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On Wednesday, Mrs Margaret Sekaggya, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders met with a delegation of ten people to discuss the issues they face with regard to the Corrib Gas Project [1]. The delegation comprised seven members of Shell to Sea, Kilcommon parish priest Fr. Michael Nallen and two members of the human rights monitoring organisation Table Observers, Sr. Majella McCarron and Donal Ó Mearáin.
Mrs Sekaggya is visiting Ireland in order to evaluate the situation of human rights defenders in the country and will present a report with her findings to the UN Human Rights Council in March next year.
Members of the delegation raised many issues of concern including violence by the Gardaí, behaviour of the private security, the democratic deficit in the planning process, surveillance and harassment, selectivity in the application of the law, the undermining and stigmatisation of campaigners by the judiciary, the politicisation of the judicial process and the ineffectiveness of designated oversight bodies in particular the Garda Ombudsman.
Mrs Sekaggya is visiting Ireland in order to evaluate the situation of human rights defenders in the country and will present a report with her findings to the UN Human Rights Council in March next year.
Shell to Sea spokesperson Terence Conway stated “Communities in Ireland have no protection when they find themselves in the path of experimental oil and gas projects. We have been abused and ignored by most institutions of the state and left to defend our rights at huge personal risk. We hope that this report by an independent international expert will make it more difficult for the Irish State to hide it's domestic record on human rights.”
Shell to Sea spokesperson Maura Harrington also stated “My involvement in informed opposition to the Shell/Corrib Project as a citizen of Ireland has led me inexorably to the belief that we live in a failed state where the system of governance does not function on behalf of the common good”.
Sr Majella McCarron spoke of her positive experience of interacting with the Department of Foreign Affairs while working on Nigerian human rights issues, but said that when it came to working on domestic human rights issues the government attitude totally changed.
She stated about her experience of dealing with various Government departments “Ireland got the seat on the Human Rights Council because of their Foreign Affairs policy and not because of their domestic record. There is no regime or understanding of human rights in Ireland apart from as a diplomatic exercise”. [2]
Table Observers highlighted four areas of concern emerging from their human rights observations in Co. Mayo; the State's ambivalence towards human rights, behaviour of the police force which appears to have intimidatory or provocative intent, the behaviour of private security and the impression that court hearings are manipulated by the State for political reasons.
NOTES:
The Shell to Sea Submission to Mrs Sekaggya is available here.
Maura Harrington's personal statement to Mrs Sekaggya is available here.
[1] UN expert on rights defenders in first official visit to an EU country
http://www.ohchr.org/en/
[2] UN seat result of Tánaiste's constant close work with diplomatic service – Irish Times
http://www.irishtimes.com/