Letters: US should proscribe all terror groups

It is time to stamp down hard on public glorification of the murder of innocents though terrorism.

This has been a core focus of our work for many years; as grievously wrong as it is that justice has been all but suspended post The Belfast Agreement, the real danger to Society in 2022 and going forward is the unpreparedness of Nations and Governments to clamp down on those who glorify and romanticise violence; creating the breeding ground for a further generation to be groomed and then destroyed.

The change must come from the top.

If the United States of America is the top sponsor of the peace process it is now time 24 years after the Belfast Agreement for it to send out a message that will be felt across this island once and for all - that almost a quarter of a century after the signing of the Belfast Agreement that all terror groups are an abomination to democracy and freedom and the American way of life.

It is not enough to proscribe today's 'dissident' terror groups that murdered Lyra McKee. We call on the U.S to proscribe the same groups that murdered Pat Finucane and Edgar Graham, Kevin McGuigan and Paul Quinn and Ian Ogle and Glen Quinn and so, so many others.

Why 24 years after the Belfast Agreement has the US only prescribed dissident republican groups but never the IRA, INLA, UVF or UDA, when we hear regular news and intelligence reports about their ongoing murders, gangsterism, racketeering and intimidation which continues to present a substantive risk to our democracy and our people therein?

These organisations are not historic, commemorative entities, they remain live, they still have access to weapons and their members are permitted to continue to operate as Mafia gangsters almost empowered to hold control of particular areas and communities.

These entities and their mouthpieces engage in vicious, organised trolling of their victims who attempt to speak out, and by the same means choke normal democratic discourse by intimidating into silence any free speech on social media they frown upon. The same is true where sinister organised trolling is also used regularly against broadcasters, politicians and journalists who seek to expose this ongoing madness.

Enough.Let the land of the brave and the free prove itself brave and stand for freedom of the tens of thousands of ordinary people on this island that still suffer under the jackboots of terror groups of all hues.How would the US administration react if sports teams which represent the USA or various .S states or cities persistently celebrated their victories by spontaneously breaking into praise for Al Qaeda or for example some other US domestic terror grouping that had claimed thousands of lives in the pursuit of the rights of a narrow section of American citizens…. For their own particular ethno-racial-religious rights through rivers of blood and tears of innocent victims?

How antithetical to the American dream and constitution!Well. If this would be an abomination on American TV and radio channels, we can assure Washington it is no less an abomination here on the island of Ireland .

Such praise by sports teams, politicians, so-called commentators and others on this island plunges a knife afresh into hearts of every widow whose husband was shot in cold blood in her own home. Turns the stomach and leaves dizzy every adult that saw their father literally torn to pieces in front of their innocent child like eyes.

America. We too wish to be a land of the brave and the free.Stand with us and face down the fascism on this island that still murders and maims and intimidates and extorts their own communities across this island daily.

America.In the name of democracy and freedom.It is time to finish what you started.It is time to put the IRA, INLA, UVF and UDA on the state department list of proscribed terror groups alongside the dissident Republican terror groups.

It is time the war on terror came to the island of Ireland.We await your response.Silence is not an option.

Kenny Donaldson, Spokesman for Innocent Victims United