Dear Madam, - Republicans in Fermanagh have slammed the recent comments of Sinn Fein MLA Sean Lynch’s distress and upset at the possible closure of Enniskillen courthouse. You’d have thought that one less of these foreign institutions would be considered a good thing but in reality it shows the extent to which Sean and his ilk have moved away from Republican politics and positions once espoused. As Lynch is an ex-POW this is particularly disappointing.

Irish Republicans have a long and proud history of opposing British rule in our country, particularly their courts and prisons where those who opposed that same British rule inevitably ended up. British courthouses across the North of Ireland hold no good memories for Irish Republicans, no fair trials or justice prevailed.

Today in 2015 Republicans who oppose British rule still face internment and secret evidence presented in Diplock courts with the concept of truth and justice as alien to the British justice system now as ever before. Sean Lynch, a former member of the District Policing Partnership and current member of Stormont’s justice committee, sits in silence while Republican prisoners in Maghaberry are strip-searched, isolated and abused daily, which in effect endorses the crimes of the same British justice system that held him under lock and key himself in times not long past. The poacher turned gamekeeper is an apt description and in truth the entire affair amounts to a sad indictment on him and his party.

This man and his party have long lost all claim to the proud legacy of Irish Republicanism. A party who dine and toast the commander-in-chief of the British Army, the Queen of England, resemble nothing of the great leaders of 1916 and dishonour them by their actions.

Sean Lynch has illustrated perfectly, the result and outworking of Britain’s counterinsurgency strategy, a strategy of jailing, remoulding and re-shaping politicians, who in turn end up enforcing the same political and military occupation they once opposed. His remarks on the closure of Enniskillen courthouse are but one more example, in a long litany of examples, of the pathetic road trodden and the position he now finds himself in which is shamefully upholding every vestige of British rule in Ireland.

Yours faithfully, Sean MacDiarmada Society Fermanagh