By Josephine Feeney
This video is of a meeting of survivors of Irish Mother and Baby homes. These were institutions where young pregnant women were sent and their children taken from them. This practice was covered in the movies, The Magdalen Laundries and the more recent, Philomena and it continued up until the 1990s.
Mass graves have been discovered on the grounds of some of the homes in Ireland. In one of these homes in the town of Tuam, County Galway, the remains of hundreds of dead children were discovered in a disused septic tank. The amount of deaths in these institutions is as yet unknown but could run in to thousands. Many mothers and their families do not know whether their babies are alive, or were sold to America as is portrayed in the movie Philomena, and many would have no idea where their relatives are buried.
The power of the Catholic Church, that once ruled with an iron fist, has been curtailed in Ireland and these discoveries are an extremely emotional and contentious issue.
A Commission of Inquiry has been working for the last five years to try and uncover what really happened. The archives of documentation gathered by the Commission are due to be sealed for thirty years. These archives include the testimony of the survivors and all written records from the religious institutions and the state.
There is a growing anger and opposition to the suppression of the Commission of Inquiry’s archives. The survivors in the video above came together to discuss how to approach this issue and change the situation.
A petition to make the archives public has been started by Aitheasntas -Adoptee Identity Rights. You can see this petition at the link below, please sign the petition and share this post and video. You don’t have to be Irish or living in Ireland to support this worthy cause.
No comments:
Post a Comment