A new exhibition dedicated to victims and survivors of the Troubles is on display at the Guildhall in Derry, designed to raise awareness of the “burden” carried by those impacted by the conflict.
The exhibition, by the South East Fermanagh Foundation, includes six memorial quilts with hand-embroidered patches dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Troubles.
SEFF's director of services, Kenny Donaldson, told Belfast Live the wider North West region is under-represented when it comes to the services available to victims and survivors, including the number of applications for a pension scheme for people who were injured during the conflict.
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“We’ve been struck over the last 18 months at the number of people who have come on board with SEFF in the northwest region who hadn’t ever belonged to any sort of survivors’ group,” he said.
“They weren’t attached to any service whatsoever and they didn’t know about the victims’ and survivors service, they didn’t know about The Troubles pension scheme. We’re hoping that in raising the awareness level there will be a domino effect, and that it will pass through the community, that people will become aware.”
He added: “It’s one thing for someone to have the information and opt out of their own volition, but we want people to have that choice.”
Explaining the rationale for the exhibition, he said: “As we face into the 25th Anniversary of the Belfast Agreement signed on Good Friday 1998, we felt it vitally important that the voices of those unable to speak for themselves would be heard within public discourse"
“Across the six memorial quilts, almost 400 innocents are remembered - ordinary yet extraordinary men, women and children from across the community and who were murdered/killed in Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and mainland Europe.
“The key messages of the memorial quilts are that violence was futile and totally unjustified; those remembered are wholly innocent; and the legacy of those represented will live on amongst those left behind.”
He added: “There is a constituency of people who increasingly feel that they’ve been abandoned. That is obviously the victims and survivors of our Troubles. That’s right across the piece, it’s not the preserve of any section of society. They do feel that they were carrying the burden, on behalf of others, of compromises that were made and some of the things that were done under the table over the last 25 years impacted them directly.
“We now need to focus on that constituency, to give them the ability to reclaim their place within society. That’s the first thing that this is about.”
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