Debate contribution: Charlie Kirk: Impact of his Death on Northern Ireland
Debate contribution by Mr Jon Burrows on .
- MLA
- Mr Jon Burrows
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 15 September 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Matter of the Day
- Heading
- Charlie Kirk: Impact of his Death on Northern Ireland
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5099079
Read the official Assembly record
Text
On behalf of the Ulster Unionist Party, I extend our thoughts and condolences to the wife and family and friends of Charlie Kirk. It was a brutal assassination, carried out in the full glare of today's social media. Many people beyond his family and friends and, indeed, beyond America will have been traumatised. Such things can be a chill factor when it comes to people expressing their views honestly and passionately. It is not appropriate, as we acknowledge the terrible crime and atrocity that we witnessed last week, to bring into it in any way a conversation about responsible language. It is absolutely vital that people can speak and be heard and be controversial. Yes, they can be governed under the law, but nothing about a person's words ever justifies the use of violence against them. Nothing about one's political views or views of faith or on how a country should be governed or its constitutional status ever justify one's murder. Every one of us in this place should use our language to say that violence is wrong and always has been wrong. There are people listening to us out there, particularly young people, who cannot make the distinction that some who sit in this place can, in saying, "Violence was OK up to that point — that date — when we said so, but it is not justified any more". We need to take that out of the equation. As a party, we remember, of course, that we have lost members, including Edgar Graham, to political violence. Therefore, I extend our thoughts as a party to the family and friends of Charlie Kirk, and to people who feel that they cannot speak out because, if they do so, they will be oppressed and may even be assassinated. We all need to stand for free speech, and we all need to have this clear red line: violence is wrong, will always be wrong in the future and was always wrong in the past.
333 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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