[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 90 (Wednesday, June 16, 2010)]
[House]
[Page H4511]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REMEMBERING BLOODY SUNDAY
(Mr. NEAL asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, we had an opportunity yesterday to witness
another it-will-never-happen moment. Thirty-eight years after 13
unarmed men and women were shot dead on the streets of Derry in the
north of Ireland, on a day now known as Bloody Sunday, the families and
relatives of the victims have found the justice they've been seeking
for decades. They learned the truth yesterday about what happened
during a peaceful civil rights march in the Bogside community in
January of 1972. And they heard the British Prime Minister David
Cameron say that their loved ones were innocent and that the actions of
the parachute regimen on that day were unjustified and wrong.
If Bloody Sunday was a defining day in the history of the troubles,
let us hope the publication of the Saville Report will be
transformative and cathartic moment for the people in the north of
Ireland.
Today we remember those who lost their lives marching near Free Derry
and Rossville Flats. We remember Bloody Sunday and those who were
wounded. The innocent people have now been exonerated.
For those of us who stood up with those families over the course of
almost four decades--and I was a staunch supporter of those families--
this is a moment of satisfaction. And at the Guildhall yesterday in
Derry, people cheered the vindication of their loved ones who died on
that tragic, tragic day.
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