Everyone must accept all paramilitary campaigns held NI back in trying to make political progress

DIETER Reinisch (Comment, January 11) argues that, while the Provisional IRA were not entitled to recognition as “prisoners of war” under the Geneva Convention, their treatment by successive British governments as “special category” prisoners gave substance to the IRA’s insistence that they were different from “ordinary criminals”.

Mr Reinisch is correct in both of these propositions. The IRA were obviously motivated by their nationalist convictions; they were not out for personal, or financial, gain and they were less likely than other prisoners to have mental illness.

However, what Mr Reinisch doesn’t do is follow on from the logic of his statement that republicans desired “a moral distinction from criminal convicts”. The IRA (and the UDA/UVF) of course want society to accept they had a moral right to kill in pursuit of their respective nationalist and unionist causes. But they didn’t.

One of our finest public servants, Dr Maurice Hayes, said that, while there had been many real wrongs in Northern Ireland, there was no justification to kill a single person on the grounds of perceived “injustice, unfairness, or discrimination”.

No international body, or human rights organisation, has accepted any “right” to kill in Ireland, whether in the 1970s, the 1980s, or today. Paramilitary campaigns were (and still are) unjustifiable.

I would respectfully suggest that until all the key players in public life are prepared to accept this, we are unlikely to see the real political progress that our whole community so desperately desires.

DR PHILIP MCGARRY By email