Posted on 06/19/2005 4:17:10 AM PDT by Panerai
Roman Catholic protesters assaulted police and Protestant marchers in a polarized part of Belfast, and nearly 30 people were injured, police in Northern Ireland said Saturday.
The violence flared Friday night as a parade by the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternity, passed a hostile crowd on the edge of the Ardoyne district, a traditionally Catholic enclave. Hundreds of police in riot gear tried to keep the two sides apart, but Catholic men and youths spent more than an hour hurling bottles, bricks and at least 10 Molotov cocktails at the police lines.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said 18 officers were injured, none seriously. The 11 injured civilians included a 14-year-old girl with a broken arm.
The rioting fizzled out once police deployed water cannons to douse the Catholic crowd.
"We were deployed in sufficient force to prevent a bad situation from getting worse, but as it was, our officers came under sustained attack," said Superintendent Gary White, who commanded the police operation.
Police said they arrested three people for rioting and planned more arrests once people photographed by surveillance cameras could be formally identified.
Several hours later, in apparent retaliation, Protestant militants attacked five homes in nearby Ligoniel, a Catholic district. The houses were struck about 2:30 a.m. Saturday with paint-filled balloons. And three had broken windows or scorch damage from ignited gasoline-filled bottles.
Ardoyne is one of the most hard-line nationalist districts of north Belfast. Residents there generally loathe the Orange Order, an organization that mounts more than 2,000 parades annually, many in July, to commemorate the victory of Prince William of Orange in 1690 over King James II, a Catholic.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
RTE: Your post "I think most reasonable people would agree that the economics of cheap labor and not fear of the papacy and such theological nonsense is the root of this unfairness and the catalyst for the ongoing, mutual hatred."
Actually, jobs are so hard to come by in Ulster, the Catholic population was complaining they couldn't get jobs at all.
Hey LCJ: this is the second time this year I've agreed with you. It saddens all who seek to follow Him when we fight like this.
You can imagine the Klan dressing up in their white sheets and parading through black sections of town. Everybody would think that was terrible. But it's okay for the Orangemen to get in their fraternal outfits and parade around. Go figure.
When was the first time? I couldn't have been regarding international trade...unless of course I made one of my rare concessions (that's the only way I see us agreeing; hint: you're stubborn).
There's quite a difference between a march in the South, and a march in a Catholic area of Belfast or Derry that suffered for decades under the Unionist hegmony and the subsequent war. People in the south just ignore them. The biggest one, in Rossnowlagh, is completely off the beaten track, and if you want to see it, you have to make an effort to go there to watch it pass along a country road. There is no reason for the Orangemen want to march through the Ardoyne except to rub it in the faces of the nationalists(could you find a more bitter, divided place in the north after the siege of the school girls a few years back?).
Re #9, oh please! They were not merely "walking" by, they are intentionally sowing discord by marching their pathetic "Orange" parade through the adjoining area. Their intent is plain, after three hundred years the Protestants want nothing more than to continue to rub it in against the Catholics.
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