A co-ordinating office should be set up to deal with people who have been exiled from Northern Ireland by paramilitaries, as has been done for Eta victims in Spain, Eileen Bell said yesterday.
The Alliance deputy leader and victims spokeswoman emphasised that ending the practice of paramilitary exiling was a necessary act of completion if the peace process was to succeed.
She was speaking ahead of an event in the House of Lords to highlight the issue of forcible exile by paramilitaries.
Mrs Bell – who spent six years in England after paramilitaries intimidated her from her west Belfast home in the 1970s – said there needed to be a more
coordinated approach to how exiles were dealt with by the authorities when they arrived in a new area.
"Those who have been exiled by paramilitaries are the forgotten victims of the Troubles, and if we are to leave the violence of the past behind, then this evil practice must end," she said. "The exiles may have gone away, but the issue of exiling hasn't.
Thousands of people have been put out of Northern Ireland over the years. I can say from my own experiences, both as someone who has been at the receiving end of intimidation and who has campaigned to end exiling, that it has no place in the society we are trying to build."
She said it was also clear that too little has been done for the paramilitary victims who have ended up in unfamiliar surroundings, often at short notice.
