Miscarriages of Justice - Where Do We Go From Here?
The Justice For The Cardiff 5 Campaign invites you to join The People’s Forum, where we can gather our collective experience and strength to find new ways of achieving accountability for all racially motivated ‘Miscarriages of Justice’ - for all the individuals, families and communities who have been traumatised by injustice and to protect future generations from harm.
A few victims have eventually been freed – many more are still captive or died in prison. Some may think that the British Justice System does eventually put right its wrongs, even if it takes decades. But this is not justice! They may have been released from prison with compensation (after the state deducted their ‘bed and board’), but what these victims want above all is ACCOUNTABILITY. They want to know who was responsible for the injustice – the individuals, the departments, the systems that framed them. They don’t want revenge; they want to ensure that it cannot happen to other innocent people.
Change has been forced on the criminal justice system. It is unlikely that the coerced confessions of Stephen Miller and Darren Hall would lead to conviction today. But many of the corrupt practices of the 80s and 90s were still used against Joe Fettah in 2016 – falsified evidence, witness statements changed under police pressure, etc. Police chiefs are certain to say that the overt racism wielded against the Cardiff 5 could not possibly exist today and yet Siyanda Mngaza’s injustice in 2020 would say otherwise.
We are working, together with Michael O’Brien (The Cardiff Newsagent 3), for a Judicial Review of all the Miscarriages of Justice in Wales since 1982. But we cannot rely on this process alone. The history of such inquiries in apportioning responsibility, imposing punishments and pushing recommendations into action is shameful. Full accountability is rarely achieved by official inquiries when faced with the power structures that they challenge.
Join us to play your part in finding new ways to achieve accountability.