Posted on May 04, 2012 by itccs
A Communiqué from ITCCS International
Brussels and Dublin:
The Roman Catholic Church faces permanent disruption and banishment in at least five countries if it does not comply with ten “non-negotiable measures” by September 15, 2012, according to a global coalition of survivors of church rape and torture.
The list of measures was issued today at a meeting in Dublin, Ireland between Archbishop Dermot Martin and representatives of Anti Catholic Church Activists Worldwide (ACCAW), Magdalene Laundry survivors, and the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State – Ireland (ITCCS).
ITCCS in Dublin, Ireland
The measures demanded of the Catholic Church include the defrocking of all child raping priests, the licensing of all other clergy as public servants, the return of the remains of all who died under Church care, the annulment of tax exemptions and other Church privileges, and the return of all of the Church’s wealth generated by the exploitation of children.
The full statement outlining these measures is reproduced below, including an audio recording of the statement.
Issued on the eve of the impending resignation of the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, for his protection of child raping priests, the statement was delivered by John Deegan of ACCAW and ITCCS Ireland members Gerry O’Donovan and Dave O’Brien, who confronted Archbishop Martin with the demands.
The Ten Point statement was issued by The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, an umbrella organization of over fifty organizations in the United States, Canada, Ireland, England and Australia.
“Pope Benedict and his Bishops have until midnight on September 15 to start complying with these measures” said ITCCS Secretary Kevin Annett today.
“After that, we will begin actions to halt the normal operation of the Roman Catholic Church around the world, and we will seek indictments against Pope Benedict and other Vatican officials for crimes against humanity and criminal conspiracy.”
The ACCAW, ITCCS and other groups have staged high profile occupations of Catholic churches during their regular services, and plan to escalate these actions into “a permanent campaign of non-violent disruption and civil disobedience aimed at the Roman Catholic Church … until the Church’s reign of terror over children is ended.”
Issued May 4, 2012 by ITCCS International – Brussels
Information: [email protected] or 250-591-4573 (Canada) and [email protected] or [email protected] (Ireland)
An Open Letter to Archbishop Dermot Martin and the Bishops and Clergy of Ireland, from The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State
Issued to a meeting with Archbishop Martin on May 4, 2012
My name is Kevin Annett and I am the Secretary of the five-nation body known as The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS). I am speaking on behalf of the ITCCS and our affiliate organization in Ireland.
Our coalition represents over fifty organizations in Canada, the United States, Ireland, England and Australia, including many survivors of church terror.
We have also been recognized by seven aboriginal nations in North America, and been authorized by them to recover the remains of their relatives who died in Catholic Indian residential schools and orphanages; and to bring to justice those responsible for the death of over 50,000 children in these church-run institutions.
Let us state clearly that the time for polite talk is over.
The Roman Catholic Church has imposed and is perpetrating a reign of terror and crimes against humanity on generations of children, is actively concealing those crimes and protecting child rapists and murderers in its ranks, and has shown no desire or capacity to change the policies or practices that allow these unspeakable crimes to continue.
Nevertheless, on behalf of the nations and survivors we represent, and the Executive Council of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, I have been authorized to give the Church a final opportunity to change, by presenting the following demands to the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, as we have already done to Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger, and Vatican officials.
The following concrete actions by the Church are required if justice is to be won for its victims and if the crimes it has committed and continue to cover up are to end.
If the Church fails to abide by these basic commandments of humanity and the law, we will take permanent action to end its criminal regime.
1. The Church must issue full reparations to all of its victims, including by paying for all of their medical and counseling bills, the cost of their rehabilitation and retraining, and for any of their disabilities and losses.
2. The Church must surrender for a proper burial, without conditions and at its own expense, the remains of all those who died in its institutions or while under its care.
3. The Church must return all land and property taken from its victims, and restore all of the wealth generated by its exploitation of them as children, including the wealth created from their unpaid or low paid labor.
4. The Church must surrender without conditions all of the evidence of its crimes against children, and all of those persons responsible for committing these crimes and concealing them, including its highest officials. The Church must fully disclose this evidence and participate without conditions in all public investigations into its crimes.
