A Sorry State of Affairs: Why we need more IRA-style apologies - The Mirror, 18 July 2002 by Jane Ridley and Dave Edwards

THE IRA's unprecedented apology for killing nearly 650 "non-combatants" over the past 30 years has raised the important issue of contrition.

Although the Irish terrorist organisation admitted its guilt for murdering civilians, it did not apologise to the families of the hundreds of soldiers and police who have died during the Troubles. In the words of Elton John's famous song, "sorry seems to be the hardest word". Here are other examples where compensation and an apology are or were long overdue.

THE FALKLANDS

ARGENTINA has never apologised to Britain for starting the Falklands War in 1982, although former Argentinian President Carlos Menem came close four years ago.

"The Turkish government refuses even to recognise the so-called Armenian Holocaust of 1915, when up to a million and a half Armenians were murdered"

Janet Ridley and David Edwards

He said: "It was a sad and traumatic blot in the history of our relations.

"Some brave young Argentine and British soldiers lost their lives in a conflict which should never have happened and that we deeply regret."

His near-apology caused an outcry in Buenos Aires, with senior politicians calling for the arrest and extradition of Lady Thatcher to face trial over the sinking of the battleship the Belgrano.

JAPANESE WAR CRIMES

JAPAN has refused to compensate the 9,000 British servicemen who somehow managed to survive their brutal slave camps in 1945.

Some 12,400 died in captivity - mainly as a result of starvation, disease and ill treatment by their Japanese tormentors.

In 1998, four months before a state visit to London by Emperor Akihito, the Japanese cabinet voiced "acute remorse and heartfelt apology" for the barbarism in the camps.

But it wasn't enough to stop former PoWs from showing their fury by turning their backs on the emperor when he travelled up the Mall with the Queen.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

THOUGH the British Empire arguably brought civilisation to a quarter of the world, it was also responsible for some evil crimes.

These have been apologised for to a greater or lesser extent by the Queen and successive British governments.

Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed "regret" for the Irish potato famine from 1845-49 which claimed more than a million lives and saw 500,000 people forcibly evicted from their homes.

In November 1995, the Queen signed a New Zealand Act of Parliament offering the Maoris an apology for a "wrongful and unjust" land grab by settlers in the 1860s.

Four years later, she expressed her sorrow for the deaths and mistreatment of the Boers in concentration camps in South Africa in 1899.

In 1997, during a visit to India, she laid a wreath but did not
apologise for the Amritsar massacre of 1919, when 379 Sikh and Muslim patriots were gunned down after protesting about curfew restrictions.

GENERAL PINOCHET

MORE than 3,000 people were killed, tortured or disappeared when Augusto Pinochet seized power in 1973.

But it was only when his own liberty was threatened that he expressed any remorse.

While under house arrest in Surrey in 1999, Pinochet issued a letter expressing sorrow for the deaths which occurred while he was head of state.

But he stopped short of the apology demanded by his opponents, who dismissed the letter as a publicity stunt. Pinochet was held after four countries requested his extradition during a trip to the UK in 1998.

After being ruled unfit to stand trial, he was flown home in March 2000 after 17 months of bitter legal wrangling.

ARMENIAN MASSACRE

THE Turkish government refuses even to recognise the so-called Armenian Holocaust of 1915, when up to a million and a half Armenians were murdered by the Ottoman Turkish regime.

So there is little chance of an apology for the mass execution by firing squads of tens of thousands of Armenian men and the starvation, rape and killing of equal numbers of women and children during mass deportations to the Syrian desert.

SLAVERY

ALTHOUGH deeming slavery a crime against humanity at a racism conference last September, Western nations scuppered a plan toapologise formally, fearing a flood of legal claims.

Instead, the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, resolution "acknowledged and profoundly regretted the massive suffering caused by slavery". Slavery and slave trading were declared crimes against humanity and the conference said they "should have been so" in the past.

Countries at the centre of the trade, such as Great Britain and France, which saw millions of Africans shipped to the New World feared they could be sued by the victims' relatives.

SLAUGHTER OF THE ABORIGINES

WOUNDS are still raw in Australia more than 200 years after
aborigines were herded away from their land by Western settlers.

Some were murdered, and many died of the diseases which the newcomers brought with them. In Tasmania, between 3,000 and 4,000 natives perished in the 1830s after succumbing to disease and maltreatment.

The colonial government offered a bounty for the capture of
aborigines on the island, leading to the so-called "black war".

There and elsewhere in Australia, aborigines were sent to "mission centres" to be "re-educated as European-style peasants".

Meanwhile, the so-called "stolen generation" of aboriginal children were taken away from their families to be bought up by whites.

The Australian government has apologised and paid out millions in compensation. There is even a "National Sorry Day" to mark the nation's regret.

TIANANMEN SQUARE

HUNDREDS died when the Chinese army opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989. More than 100,000 students and intellectuals had occupied the square, calling for democratic reform in a protest which shocked the Chinese government.

It quickly declared martial law and sent in the army, which carried out the massacre, although nobody knows for sure how many died.

The government has never apologised for the deaths and has insisted that most of those who died were soldiers.

BALKAN WAR

TEN years after the term "ethnic cleansing" made the headlines, the leaders of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Croatia held a summit on Monday, pledging to rebuild peace and trust between the three states.

But Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica refused to apologise for Serb atrocities or to call on former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to surrender to the UN war crimes tribunal.

The summit was held in the bullet-scarred Old Town of Sarajevo, whose 43-month siege by Bosnian Serb forces summed up the mass bloodshed and ethnic strife of the 1992-95 war.

Karadic faces genocide charges for the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica.