PARAMILITARY PRISONER RELEASES

Early day motion 234, tabled 25 January 1999 by Harry Barnes (Labour). Signed by 15 members.

That this House notes with alarm that this year alone, according to the respected human rights group, Families Against Intimidation and Terror, 160 people have been directly affected by violent terrorist incidents, including mutilations, shootings, intimidation, exiles and expulsions; recognises that paramilitary intimidation is not, in the main, the work of renegades but a central part of the paramilitary groups' strategies to maintain the military integrity of these organisations and to continue to control certain communities, thereby discouraging co-operation with the RUC and, in the case of the IRA, to provide a political bargaining counter in relation to the proposed reform of the RUC so that paramilitary groups may exercise influence within a reformed police service; further notes that paramilitary organisations have demonstrated on occasions their capacity to end these beatings when it suited their purposes; and believes that the paramilitary prisoner release programme should be slowed up as a political sanction against a cynically and centrally organised regime of increasingly brutal intimidation.

Signatures by party: Labour 5, Conservative 4, UUP 3, Liberal Democrat 2, UKUP 1.