Sinn Féin: Criminality, Corruption and Columbia

Last weekend Sinn Féin, the political wing of the now disarmed Irish Republican Army and a rising and nefarious force in Ireland's politics, celebrated its one hundredth year of existence in a lavish extravaganza in the Park West Hotel in Dublin. Never mind that, as Kevin Myers pointed out in The Irish Times, the party barely resembles the one set up by Arthur Griffith in 1905 and that most Irish political parties could claim the same roots, the Sinn Féin President, Gerry Adams claimed the centenary for his own motley collection of terrorists, murderers and fellow-travellers.

For me though, it wasn’t the hijacking by Sinn Féin of the origins of the Irish Republic - which incidentally it’s formerly armed buddies in the IRA opposed - that left me nauseated - modern Sinn Féin have being doing that since its foundation at the start of the Northern Troubles. It was a throwaway line in Adams’ speech. Welcoming his audience he smugly noted that some of them had come all the way from Columbia to attend the event. He was referring to the so-called ‘Columbia Three’ (pictured above), Sinn Féin/IRA men who travelled to the South American country on false documents and claimed that they were there for bird watching and to observe the non-existent Columbian peace process. Only the truly naïve would believe this, the Columbian government’s assertion that the men were training the left-wing FARC guerrilla group being a far more likely explanation of their visit.

What makes me sick is that there is certain amount of admiration in Ireland for these desperados who undertook an expedition to the depths of the jungle, encountered revolutionaries and the harsh Columbian prison system, fled the admittedly corrupt authorities there and escaped back to Ireland after four years to tell the tale. Upon their return graffiti soon appeared at the bottom of the very street on which I live saying ’welcome home Martin, Niall and Jim’. There appears to be no chance that these men will be extradited back to Columbia and the Irish government doesn’t seem to care. Adam’s line unsurprisingly received a large cheer at the Sinn Féin event. The fact remains though that Martin McCauley, Niall Connolly and James Monaghan were undoubtedly in South America in 2001 to help a vicious terrorist group prolong a bloody civil war, presumably with the aim of enriching Sinn Féin/IRA with cocaine money in the process.

Sinn Féin may be a publicly reformed organisation with the decommissioning of IRA weapons and increasing electoral popularity in the North and South of Ireland. However its support for the Columbian Three and the party’s involvement in bank robberies and smuggling in Ireland shows that it does not belong in a modern democracy - especially when the proceeds of these crimes are being used to forward Sinn Féin’s ambitions of power. Unfortunately the culture among some in Irish society tends to support the rebel , with misguided and ignorant nationalism meaning that many support Sinn Féin for the very reason that the majority still oppose it - its symbiosis with the IRA and the futile and war that it waged with Britain for thirty years.