Death certificate 'won't bring closure'
New plans to issue death certificates to families of people missing for more than seven years will not bring closure to relatives of the so-called Disappeared, it was claimed today.
Oliver McVeigh, whose brother Columba was among nine people killed and secretly buried, dismissed draft laws designed to ease the suffering of the bereaved as a simple gesture.
Columba was 17 when he was abducted and murdered by the IRA from his family home in the village of Donaghmore, County Tyrone, in 1975.
“A death certificate doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s of absolutely no relevance to me and my family,” said Mr McVeigh.
“I know my brother is dead, I don’t need a death certificate to prove it. The only closure for us is to get the body and get him buried beside his mother and his father.”
The Stormont Executive launched a public consultation today on proposed new laws that will allow someone who has vanished for more than seven years to be legally declared dead.
Former Northern Secretary Peter Hain said last year the move was designed to help the families of the Disappeared get some closure.
However, Mr McVeigh said there was more the Executive – and in particular Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness – could be doing to help relieve their suffering.
“This is just a gesture,” he said.
“It might mean something to some people, but to most it doesn’t. The Disappeared are way down the (Executive’s) list of priorities.
“Martin McGuinness could be doing a lot more in his capacity. I’d like to see him personally approach people who were involved.
“And I don’t mean him delegating other people to do it. I want him to personally go to the people who were involved in the burying of these people.”
Mr McVeigh stressed that his family did not want to know who was behind the murder and burying of his brother, whose body has never been recovered despite extensive searches in 2003 at a bog in Emyvale, County Monaghan.
He said they just wanted the information that could help locate Columba’s body to be passed to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains.
“The smallest bit of information could prove to be vital,” he said.
“The forensic scientists are only as good as the information they get and at the moment that information is not very good.”
Mr McVeigh said the plight of the families of the Disappeared was one of the worst cases of human rights abuses.
“They even stop in wars to bury the dead. Even in the Holocaust the victims were buried.
“What we have to deal with is unheard of,” he said.
The IRA said in 1999 it would help locate the bodies of nine of its victims, who were secretly buried, but only four were found.
Finance Minister Peter Robinson said the draft laws will help those families and relatives of other missing persons deal with the disappearance.
“When a person goes missing and is presumed dead, in addition to the emotional trauma, the families left behind find themselves in a legal state of limbo,” he said.
“Can the family home be sold? Does the missing person’s will have to followed? Can the death of the missing person be registered?
“Unfortunately, there has been no easy answer to these questions because existing court procedures do not allow a judge to deal with all the legal issues arising from such a death.”
The Northern Assembly are asking people affected by missing relatives to give their views on the draft bill, which is based on similar laws in Scotland.
The 12-week consultation is open to April 15.
Mr Robinson said: “The draft bill allows family members and others to apply to the High Court for a declaration that the missing person may be presumed to be dead if he or she is thought to have died or has been missing for more than seven years and has not been heard from during that period.
“The court order will lead to the missing person’s presumed death being registered and a death certificate issued to the families.”
