Submitted by crinadmin on
Summary: Children in Northern Ireland are caught
between two powerful groups - security
forces on one hand, and paramilitary
groups that advocate political violence
on the other. Children in Northern Ireland are caught between two powerful groups -
security forces on one hand, and paramilitary groups that advocate
political violence on the other. Many of the almost 3,000 people who
have lost their lives in "The Troubles" since 1969 have been
children. Moreover, police officers and soldiers harass young people
on the street, hitting, kicking and insulting them. Police officers
in interrogation centers threaten, trick and insult youngsters and
sometimes physically assault them. Children accused of crimes are
locked up in adult detention centers and remand prisons in shameful
conditions. Because police in Northern Ireland have largely abdicated
normal policing in many troubled areas, paramilitary groups have
filled the resulting vacuum with alternative criminal justice
systems. These paramilitary groups - the Irish Republican Army on the
Catholic side and the Ulster Defense Association on the Protestant
side - police their own communities. They punish children they
believe to be "anti-social" by shooting or brutally beating them, and
sometimes by banishing them from Northern Ireland. The abuses of
children by all sides violate international human rights laws and
standards as well as the laws of war.