Amnesty head who loves life by the sea

Amnesty head who loves life by the sea

3 July 2013

WHEN Patrick Corrigan was a student he seriously considered leaving Northern Ireland. The Troubles were rumbling on unabated and this wasn’t where he hoped to bring up a future family.

Having taken Business Studies at the University of Ulster he would later go on to study Human Rights law, but his preoccupation in the early 1990s was working with campaigners such as Mairead Maguire and her Peace People.

“I started volunteering on peace and justice issues and encouraging politicians to engage in dialogue,” he said. “That work brought me in contact with Amnesty International.

“I grew up in Northern Ireland during bad times and rabid injustices were all around me. After travelling overseas for a year I had to decide whether or not to come back, and if I did come back to try to make a difference.

“I decided if I was going to make my mind up to stay in Northern Ireland I wanted to play my small part and started trying to do volunteer work.”

Involved with Amnesty International for 16 years now, the Newcastle man is Amnesty’s Northern Ireland Programme Director. He says its headquarters are still a “small office” on Belfast’s Ormeau Road but that its presence has grown across Northern Ireland to include around 4,000 members.

“Our support base has grown, as has our visibility and campaigning about the various big international issues,” Patrick explained. “Locally we have the Mid Down Group that meets in the Ballydugan Mill every month.”

Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for human rights, set up to be independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion. So while the Northern Ireland base adds its voice to the calls for the end of human rights abuses in Syria, for example, and was recently busy holding G8 leaders to account, it also has problems on its own doorstep to deal with.

It is, as Patrick admits, something that did not make Amnesty popular with all political persuasions here.

“Amnesty International has never shied away from taking on difficult issues even when we knew it was certain to cause controversy just as it does elsewhere,” he said. “We oppose torture, we oppose internment.

“When those were divisive issues along the old orange and green lines that meant some politicians chose to paint us with the same brush. We are only in the business of applying international human rights law and fighting injustice wherever we see it around the world.

“Attitudes here have changed, we work with parliament and with all parties. Basically we do not expect to get support in every quarter on every issue. We do expect to get a fair hearing...and surely bit by bit attitudes are changing.”

Fighting human trafficking and securing a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights are among the issues that now occupy Patrick locally. What’s really making him angry at the moment, though, are the limitations being placed on the recently announced Stormont inquiry into historical institutional abuse.

“There are those who have been abused who have been left outside the inquiry — the children who were abused within the Parish community, the young women in the Magdalene laundries,” he said. “That is an outrage.”

Working alongside these victims, several of whom live locally, he made a recent visit to the Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers but said the response so far was “noncommittal”.

“It is very frustrating for the victims waiting for a lifetime to be heard, to be told they must wait another three years until the end of the institutional abuse inquiry,” he said.

“The Down and Connor diocese still has to publish its safeguarding report [all dioceses in Ireland have had to engage with the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church to review their safeguarding practices]. Most of the other reports have been published.

“It was in this diocese that Fr. Brendan Smyth ran rampage, not only in institutions but in parishes. The children in the care homes have recourse. But is it here where children were raped by Fr. Brendan Smyth in the parish community, and they have no-one to come to.”

Patrick said another priority for him was the many families of the 3,600 people killed here during the Troubles who still felt they had no access to justice for their loved ones.

When he’s not campaigning on the big issues of the day this good-humoured Newcastle man enjoys family life by the seaside — his home over the past two years after living in Loughinisland for 10 years. He is also on the board of governors for All Children’s Integrated Primary School in Newcastle.

And while mostly overseeing many of Amnesty’s campaigns during his day job he is certainly not adverse to front line duties.

While President Obama largely charmed those around him with his recent peace speeches in Belfast en route to the G8 in Fermanagh, Patrick said: “Amnesty International were there reminding him of incidents in his own back yard — the use of drones over Pakistan and the deaths of hundreds of innocent men, women and children.”

Dressed in orange boiler suits some members were also in Belfast and in Enniskillen to remind the US President of the still open Guantanemo Bay prison.

“Much gets done at home and within the community in towns across Northern Ireland,” he said. “The Mid Down Group for example were involved in campaigning for the release of a Burmese prisoner of conscience, Khaing Khung, and were backed by Down Council.

“They arranged for hundreds of letters and postcards to be sent to both the prisoner in his jail and the Burmese president,” he said. “They were letting them know this was a man not forgotten about by the world.

“If you are one of those people who reads newspapers and watches TV and gets impassioned by what you hear take a look at amnesty.org,uk. You can join for a couple of pounds a month and get involved from the comfort of your own home.

“And if you want to get more involved there is the Amnesty Mid Down Group.”

For more information on joining Amnesty International’s Mid Down Group contact Philip Nye on 07725 071803.