5. The Church and its guilty parties cannot hide behind so-called diplomatic immunity or other privileges to evade justice and avoid prosecution. The Vatican must end its official cover up and annul its policy known as Crimen Sollicitationis, which compels Catholic clergy to conceal crimes committed against children in their parishes.
6. The Church must immediately expel and defrock all known child raping priests, officials and employees in its ranks, and defrock any clergy who harms a child or conceals such harm.
7. All clergy and Church officials must agree to be licensed and monitored as public servants, and take a legally binding, public oath to protect without conditions the rights and sanctity of children and disclose any harm done to them.
8. The Church must forgo and withdraw from all of the tax exemptions, financial concordats and agreements, and other special privileges presently granted to it under the laws of nations.
9. The Vatican must agree to the annulment of its status as a so-called state, and free its congregations and dioceses from its authority so that they may act according to the wishes and needs of their respective communities and their faith, and not the political and financial requirements of the Vatican.
10. All of the wealth accumulated by the Church and the Vatican Bank through land theft and conquest, and from tax exemptions, concordats, and from its operations around the world that have harmed children through the exploitation of their labor, such as the Magdalene Laundries and Indian residential schools, must be returned to its victims and to the poor in general through a direct, public redistribution of that wealth, as Christ himself commands.
We have been instructed to inform the Bishops of Ireland, as we have notified the Vatican, that they have until September 15, 2012, to agree to these demands and implement these ten measures.
If they fail to commence to do so by midnight of that date, we will enact the following measures:
1. The Roman Catholic Church will be formally and forever banished from our communities, and measures will be taken to legally and practically prevent it from operating;
2. Roman Catholic churches, agencies and offices around the world will be permanently disrupted and occupied as part of an ongoing campaign of non-violent civil disobedience; and
3. Our International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State will reconvene its court, and will seek the immediate detaining for questioning of the highest officials of the Roman Catholic Church, including Pope Benedict, on charges of obstruction of justice, criminal conspiracy, and crimes against humanity.
It is time for all people of conscience within the Church to choose who they will serve: a self-governing, criminal church system that sets itself above the law and God – or its suffering victims, and justice.
We urge Catholics to choose life, by making these ten steps a reality. Otherwise, the Roman Catholic Church will have forfeited its right to operate in our communities and in our world.
By this declaration, we are lending our active support to the Irish survivors of rape and torture by the Roman Catholic Church who are meeting with Archbishop Martin today. These survivors include members of ACCAW, the ITCCS, and Magdalene laundry victims.
We stand as a united front with these brothers and sisters, and with all victims of Church terror anywhere in the world. We will never stop until justice is achieved, and the reign of terror against children everywhere is ended.
We will be sharing this letter with our affiliates around the world, as well as with the global media, judicial bodies, and governments.
We welcome a formal response from the office of Archbishop Martin, and we call upon the Church to accept the demands and wishes of the Irish survivors who are meeting today with Archbishop Martin.
Signed on behalf of The Executive Council of The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State
Reverend Kevin D. Annett, ITCCS Secretary
Gerry O’Donovan, ITCCS Ireland
Dave O’Brien, ITCCS Ireland
Issued May 4, 2012 by ITCCS International (Brussels)
[email protected]
Category Action: What to Do, Countries, Ireland, Media
Posted on April 15, 2012 by itccs
by Kevin Annett
The united church delivers on its promise
I’ve been ignoring the orchestrated circus calling itself the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but now that it’s meeting in my own backyard, I’ve been asked to comment.
Frankly, it’s all quite the déjà vu experience. The travesty going on this weekend in Victoria reminds me of a story told to me by one of the few survivors who hasn’t been gagged.
When the children weren’t being starved, raped and tortured to death, they were dressed in decent clothing every Sunday and paraded in front of a smiling and appreciative middle-class congregation at the local United Church. And there, to the happy amusement of the official Christians, the boys and girls of the Edmonton Indian Residential School would sing hymns of praise to Jesus.
After they had performed for the Christians, the children would return to the school, where half of them would die.
Those who did survive are still performing for us, because we still desperately need to smile on Indians and think good of ourselves. That’s really why we created the misnamed “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”: to reassure ourselves that we aren’t, in fact, murderers.
