Belfast Agreement @25: The deal laid the foundation for moral abyss into which we’ve fallen, writes Kenny Donaldson

The position of our group, SEFF, which mainly represents innocent victims of terrorism, has been consistent and unwavering; that the violence of 'the Troubles' was futile and was wrong and that ultimately it achieved nothing except separating people, breaking trust and ravaging lives.

More than 3,000 people are dead as a result of that terrorist campaign, and tens of thousands were injured, with the vast majority being innocent victims/survivors who did not go out with intent to harm their fellow neighbour.

The sight of watching unrepentant terrorists walk free from prison, and in many cases being treated as heroes when they returned to the communities from which they came, was devastating for many people 25 years ago. For many vicims and survivors who had never seen punitive justice for the killer of their loved one, there was also a horrible realisation that the likelihood of the state proactively advancing such cases after the agreement settlement was highly unlikely. So it has proven.

Protracted decommissioning which enabled terrorism to have armaments destroyed or put beyond use which held the evidential secrets to their heinous crimes was also part of the skulduggery of a settlement which had no concern for innocent victims/survivors - who were viewed as collateral damage for bigger interests, to appease terrorists and apologists for terrorism.

Approximately 60% of those who died were murdered by republican terrorist organisations, approx. 30% of those who died were murdered by loyalist terrorists and 10% of those who died were killed by the UK state and its security forces. A small sub-section of those state killings were actual murder.

Then there were the secret assurance letters given to terrorists which were a covert way of bypassing the expressed will of Parliament, who would not back the Labour government's official efforts in 2006 to finalise the On The Runs issue. We also had Royal Prerogatives of Mercy with 10 years of records in the run up to the Belfast Agreement having magically disappeared - supposedly no back up copy of recipients exists.

The Blair administration presided over the wanton appeasement of terrorism, believing that the ends justified the means at all costs, there was laid the foundation for the moral abyss to which our society has fallen. Successive UK governments since then have also sought to divide and conquer people by teasing them into accepting particular positions, conditioning them to believe that nothing better is possible.

The death rate from terror-related actions and other related civil unrest has certainly decreased since the 1998 Belfast Agreement but is what we have now really good enough?

Aside from the ongoing threat of physical violence (brought into sharp focus of late through the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell in Omagh) the terror campaign is being fought through psychological terrorism and historical rewrite, with the objective of cleansing the reputations of perpetrators and hateful ideologies.

A poll last year found that nearly 70% of nationalist voters agree with Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill that there was “no alternative” to IRA violence. Depressingly, this can be interpreted as meaning that growing numbers of the population now support a terrorism that the overwhelming bulk of voters who lived through would not support at the time.

Whether its terror memorials, sports grounds named after terrorists, band parades commemorating terrorists or communal public displays of memorialisation to individuals such as Seamus McElwaine, Provisional IRA, Billy Wright, LVF, or those responsible for the Miami Showband attack, all are wrong and must cease.

In Northern Ireland, we are conditioned to believe that we must divide on denominational religion and that we must divide on our position on the constitutional future of this place. Rather than focus on such division, there is a greater power in building on those values which unify us.

But 25 years on from the Belfast Agreement, we are clear that it is innocent victims and survivors of terrorism and other Troubles-related violence who must now be the constituency who are appeased. Their needs must become a priority of government.

All of us have a responsibility to challenge the normalistion of terrorism.

• Kenny Donaldson is director of South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF)