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90_HR0044
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1 HOUSE RESOLUTION
2 WHEREAS, In the late 1960's peaceful opposition to
3 disenfranchisement, internment, and anti-Catholic
4 discrimination in Northern Ireland led to large protest
5 marches; and
6 WHEREAS, On January 30, 1972, one such peaceful protest
7 was indiscriminately fired upon by a British paratrooper
8 regiment and 14 of the demonstrators were killed; an act so
9 heinous that the day is remembered as Bloody Sunday; and
10 WHEREAS, The Widgery Report acknowledges that all of the
11 victims were unarmed, that most were shot in the back, and
12 that the killings were "reckless" but no British soldiers
13 were prosecuted; and
14 WHEREAS, Jack Duddy, Michael Kelly, James Wray, Patrick
15 Doherty, Hugh Gilmore, Kevin McElhiney, Bernard McGuigan,
16 John Young, Gerald McKinney, Michael McDaid, William Nash,
17 William McKinney, Gerald Donaghy, and John Johnston sought
18 the rights of equal citizens and paid the ultimate price for
19 challenging the British rule in Northern Ireland; and
20 WHEREAS, The perpetrators of this atrocity remain free;
21 and the Helsinki Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN
22 Committee on Torture report that 25 years later the British
23 still deny basic rights to Catholics; and
24 WHEREAS, The relatives of those murdered and injured
25 demand that the British government stop equivocating and
26 declare that all those murdered and injured on Bloody Sunday
27 were innocent, or at least entitled to their due presumption
28 of innocence; and that the British government finally bring
29 the murderers to justice; and
30 RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
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1 NINETIETH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we
2 remember those in Derry who sought justice 25 years ago and
3 gave their lives in their quest; and that we view with alarm,
4 as do the Catholics of Northern Ireland, the return of the
5 same paratrooper regiment back onto the streets of Northern
6 Ireland; and be it further
7 RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be given to the
8 families of the victims in recognition of the long struggle
9 for justice that their loved ones began in 1972 and continues
10 today.