A right to protest

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Tuesday April 04, 2006 05:42

by Seán Ryan

What does the Constitution have to say about our right to protest?

What are our duties?

Our right to protest is derrived from Article 40.6. We have freedom of expression (with one or two limits), the right to peaceful assembly and the right to form associations.

An activist should be familiar with these rights. They are printed in full below.

Shannon Warport for example is a public place. Being a public place, the public have a right to assemble there and practice their rights. There is no legal argument in existence that contradicts this, excepting when the State announces a state of emergency, eg. Civil war.

Rights are one thing, duty is quite another. Let’s talk about duty.

Article 9.2: Fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State are fundamental political duties of all citizens.

An old Oxford dictionary that I use deines ‘fidelity’ as being: 1 faithfulness, loyalty. 2 accuracy, truthfulness. 3 the quality or precision of the reproduction of sound.

It defines ‘loyal’ as being: True or faithful in one’s commitment to one’s friends, beliefs, etc. ‘Loyal’ is an adjective and ‘loyalty’ is a noun.

As a citizen of this country not only do I have the right to protest our colaboration in genocide, the plundering of our countryside by foreign and domestic parasites and the enslavement of my fellow citizens by the same aforementioned parasites, it is my solemn Constitutional duty to do so.

I may add that article 9.2 also applies to the justice system and the government and other ‘representatives.’

ARTICLE 40.6
i. The right of the citizens to express freely their
convictions and opinions.
The education of public opinion being,
however, a matter of such grave import to
the common good, the State shall
endeavour to ensure that organs of public
opinion, such as the radio, the press, the
cinema, while preserving their rightful
liberty of expression, including criticism of
Government policy, shall not be used to
undermine public order or morality or the
authority of the State.
The publication or utterance of
blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter
is an offence which shall be punishable in
accordance with law.
ii. The right of the citizens to assemble peaceably
and without arms.
Provision may be made by law to prevent or
control meetings which are determined in
accordance with law to be calculated to
cause a breach of the peace or to be a
danger or nuisance to the general public and
to prevent or control meetings in the vicinity
of either House of the Oireachtas.
iii. The right of the citizens to form associations and
unions.
Laws, however, may be enacted for the
regulation and control in the public interest
of the exercise of the foregoing right.
2° Laws regulating the manner in which the right of
forming associations and unions and the right of free
assembly may be exercised shall contain no political,
religious or class discrimination.

ARTICLE 9.2
Fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State are fundamental
political duties of all citizens.