The Indians are singing a new tune to us these days, perhaps not a church hymn anymore, but one just as crafted and controlled by us. Those chosen survivors whose statements have been reviewed and officially approved by the state and church-funded TRC are presenting to us what we need to hear: a sanitized version of the unspeakable that will not disturb either our sleep or our legal liability.
The survivors will say many things, but none of it will ever be acted upon, or, heaven forbid, used as a way to bring to justice the churches responsible for killing more than 50,000 children. That’s not allowed. The head TRC official, another sanitized Indian named Murray Sinclair, has even called the whole thing “a big venting session and nothing more”.
Like in the days they sang in the church choir, the survivors will be doing all the performing. We will do the listening. That’s how the game has always worked. That’s how we learned how to conquer and enslave them: watch, and learn, and manipulate.
One of the few indigenous people left standing, a traditional Anishinabe man named Peter Yellow Quill, had the temerity to ask the TRC Commissioners in Winnipeg last June why none of the church officials would be testifying at the hearing.
“Shouldn’t the people who caused this holocaust be made to explain and be held accountable?” Peter asked.
He was told to sit down.
Peter still doesn’t get it, but I don’t blame him. He doesn’t understand who and what he’s dealing with yet. Neither do all the desperate brown men and women who will walk on razors and publicly undo themselves once more by recalling their torture in order to provide satisfaction to we who caused their suffering: the Mu Multh Nees.
That’s a west coast word from a nation long gone, and it means, “Those who are nothing”. It’s what the Nuu-chah-nulth people named the first Europeans they encountered.
I’ve pondered that word mu multh nee ever since it was first told to me in 1993 by a hereditary Nuu-chah-nulth chief in Port Alberni, where I began to learn of the mass graves of all the children behind the United Church residential school there.
Stirring his tea, the old man explained,
“Sometimes it means ‘the ghost people’, ‘cause that’s what you seemed like to my ancestors, spirits who were lost. But it really means, people who are Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I repeated, confused.
“Yeah” he said. “You appear to be real but you aren’t.”
Appearance, after all, is everything to us Nothings.
If we create an appearance of an investigation and call it a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, then it is faithfully believed to be so: even when it has no power to subpoena, or prosecute, or allow names of criminals to be named.
If we speak of healing, we genuinely believe that we know what that is; and that we are actually capable of it. But the Appearance is shattered in an instant by simple questions like “Where are the bodies?”, and “Who is responsible?”, which is why the TRC must be as rigidly controlled as a Sunday church service.
Most of the many aboriginal survivors I know have avoided the TRC like the plague, knowing that Nothing will come of it. And sure enough, tomorrow in Victoria, as at every TRC event, the carefully screened and selected witnesses will tell their tales of woe and desperately believe, as all slaves must, that Caesar will be moved, and will change, as if he were human. But that which is Nothing cannot change.
And yet, the performance must go on, and this week the Canadian “media”, which has for so many years utterly ignored the evidence of murder and torture and mass graves at the Indian residential schools, will suddenly and dutifully describe how something called truth and healing has finally arrived. All of the right kind of Indians will be quoted. But the survivors will continue to die in droves. And the graves will remain closed.
My closest friends worry about me these days, even more than normal. One of them called me up yesterday and said,
“It must be hard for you to be so ignored when you’ve been so vindicated. After all you’ve sacrificed, I don’t know how you can stand it, this huge cover up of the truth.”
“It’s okay” I replied. “None of it’s real”.
For in the last days, I will pour out my spirit on those I have chosen: even on my poorest servants. For the sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the great and terrible Day of the Lord. And there will be deliverance for the survivors of that Day, even though their wound be incurable. For I the Lord God will make myself known to them.
Category Testimonies of Survivors and Eyewitnesses
Posted on April 15, 2012 by itccs
April 12, 2012
Dear Steve,
church and state I doubt that if one of your own kids was savagely raped, strangled to death and thrown into a garbage pit somewhere, you’d look too kindly on a government that gave $57 million to the killer’s employer, especially when the latter had been caught red-handed concealing the crime.
