Kenny Donaldson: The legacy of injustice for Kingsmill families hasn't gone away
Once again, a report has been produced this week which has had the effect of psychologically torturing innocents impacted by the Kingsmills massacre. Why do we say this?
The Irish state principally but also the UK state have provided the absolute minimum they could in terms of disclosure and accountability, and that has been often through the victims themselves having to strongarm these institutions and bodies.
To this point the Provisional IRA have made no effort to deal with the gravity of Kingsmills.
Sinn Fein leaders have issued weasel words of 'acknowledgement,' but never confirming the illegitimacy of the crime perpetrated - less still any call for those responsible to be held accountable.
And the Irish government flexed its muscles around what it would deliver for the families.
In reality, it was never willing to lift the weight required.
The Kingsmills families have been systematically failed for almost five decades since that dastardly deed was perpetrated.
Our thoughts are with the families of the 10 innocents murdered at Kingsmills and also lone survivor Alan Black who has had to carry the trauma of that evening for almost 50 years - that unimaginable brutality inflicted by those led by sectarian and ethnic motivated hatred of their own Protestant neighbours.
There has been an attempt by some to recalibrate the crimes committed at Kingsmills, to try to enforce a false narrative that the UK state was complicit with the attack and were, at best, willing onlookers and, at worst, active participants.
The findings of the Police Ombudsman's report dismiss such a version of events.
The Provisional IRA - not the 'South Armagh Republican Action Force' nor anyone else - carried out this merciless attack and they planned it for months in advance, putting the well-developed plans into action upon the UVF giving them the retaliatory inroad through its sectarian motivated murders of the Reaveys and O'Dowds just 24 hours earlier.
Of course with hindsight the RUC could potentially have progressed the investigation further had they been given the adequate resources, and for families this will be what they will have wanted and expected from their state, but that's not what they received.
South Armagh was on the cusp of all-out sectarian violence akin to a civil war.
It needs remembering that Kingsmills occurred just four short months after the Tullyvallen massacre.
There remains time for those in default, who have failed the innocents of Kingsmills, to do the right thing. Their murders remain unresolved and a bloody stain on the local landscape.
The refusal of the authorities to provide answers around what they did with DNA evidence connected to a potential subject, which potentially links the events of Kingsmills with Tullyvallen and which could result in the prosecution of a particular individual (still alive) is an issue that remains unresolved.
The message is simple; due to the complexities and refusals of many to voluntarily engage in a fulsome way with Kingsmills, there is a growing argument for a public inquiry to be held with full compellability rights for any inquiry chair to speak with persons located across both jurisdictions and that list would be substantive - where openness and transparency replaces obstructiveness, avoidance and smoke and mirrors.
l Kenny Donaldson is director at South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF), Lisnaskea