Opinion on Sunday: Time we faced home truths on paramilitaries

TEN years on from the first ceasefires and six years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, we are still living under the shadow of the para-militaries.

They haven't gone away you know. That's why we all need to face up to a few home truths.

As the IMC's report made clear, loyalists are responsible for most violence and by far most murders.

These are facts.

The IRA is also responsible for serious violence. Some senior members of Sinn Fein are members of the IRA.

These are facts.

The IRA, UDA, UVF, Real IRA are all up to their necks in criminality. Many are involved in drug dealing. These are facts.

It is time for everybody to face up to all these facts. Unionists, instead of pointing only to the IRA, need to face up to the fact that most violence comes from their own community.

Sinn Fein, instead of bleating that they are being victimised, need to end IRA paramilitary activity.

As the IMC finds, they have considerable influence on the IRA. They must use it - instead of trying to dismiss the findings of an international commission as a securocrat conspiracy against them.

We all need to face up to the fact that paramilitary activity means beating people up. It means ripping people off.

It even helped bring our democratic institutions of government down.

And it is not some kind of remnant of the Troubles. Try telling that to the parents of teenagers sold drugs by loyalists. Or to the driver of EUR3 million worth of cigarettes held up at gunpoint by the IRA at Jonesboro last December. In fact, it is the paramilitaries' way of earning fortunes well into the future.

That is a future that the people of Ireland never signed up to. It is a future that we never endorsed. When the people voted for the Good Friday Agreement, they expected the paramilitaries to go quietly into retirement.

They never agreed to the gold plated pension plans that many are now trying to carve out for themselves.

Ten years on from the ceasefires and six years on from the Agreement, this paramilitary activity and criminality has got to end. In truth, it should have ended long ago. That's why there can be no more excuses. There must be no more turning a blind eye.

All parties must choose a purely political path. The paramilitary bully-boys must be banished to the dustbin of history where they belong.

They deserve to be punished for their activities. They cannot be allowed to get away with just a slap on the wrist.

That is why the SDLP is calling for an all-Ireland Criminal Assets Bureau to seize the ill-gotten gains of drug dealers, racketeers and robbers throughout the island.

It is also why it is so important that the judiciary get real about sentencing.

People are tired of seeing paramilitaries - often guilty of sectarian crimes or racket-eering - getting off with light sentences.

Of course, judges must stand back from the sudden swings in public opinion that can result from particularly awful crimes. They should apply consistent principles in sentencing - nobody wants lynch law or sentencing by opinion polls.

But judges have to show that they are not out of touch. They must not withdraw from the sentencing debate or hide behind the formalities of the system.

The North's Chief Justice, Brian Kerr, is correct to say that there is a mechanism for correcting sentencing errors through the Court of Appeals - but it is weak and limited.

Lenient sentences cannot be appealed - only 'unduly' lenient ones can be. Worse, only the Attorney General makes the decision - victims and their families are left powerless and voiceless.

It is time for some fresh thinking in the whole area of sentencing.

Like much of the judicial system, it is far too remote from the man and woman in the street, the citizen in whose name the judges make their decisions.

That's why the SDLP wants real reforms to ensure better sentencing - not just of paramilitaries, but of ordinary criminals too.

Juries are instruments for public involvement in the justice process. We need to look seriously at allowing them to recommend sentences when they find somebody guilty.

We also believe that it should be possible for victims or their families to appeal against lenient sentences.

This would require them to be legally represented in court cases as they are in other jurisdictions.

The SDLP also believes that victims' families should be allowed to see the police files so that they can know if there was a proper police invest-igation in the first place.

But if we are to take justice down off its pedestal and give it back to the people, what we really need is to get the Assembly and its institutions up and running as soon as possible and have justice taken away from British Ministers and given to the Executive and Assembly.

That way we can ensure that our agenda for putting victims at the heart of the criminal process will get implemented.

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