But that’s what you’ve just done, according to your own 2012 federal Budget. Your government has given that much money to the Roman Catholic church and its agencies across Canada. In fact, of the more than $80 million you shelled out to religious groups, nearly three quarters of that money went to the same catholic church that caused the death of most of the 50,000 little kids who never came back from the Indian residential schools.
Now I understand why the Vancouver cops come down on us so hard whenever we picket the downtown Catholic cathedral on behalf of those missing kids, since the local Archbishop is another recipient of taxpayer’s largesse, to the tune of $231,321. I wonder what that particular payoff is for? Or the cool $200,000 you gave directly to one particular catholic parish, St. Patrick’s church in St. John’s, Newfoundland?
And just so we’re clear, your Budget doesn’t stop at the catholics. You also handed to another church with aboriginal blood on its hands, the United Church of Canada, nearly $1 million, to its national office in Etobicoke. Even little Simcoe Street United Church in Oshawa got $136,785!
Steve, you’re colluding with murderers, and for some reason you’re compelling Canadian taxpayers to help you do so, by bankrolling church organizations whose stated policy regarding child rape in its ranks is to obstruct justice by concealing the crime and silencing the victim.
That’s the case for the catholics, at least, who have always been more honest in their criminality than the more “liberal” United Church, who nevertheless shuffle their own rapists around for their own protection: guys like convicted former national officer “reverend” Russell Crossley.
So, to leave aside for a moment the gross immorality of all this (something I’m sure you won’t find that hard to do), your use of public funds to subsidize proven criminal bodies is an offense, not only under domestic but international law.
Let me repeat: you are committing a crime, and are forcing taxpayers to help you. And I know why: it’s because of something called a Financial Concordat, which you share with the Vatican and its subsidiary churches. Under its terms, you’re obligated to subsidize catholic agencies, and even funnel taxpayer’s money directly to the church, as your own Budget reveals.
In other words, you’re in a pact with the Devil.
Somebody who you’ve probably never read, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was once expected to pay his American government a tax that would help fund a Fugitive Slave Law, compelling all citizens to return runaway black men and women to their slave masters. Well, Ralph wouldn’t do so, and, echoing modern day international law, he wrote to the President in the year 1852,
“Whenever government surrenders its moral authority by aiding oppression and evil, then I am absolved of all allegiance to it, and I know no ruler save God Almighty, and no law but that of conscience itself.”
That’s the natural law, Steve, and it’s my birthright. And like anyone of conscience, I’m invoking that higher law right now, and I’m asking everyone I know to do the same. We ain’t gonna pay your butcher’s bill any longer, Mister Prime Minister.
But that’s just for starters. You are inviting us to also issue a citizen’s arrest warrant against you, Steve, on behalf of all of our fellow citizens, who you are compelling to break the law. We can do that, under common law. It’s called a Necessity Defense, and it has to happen whenever the courts and police refuse to protect the public from criminals in high office, like you.
Some of my friends among the Cree Nation on the prairies started the direct action ball rolling back in the fall of 2008, right after your bullshit “apology” to them for the residential school terror. They did their own kind of healing when they entered a catholic church and stripped the local priest of his vestments and told him to get off their land. He ran out the front door of the church, and he’s never come back since then.
That kind of action has always been our only real safeguard against the likes of you, Steve, and the monsters in robes who prey on our children. My ancestor Philip Annett knew that when he picked up his musket in December of 1837, and marched through the Ontario snow to join with other farmers when they tried overthrowing the clique of bishops and bankers that ran Canada for their own private profit.
We may have lost that battle, but we’re patient. We learn from our mistakes, and we know you now for what you are. And our arm is strong, and reaches far. It has to, for our children’s lives are at stake, and our future.
So I won’t bother asking the bought and paid for “members of parliament”, who are the bonded servants of a foreign ruler and another criminal called “the crown of england”, to do something about your funding of child killers. Instead, we’re turning you off at the source. No more taxes. No more votes. We need a new deal, altogether.
Welcome to the Republic of Kanata, Steve. You can leave now.
By Wynne Parry, Senior LiveScience Writer | LiveScience.com – 14 hours ago 
