On the recordJune 16, 2010
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. ____________________





