Dickson hits out at NIO human rights record

The outgoing Chief Commissioner of the NI Human Rights Commission has criticised the human rights record of the Northern Ireland Office during his tenure.

In an open letter to Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Paul Murphy, Professor Brice Dickson said he could not “help felling that on many occasions your government is content to pay lip service to human rights without actually doing much to protect them in practice”.

He continued: “The delays that have been put in the way of revealing the truth about the murder of Patrick Finucane, the obstructionism of the Ministry of Defence during the Bloody Sunday Tribunal, the tolerance of Loyalist and Republican “punishment attacks” (no-one in government is able to tell us how many people have been prosecuted for these crimes) and the appalling lack of support for prisoners and young people with mental health problems in Northern Ireland are all telling signs that New Labour is not quite the caring, rights-orientated government that we hoped it would be when it was first elected in 1997…”

Professor Dickson will finish his six terms of office on Monday with no announcement yet made on his successor.

Meanwhile, the NIHRC has settled a case taken against the Secretary of State over the right to access visits to the Juvenile Justice Centre in Rathgael, Bangor.

The settlement will give the Commission access to the Centre by 1 May 2005 and will meet with the Prison Service before then to discuss its proposed research.

The Commission had sought a judicial review of the decision by the Northern Ireland Office not to grant it access rights to the Centre.

The HRC said it wanted to check whether the recommendations contained in its report 'In Our Care: Promoting the Rights of Children in Custody', published in March 2002, are being properly implemented.

The report at the time made a number of findings regarding the treatment of young offenders in the juvenile justice system.

(MB/SP)