Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Last-Round DefeatAuthor(s): Kevin CullenSource: Fortnight, No. 303 (Feb., 1992), pp. 9-10Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25553276 .

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closely scrutinised. But, as several

of the representatives of the newly democratised east European states

commented in Copenhagen, those

who seek to set standards for others

must be prepared to have their own

record examined too.

Groups campaigning on human

rights in Northern Ireland can only welcome a new Europe and North

America-wide forum in which to

raise abuses?in the hope that in

ternational embarrassment will

have more effect on the British

government than reasoned argu ment and lobbying nearer home.

Michael Farrell

Last-round

defeat

THROUGHOUT half a dozen le

gal engagements over nine years, Joe Doherty lost only once in the

American courts. But, in the end, it

was the only one that mattered.

The Supreme Court's decision

last month to side with the US gov ernment and deny Mr Doherty a

new hearing for political asylum sent him packing for a cell in the

Maze, and effectively ended the

career of Irish-America's biggest cause celehre.

Irish-Americans are a fractious

lot, divided largely along the lines

of their support or contempt for the

Provos?the latter group being in

the considerable majority. In Joseph Patrick Thomas Doherty, however,

they found something they could

agree on, his standing as a con

victed IRA killer notwithstanding. Mr Doherty (37) slipped into

New York after escaping from Bel

fast prison, where he was being held for the 1980 killing of a British

army captain, for which he was

convicted in absentia. Gradually, after his 1983 arrest by FBI agents in the Manhattan bar where he

worked, he became a rallying point for many Irish-Americans who saw

his being held without charge in the US as unconstitutional and Wash

ington's attempts to return him to

the UK as an unlawful incursion of

foreign-policy considerations into

the courts. Government agents who

worked for his deportation said he

was a murderer who claimed a po litical motivation that was no longer

recognised under US immigration law.

Through a public-relations cam

paign initiated by a small band of

supporters, then carried on by Irish

American newspapers and politi

cians, Mr Doherty became a

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More settlers, no settlement

OVER the past months, first in

Madrid and then in Washington, the world has watched the fanfare

accompanying the middle-east

peace process. On the surface, ques tions of procedure and symbolism have predominated: who would at

tend; where the parties would sit;

who would speak. The rhetoric,

too, has been analysed for every nuance in tone and phrase.

But, as the electoral agenda in

Israel takes over?two tiny ultra

right religious parties withdrew

their support from the government of Yitzhak Shamir last month?the

essential message of the talks seems

to have escaped notice: vis-a-vis

the Palestinians, the Israelis are

ready to offer nothing in the realm

of justice. Yes, they are ready to

offer peace with Palestinians?but

only if the surrender of national

identity, political rights and the re

maining land on which Palestin

ians live can be called 'peace'. In

official parlance this surrender is

denoted 'limited autonomy'. After more than four decades of

Israeli expansion and Palestinian

displacement, one wonders why the

media, statespeople and other in

terested parties have trouble nam

ing 'limited autonomy' for what it

is?an attempt to expand and make

permanent the Israeli presence in

the West Bank and Gaza and bring an end to Palestinian culture and

Palestinians' sense of themselves

as a people. It is an attempt to

defeat and humiliate them.

One wonders, too, why Jews

and others seem unable to grasp the

meaning of this autonomy from the

perspective of Jewish history.

Could we not say that the finalisa

tion of the Israeli triumph and Pal

estinian displacement brings to an

end the history of suffering and the

ethical imperative which charac

terised for millennia the centre of

Jewish life and inheritance? And

why is it that so many in the Jewish

community fail to see the obvious

parallel to our own recent experi ence of displacement, deportation,

expropriation, torture and murder?

This failure of analysis has re

duced a referendum on Jewish his

tory to procedure and rhetoric. Thus

the travelling conference, rather

than addressing the substantive is

sues, has simply been an attempt to

buy time?time for the Israelis to

ride out American pressure in the

post-Gulf-war era; time for Pales

tinians to seek space to ward off, if

even for a moment, the last tidal

wave of Israeli expansion. But when

the interest of the US government is exhausted, who will intervene on

behalf of the Palestinian people, and Jewish history?

To save the Palestinian people, no one?least of all the Arab states

who have so often spoken force

fully, if hypocritically, of them.

