A PROMINENT human rights activist has publicly disassociated himself from the Human Rights Commission's proposals for a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights.
In a written submission to the Westminster Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which is investigating the Bill of Rights proposals, Professor Liam Kennedy said that human rights were universal, not specific to Northern Ireland.
Therefore, he argue
d, there was no need to create a separate bill for the Province.
Prof Kennedy's comments attacking the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission's (NIHRC) proposals follow those of Prof Brice Dickson, one of the original architects of the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights concept.
Prof Dickson said that he now believed there had to be a radically smaller Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland than that supported by Prof Monica McWilliams, his predecessor as chief commissioner at the NIHRC.
Prof Kennedy, professor of economic and social history at Queen's University, is the founder of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Association (NIHRA), "a voluntary organisation without State or large-scale philanthropic funding".
He said that since 1997 his organisation had campaigned against the worst human rights' abuses in Northern Ireland – those perpetrated by paramilitaries.
He said: "We hardly need reminding of the scale of these activities: between 1973 and 2008 the police recorded well over 3,000 'punishment' shootings in Northern Ireland and 2,500 'punishment' assaults, carried out by loyalist and republican paramilitary organisations."
But he was scathing of other "human rights" organisations which, he said, largely ignored paramilitary punishment attacks.
"NIHRA condemned state violations but we also highlighted and opposed human rights abuses by the IRA, the UVF, the UDA and other illegal organisations."
Several other "well-funded" human rights organisations had extended "a Nelsonian blind eye" to such paramilitary violence, he said.
Those same organisations then lobbied to have a special Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland, and, he argued, their reticence to address the human rights abuses of paramilitaries dented their authority to demand a bill of "human rights".
"Our view, to use a rather unkind term, is that the 'human rights industry' in Northern Ireland has been wrong in its focus and its principal concerns.
"Because it has been self-regarding and somewhat self-serving, it has forfeited the trust to speak with any kind of authority or representative voice on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.
"The unwieldy proposals emanating from the Human Rights Commission, influenced heavily by various vested interest groups, serve to underline the selective and partisan concerns of the self-styled human rights community."
He added: "Time and scarce resources have been lavished on a parochial project that has all the appearances of having produced a white elephant, though over a gestation period that exceeds that of elephants in the natural world."
