NI VETERANS COMMISSIONER – PRESS RELEASE – 16 APRIL 2025
While many in society have moved on from the dark days of the NI Troubles, veterans are not being allowed to and this must stop.
This week marks 27 years since the Belfast Agreement was signed. All these years later, while society have moved on with life, veterans, many of whom are also victims, have been left behind and feel forgotten. In 1998, and the years that followed, society in NI was told that to have peace it must accept some of the following:
- Accept terrorists being released from prisons;
- Accept terrorists receiving Royal pardons and ‘on the run’ letters;
- Accept terrorists in the government of NI.
Many people were deeply uncomfortable with this flagrant disregard of justice. Fast forward to 2025 and we now have a legacy process that is focused almost exclusively on the actions of lawful state forces. There are over 30 potential inquests into Troubles related killings and around 600 civil cases in the pipeline, with the vast majority of these involving the security forces.
To date we have had in the region of £350m of public money spent on legacy inquiries and yet not one penny of public money investigating atrocities against the military. For example – at Narrow Water in August 1979, 18 soldiers lost their lives in an IRA terrorist attack that was instigated in the Republic of Ireland, yet the UK and Irish governments are tone deaf when it comes to an inquiry about this event or many other similar events. Everyone in a civilised society should have the right to justice, but it must be equal justice and not a legal process that only scrutinises the actions of the security forces and ignores the context of the incidents and the reality of what was going on in Northern Ireland at that time.
During Operation Banner, military personnel were sent out under lawful military orders, in order to keep the peace, but are now being subjected to civilian law with the threat of prosecution up to 50 years later. Many veterans, quite rightly, feel betrayed. For those who put their own lives at risk to save life and protect property, and to now be targeted by legal ‘warfare’, and regularly demonised for their brave service, when the facts are that over 90% of the killings during the Troubles were committed by terrorists, is both immoral and unfair.
It is my hope that as the UK and Irish Governments, political parties and wider society reflects on another Belfast Agreement anniversary, they recognise the anger and frustration of the veteran community at a ‘peace process’ that has left them behind. Many of them lost colleagues to terrorist actions, and continue to bear the physical and mental scars of their service and for that society owes them a deep sense of gratitude.
As Veterans Commissioner I am convinced that there will never be true peace or reconciliation in Northern Ireland while the republican movement, facilitated by a Labour Government intent on reopening inquests, continues its lawfare strategy and demonisation of the brave men and women who served in Northern Ireland.
David Johnstone
NI Veterans Commissioner