They are biding time as well, to see

if the New World Order will stabi

lise their own fragile and limited

power. Their survival is dependent on the very status quo?of which

Israel is a part?which they so of

ten denounce. What they want is a

less obviously intrusive Israel:

some progress on the Golan Heights and in the south of Lebanon?so

that victory, even amid defeat, can

be claimed. To give a little on

these issues would serve Israel

immensely in the court of world

opinion and do little to hurt its

primary interest in bringing about

the end of Palestine; it might even

advance that interest.

The Palestinian negotiators are

aware of all of this and more. Like

the Jewish leaders in eastern Eu

rope during the Nazi period, they are caught in an historical tragedy of epic proportions. The Judenrat,

the Jewish councils in the ghettoes of eastern Europe, were granted limited autonomy similar to that

being offered to Palestinians to

day. Many of their leaders felt that

negotiation, as a form of politics within surrender, was the only way to lessen the Nazi onslaught. Like

today's Palestinian leadership, these Jewish leaders were hardly traitors: they sought in the last hours

of their people to save the remnant,

to somehow bequeath to a new gen eration the promise of a future.

Palestinian leadership, which is

witnessing the ghettoisation of Pal

estinians and the prospect of their

ultimate expulsion?trends which

have continued and are even accel

erating as talk of autonomy be

gins?are gambling that the

historical process, always open and

unpredicatable, may one day re

verse that which now seems inevi

table. Yet one cannot help but see

beneath the rhetoric of the peace table and the glamour of global television the armed resistance of

the Warsaw ghetto?when even the

symbols of self-government failed

and the last muted appeals to the

world fell on deaf ears.

Marc Ellis

FORTNIGHT FEBRUARY 9

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Apart from the tens of thousands who died, hundreds of thousands fled El Salvador's civil war

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It looks like peace AS the last few minutes of the

outgoing UN secretary general Javier Perez de Cuellar' s five-year term ticked away at the end of the

old year, negotiators for the

Salvadorean government and

rebels ofthe Farabundo Marti Lib

eration Front finally agreed to end

El Salvador's 12-year civil war.

Hours later, Salvadoreans

danced cumbias and exploded fire

works, and the FMLN hoisted a

banner in front ofthe metropolitan

cathedral, tomb of Archbishop Ro

mero, probably the war's most fa

mous martyr.

Archbishop Romero, shot dead

in 1980 by a right-wing death squad as he said Mass, paid with his life for speaking out against the causes

of a war that has claimed the lives

of 75,000?mainly civilians?and

displaced over a million. He de

nounced the grinding poverty of

most of the country's 5 million

inhabitants and the barbaric ex

cesses of a US-funded army. The early guerrilla offensives

of 1981 and 1982 were put down with astonishing brutality. The

FMLN was stunted but not de

feated and a massive guerrilla of

fensive in San Salvador in 1989 showed that they were no spent force. This last offensive brought the US administration to the reali

sation that the only solution to the

Salvadorean war?which had al

ready cost US taxpayers $4 bil

lion?was a negotiated one.

The new secretary general, Bhoutros Bhoutros Gali, has re

ferred to the New York accord

as a "negotiated revolution".

Guerrilla strategy has been to re

move the obstacles to their being a viable political force that can

effect the social change they origi

nally set out to achieve by means

of revolution.

The major obstacle has been

the corrupt and murderous 53,000

strong armed forces, which from

this month?the beginning of a

nine-month period of 'armed

peace' before the definitive cease

fire?will gradually be cut by half.

Rapid reaction battalions will be

disbanded and a civilian commis

sion will set about purging the

army of officers involved in hu

man rights abuse and corruption. The military-led security forces

will be replaced by a civilian-run

National Police force, in which

demobilised FMLN combatants

can participate. The peace proc ess will be monitored by the UN,

and the multipartite national Com

mission for Peace (COPAZ). "This is a great political and

diplomatic coup for us," said Vic

tor Amaya, the FMLN's London

based representative. "But the

hardest part is yet to come." Mr

Amaya fears a backlash from the

far right, who have opposed nego tiations. Already journalists, poli

ticians, the church and UN

personnel have been threatened.

