNI gunmen sit on the Committee for Reconciliation and Information (ICRIR) that was set up under Britain’s so-called ‘Legacy act’. Thirty of them are also former members of the RUC, and ten are former British military personnel.
Pádraic continued, “The irony is lost on no-one that at the same time that Jon Boutcher labels Irish Republican soldiers as terrorists, his own force conveniently misplaced 40,000 rounds of ammunition from a training centre in Antrim, which will bring back familiar memories of RUC collusion with Loyalists. In a search, more than 25,000 rounds and 27 guns were discovered. The PSNI, Policing Board and Stormont’s ‘Justice’ department were all aware for years of the theft of guns and ammunition and yet took no steps to address it. It’s clear that these institutions exist solely to protect British interests in Ireland and the reputation of their structures in the Six Counties”
“This all shows the truth behind what Republicans have been warning of since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement almost 28 years ago. That collusion is still rife and that the PSNI is non-reformable and unchangeable. This is contrary to what the Stormont parties would have you to believe.”
Pádraic finished by saying, “Britain and it’s colonial administrators will always seek to criminalise our struggle – historically and presently – in the hopes to delegitimise the Republican position: that the British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland.”
