I WAS 12 years old when I woke up one Sunday morning in 1985 to the sound of our home phone ringing at about 6:35am. Within minutes, my father told my big brother and me that our mother was gone. Her plane had crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. The sound of my father’s pain still echoes in my ears today.
My mother was one of 329 people killed when a bomb aboard Air India flight 182, flying from Montreal to Delhi, exploded off the coast of County Cork on 23 June 1985.
Just the day before, I had been nagging my mum to make me some jelly before we departed for the airport to see her off to India. The last thing she did before we left for the airport was to make her “little devil” a big bowl of jelly and made me promise to be good while she was away. I did not understand what my father meant when he told me she was gone.
The last image I have of my mother
Several days later, my father and I were in Ireland, where we had to look at over 100 pictures of dead bodies in the hope that we could identify and recover her body. And we did. In fact, the last image I have of my mother is of her lying on a metal table with stitches running from below her ear, down along to the middle of her chest and further.
A few days later, my father and I were in India where we cremated her body and sent the ashes down the Ganges River. I remember sitting there alongside my Dad, and my mum’s sisters, brother, father, mother and other family members – all wailing. Our family was devastated. My brother went off to university alone, my father struggled to raise me and my brother, while mourning the loss of his wife. And I tried to understand what had happened to the closest person in the world to me, my protector, the one who tucked me in, the one who made me jelly.
Victims’ families have struggled to have their voices heard
In the decades since the Air India bombing, and up to very recently, my family and the families of the other victims of the attack have struggled to have our voices heard as victims of this appalling crime. Over the years, the Canadian authorities failed respond to the needs of the victims’ families. They felt alone and isolated in the aftermath of the attack, during which time many mistakes were made in the investigation and prosecution of those suspected of carrying out the atrocity. Following an immense outcry from families, the media and the public, it was only in 2005 that the Government of Canada officially recognised this as a Canadian tragedy and moved to hear the voices of the victims.
The experience of my family, and those like mine, shows that the effect of serious crime on victims and their extended families is profound and long-lasting. Victims of crime do not just struggle with the consequences of the criminal act itself, they face huge difficulties in the crime’s aftermath. They struggle to be listened to by the authorities. They struggle to be named and recognised as victims. They struggle to have their voices heard. They struggle to have the justice system address their needs. This is not just a Canadian problem – it is a problem facing criminal justice systems across Europe, including in Ireland.
Today, I will be speaking at a conference jointly hosted by the Victims’ Rights Alliance and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties-led JUSTICIA European Rights Network. The conference will explore the opportunities to strengthen the rights of victims of crime here in Ireland and across Europe through the EU Victims’ Directive, which will be incorporated into Irish law late next year. The Directive contains a range of measures to better protect victims of crime. These include:
In the coming year, Ireland has a real opportunity to blaze a trail for victims’ rights in Europe by ensuring that this Directive is not only implemented, but enforced and properly funded. In doing so, Ireland will go a long way towards addressing the struggles that many families – families like mine – have faced in the aftermath of crime.
Susheel Gupta is the Vice-Chairperson of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and an advocate for the Air India Victims’ Families Association. Susheel will be speaking this Friday 14 November 2014 at “Implementing and Enforcing the Victims’ Rights Directive”, a conference jointly hosted by the Victims’ Rights Alliance and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties-led JUSTICIA European Rights Network. The conference will take place from 9am at the Pillar Room, Rotunda Hospital, Parnell Street, and will be opened by Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald TD. Details available here.
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