Another major concern is the

reconstruction of this war-ravaged

country. The US has promised

aid, but there is already heated

debate about how it will be channelled.

Mary Durran

celebrity. His case was featured on

Sixty Minutes, the most watched

TV show in America, as well as on

the front page of most US newspa

pers. More than 130 members of

Congress?most of whom say they

oppose the IRA and its tactics?

signed up as Doherty supporters. Above indignant howls from Brit

ish diplomats, New York City Council renamed in his honour a

street corner he could see from the

Manhattan cell he occupied for eight

years.

Aiding all this was Mr Doher

ty's rugged good looks, intellect,

boyish charm and earnestness. In

deed, though he had not felt the sun

on his face for nearly a decade, and

had been convicted of murder, Joe

Doherty was arguably the most fa

mous Irishman in America.

His string of legal victories in

American courts, however, came

to an anti-climactic end last month.

Initially, Mr Doherty sought politi cal asylum, but in 1986 he said he

was willing to be deported to the

republic. That changed, however,

when the Irish and British govern ments signed an extradition treaty. When Mr Doherty tried again to

seek asylum, however, he was

blocked by the then attorney gen

eral, Dick Thornburgh, who as

serted unabashed that it was in the

interest of US foreign policy that Mr Doherty be returned to the UK.

But if Mr Doherty sought to alter his legal strategy to match the

changes in law and intergovern mental relations, the Supreme Court

overruled the federal appeals court

in New York, which had said he was indeed entitled to a new asy

lum hearing. The majority opinion, written by the chief justice, Wil

liam Rehnquist, held that Mr

Thornburgh had not abused his dis

cretion when he overruled a 1989

decision by the Board of Immigra tion Appeals, which said that Mr

Doherty deserved a new hearing because of changes in the extradi

tion treaty. The Doherty ruling has impli

cations for many other political

refugees seeking a haven in the US.

Lawyers say refugees will now have

to make a choice?sometimes

Hobson's choice?when deciding what legal course they want to pur

sue, and to stand by it even when

unforeseen events make that course

unwise.

Mr Doherty's legal setback

came as two men in similar posi

tions, but with different legal strat

egies, prevailed. The same court

that had upheld Mr Doherty's right for a new asylum hearing ruled that

the former British paratrooper and

IRA bomber Peter McMullen could not be extradited, because a 1986

treaty between the US and Britain

had illegally singled him out for

punishment. That decision came just days

after a federal judge in New York had granted political asylum to a

Belfast man, Sean Mackin, whom

the authorities have accused of be

ing involved in IRA activity before he entered the US in 1983. The

judge said Mr Mackin, who hails

from a republican family, would be

subject to persecution if returned to

Northern Ireland.

While Mr Doherty was also an

intended target of the 1986 treaty, Mr McMullen's legal victory had

no bearing on his case, since the

former was seeking asylum, not

trying to avoid extradition. It is a

legal distinction that all refugees will be forced to consider when

they make their initial petitions for

relief before US courts.

The legal defeat that bound Mr

Doherty for the Maze came just

days after his place as Irish-Ameri

ca' s sweetheart had been cemented.

After he had voiced mild criticism ofthe IRA's bombing of Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast in Novem

ber, he was unceremoniously

dumped as a columnist for the Irish

People, a weekly newspaper pub lished by Noraid, the American IRA

support group. That sacking led to

acrimony among Irish-Americans

who support the IRA?while the

sizable majority who do not pointed out the hypocrisy of those who were

complaining that Mr Doherty was

being held prisoner for his political views.

In the end, the IRA's house or

gan in the US had to back down in the face of popular support for the

IRA's face in America.

Joe Doherty had won. But he

still lost.

Kevin Cullen

A bigger stage?

THE German Christian Democrat Egon

Klepsch was last month elected

president of the European Parliament

replacing the Spanish Socialist

Enrique Baron.

It was only six days before the

election when the 189-strong Socialist group declared that it

would not put forward its own

candidate. Up to that time the Social Democratic and Labour party Leader, John Hume, had been receiving

strong support from the British Labour

group?and was behaving every bit

the candidate.

News that he was willing to

stand for the top post in the parlia ment was greeted with some surprise

10 FEBRUARY FORTNIGHT

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