Irish Republican Army executioners shot their victims dead and secretly buried them in fields and bogs, leaving them to rot and join the ranks of Ireland’s “disappeared.”
Some were British soldiers, others suspected to be informers or traitors. Uncertainty about their fate and the whereabouts of their bodies added a brutal twist to a brutal conflict.
However, they were not killed by the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, but by the so-called “Good Old IRA” in southern Ireland during the War of Independence in 1919-21.
In fact, research shows that in less than three years, Ireland’s founding fathers killed and disappeared five times as many people as the Provisional IRA would have done in 30 years.
“It is well known that northerners disappeared during the upheavals,” said Padraig O Ruairc, a historian and archaeologist who investigated the phenomenon. “What people don’t know, and in some cases don’t want to admit, is that the same thing happened in the fight for freedom in southern Ireland in a much shorter period of time and on a much broader scale.”
Ó Ruairc has documented the dark tradition of secrecy in his book The Disappeared: Enforced Disappearances in Ireland 1798-1998, published this week.
For a variety of reasons, Irish and British authorities are keeping a lid on the worst of the abductions and killings, he said. “There’s no political will. They don’t want to touch this.”
During the War of Independence, also known as the Anglo-Irish War, republican forces killed and secretly buried 94 people, while 19 people were reported missing by the Provisional IRA and Irish National Liberation Army during the upheaval. .
Although the numbers pale in comparison to Spain’s civil war, Indonesia’s purges of anti-leftists, and South America’s “dirty wars,” there are still incidents that resonate. Disney+ has filmed an upcoming drama series about Jean McConville, a mother of 10 murdered in Belfast in 1972, based on Patrick Laden Keefe’s book Say Nothing.
The Independent Commission into the Whereabouts of the Victims’ Remains has been tasked with searching for four people still missing from the attack, including British army captain Robert Nairach and 19-year-old Catholic Columba McVeigh.
Ireland’s establishment parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, are using these cold cases to embarrass Sinn Féin, the political wing of the turbulent Provisional IRA.
But while the ruling party celebrates the First IRA as national heroes and founders of the party, it also praises victims such as 15-year-olds Edward Parsons and Maria Lindsay, who were shot dead and secretly buried in 1921 and 1922 respectively. Ó Rueaku said they were ignoring it. “The Irish state is somewhat in denial about the level of violence that took place in the War of Independence. They don’t want bodies exhumed.”
For the rebels, hiding the bodies kept the British military guessing and prevented potential prosecution and retaliation. According to the historian, about 40 bodies of the disappeared from that time are still buried, and most can be found. Some executioners left behind maps or confided in their relatives, so the knowledge became part of local folklore. Ó Ruairc received an anonymous letter and a map with detailed locations.
In retaliation for a deadly British attack, his great-uncle, an IRA commander named Ned Lynch, executed a prisoner of war, Private George Robertson, and had him buried in a marsh in County Clare. Mr Ó Ruairc had previously identified the bog grave of another soldier, Private Sergeant George Chalmers, leading to his exhumation and reburial in 2018 at the request of his descendants.
He said British military authorities showed little interest in discovering more ruins. “When you start excavating soldiers here, the question arises as to what they were doing in Ireland.” “The Disappearances” is about the six civilians shot dead in the 1916 Easter Rising, and the 1920s. It documents how the military and police secretly buried victims, including the Galway priest Fr Michael Griffin, who was kidnapped in 2016.
One of the earliest recorded disappearances is that of John Newell, a County Down resident who infiltrated a rebel group of United Irishmen in 1796 and helped imprison 200 members. be. Newell made £2,000 from the authorities and boasted with astonishing arrogance of his own exploits in a tell-all book. He was eventually kidnapped, shot and secretly buried in County Antrim.