Truth forum a better option for victims.

(From Irish Independent)

THE Oireachtas Joint Committee has passed the problem created by the Barron Report smartly out of the jurisdiction (or perhaps not so smartly) and to theauthorities in Britain and Northern Ireland.

It might have been more useful, but much more difficult, to face up to the question of how a society moving out of conflict, deals with an often terrible past, how, if at all, theunderstandable demand for the truth on the part of the relatives of victims, can be met atleast in part.

We have all seen in the courts recently how difficult it is to recreate the sequence ofevents which led to the death of one young man in a brawl, even with the aid of video cameras and the presence of 900 witnesses, who are still presumably within thejurisdiction and unable to claim privilege on grounds of public interest immunity.

How much more difficult is it then to establish the truth of events 30 years ago, whichwere themselves hidden and subversive with many of the witnesses and possible perpetrators dead and all at a time when the capability of forensic science and investigation was much less developed than now.

None of this is to minimise, or undervalue in any way the suffering of the relatives and survivors, the legitimacy of their desire for closure or the validity of their search for the truth.

But truth, in these circumstances, may itself be an illusory concept and the failure toachieve this, and the process involved, may, in the end, be even more painful for those who have suffered so much already.