SAVE NEWGRANGE – PRESS RELEASE – 20 August 2010
‘Critics Invited to Fill out UN Heritage Rights Survey Online During Heritage Week’
To mark the beginning of Heritage Week tomorrow, Save Newgrange is launching an online survey drive today, asking both critics and supporters for their viewpoints on their heritage rights. The survey was drafted in co-operation with lawyers at the 2048 Project in University of California, Berkeley, and asks people how they feel about their human rights to heritage, particularly with regards to controversial sites like Brú na Bóinne, Carrickmines Castle and the Hill of Tara, and asks whether the legal protections and public consultations in Ireland are adequate.
The results will be sent to the Human Rights Committee in the United Nations, which monitors the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
We are asking the Committee to issue recommendations to the Republic of Ireland concerning its human rights obligations to protect Irish peoples’ rights to family, privacy, judicial remedy, religion, peaceful assembly and freedom of expression in conjunction with ancestral heritage sites. A full range of viewpoints is essential, in order to give an accurate picture of the the factors that have led to the heritage controversies in Ireland, including the recent bulldozing of two ring-forts in Macroom, Co. Cork.
Matt Schwoebel of UC Berkeley said:
“We have been watching dispute after dispute over heritage in Ireland, for the last decade, and want to help prevent such disputes from taking place in the future. We welcome the full range of opinions, in order to better understand the reasons they keep happening, and why people get so entrenched on both sides of the issues.
Vincent Salafia of Save Newgrange said:
“It is important that these issues are debated openly during Heritage Week. Anyone can fill out the survey at savenewgrange.org. We have written to our critics on the Bypass Slane Campaign Facebook group, and invited them to participate in the survey. Over 10,000 supporters on our own Facebook group have been asked to mobilize online and spread the word about the survey during Heritage Week.
ENDS
CONTACT: Vincent Salafia 087-132-3365
