John Finucane: Sinn Féin MP urged to step away from commemoration

A senior Sinn Féin representative has been urged to step away from an event billed as a "South Armagh Volunteers commemoration".

North Belfast MP John Finucane is billed as the main speaker at the event in Mullaghbawn on 11 June.

Kenny Donaldson from the victims' group South East Fermanagh Foundation said it would be hypocritical for Mr Finucane to attend.

Sinn Féin said "everyone has the right to remember their dead".

Mr Donaldson said if Mr Finucane takes part in the event "he is connecting with the remembrance of terrorists who murdered their neighbours through waging a campaign based on ethnic and/or sectarian influences".

"Sinn Féin needs to stop its policy of hypocrisy once and for all," he continued.

"It may be fooling some of the people (who should know better) some of the time but it certainly is not fooling all the people all of the time, innocent victims/survivors of terrorism being the core constituency who aren't conned so easily."

He added: "This is particularly poor form from a political representative who is himself an innocent victim/survivor of terrorism.

"If an event was held commemorating those gunmen who carried out the assassination of John Finucane's father, then he would be up in arms, and rightly so.

"How then is it acceptable for him to associate with an event remembering members of the Provisional IRA who murdered their own neighbours?"

Mr Finucane's father, solicitor Pat Finucane, was shot by loyalist gunmen at his home in Belfast in 1989.

Referring to Sinn Féin, DUP MLA Emma Little-Pengelly said it was "baffling that a so-called mainstream party keeps getting away with this".

In a post on social media, the former junior minister added: "The same 'volunteers' and IRA remain proscribed as a terrorist organisation."

Former First Minister Baroness Foster tweeted an image of the event advert and said: "For all those fawning over Sinn Féin, here is one of their MPs glorifying terrorists and making it sound like a fun day out for all the family."

In a statement to BBC News NI, Sinn Féin said "Everyone has the right to remember their dead with dignity and respect.

"We will continue to stand with families who have lost loved ones in the conflict."

Last year in a BBC interview, Sinn Féin's vice-president Michelle O'Neill said "the only way that we're ever going to build a better future is to understand that it's OK to have a different take on the past.

"My narrative is a very different one to someone who has perhaps lost a loved one at the hands of republicans," she continued.

"So I think that we need to be mature enough to say, that's OK, we'll have to agree to differ on that one, but let's make sure the conditions never exist again that we find ourselves in that scenario."