Belfast on the Brink After Killing, Reid Says

Reuters ^

[RCW2001]

Belfast on the Brink After Killing, Reid Says
Last Updated: July 22, 2002 09:48 AM ET
By Louise McCall BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid said Monday the province risked a return to the dark days of tit-for-tat sectarian killings after Protestant gunmen shot dead a 19-year-old Roman Catholic. The killing was the culmination of what police described as a "catalog of mayhem" in north Belfast overnight which saw two other men -- one Protestant, the other Catholic -- wounded in separate shootings. The death was claimed by the "Red Hand Defenders" in a call to the BBC in Belfast Monday. The name is a cover used in the past by several pro-British factions, chiefly elements of the Ulster Defense Association (UDA). Responding to the attacks, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid said the killers "must and will be brought to justice" and urged community leaders and paramilitary chiefs to act to end the bloodshed. "Once again the violence of north Belfast has brought that part of the city to the brink of a return to the darkest days of random killings," Reid told reporters in Belfast. He warned that if the violence was not brought under control, the people of Northern Ireland "will hand over the keys to their future... to gunmen, crazed by bigotry and hatred, who will not let the peace work." The shootings were the latest in a series of attacks in the strife-torn British province, where the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement between majority Protestants and minority Catholics has failed fully to staunch the violence. CATALOG OF MAYHEM Police superintendent Roy Suitters described the overnight violence as "a catalog of mayhem" and appealed for community leaders on both sides to exert influence to defuse tension. "When a 12-year-old at one side of Belfast throws a stone, someone on the other side of Belfast ends up being killed," he told the BBC. "Somehow, somewhere this has to stop." Police later named the victim as Gerard Lawlor, aged 19, who lived a few hundred yards from where he was killed. Local media reports said Lawlor had an 18-month-old son, and quoted the dead man's mother appealing for no retaliatory attacks. Lawlor was hit several times in what police believe was a drive-by shooting in the Whitewell Road area of north Belfast early Monday, scene of clashes between rival Catholic and Protestant gangs during the past year. He died at the scene. In January this year a 20-year-old Catholic postman was shot dead in the nearby Protestant Rathcoole area. That killing was initially claimed by the Red Hand Defenders, but the UDA later admitted responsibility. Earlier Sunday night, a 19-year-old Protestant was shot and wounded close to the Catholic Holy Cross Girls' School, scene of a bitter blockade by Protestant residents last year. Later a Catholic man was wounded in another gun attack. British government officials have said either Reid or Prime Minister Tony Blair will make a statement on the peace process before parliament recesses for its summer break Wednesday. The Irish Republican Army -- responsible for about half of the 3,600 deaths during Northern Ireland's 30 years of conflict -- issued an unprecedented apology last week for killing unarmed civilians during its campaign. The IRA, like other major paramilitary groups on both sides, has called a cease-fire, but rising levels of street violence and rioting by both sides have damaged faith in the peace process.

[Benson_Carter]

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Catholic Man Slain in N. Ireland
Mon Jul 22, 7:50 AM ET

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - A Catholic man was shot to death Monday after a night of gun attacks left two others wounded in north Belfast, the most bitterly divided side of Northern Ireland's capital, police and residents said.

The killing of Gerald Lawlor, 19, was the first related to the Northern Ireland's political conflict since mid-April, when a Catholic cab driver was slain in a rural village in disputed circumstances.

A group called the Red Hand Defenders claimed responsibility for the killing early Monday. Police say this name is used as a cover for the outlawed anti-Catholic group, the Ulster Defense Association, or UDA.

Lawlor was walking just after midnight toward the Whitewell Road, a contested boundary between rival British Protestant and Irish Catholic neighborhoods, when he was shot, police said.

"The series of shootings in north Belfast last night, which ended in the vicious murder of a young Catholic man, are beneath contempt," said Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid, Britain's Cabinet minister for the province. "No community grievance or political cause could ever justify this. The murderers must, and will, be brought to justice."

Lawlor's mother, Sharon, appealed to Catholics not to take revenge and said she would pray for her son's killers. Gerald Lawlor had an 18-month-old son, Sharon Lawlor said.

The UDA is supposed to be observing a cease-fire in support of the province's 1998 peace accord, but Britain no longer recognizes the validity of that truce because police blame the 3,000-strong organization for repeatedly attacking Catholics. The UDA last year disbanded its affiliated political party and formally rejected the 1998 pact, from which the UDA largely has been excluded because of its electoral unpopularity.

Catholic residents said the gunfire started Saturday night after they spotted Protestant militants on a motorcycle trying to shoot Catholics in two parts of north Belfast. One Catholic man was shot in the thigh.

Protestants said the attacks on Catholics were in retaliation for Saturday night's shooting of a man in the Protestant half of Ardoyne, a polarized district of north Belfast at the heart of rioting the past year.

The man was hospitalized in stable condition.

Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party, denied IRA involvement.

[Benson_Carter]

Catholic Priests Escape Injury in N.Irish Attack
Fri Jul 19, 8:15 AM ET

BELFAST (Reuters) - Two Roman Catholic priests in Northern Ireland escaped injury when their parochial house was attacked with petrol bombs, police said on Friday.

They managed to put out the blaze after one was roused from his bed by the sound of breaking glass as four petrol bombs and three canisters of lighter fuel were hurled through the windows of the house in Downpatrick, south of Belfast.

The attack was condemned by the Catholic moderate SDLP MP for South Down Eddie McGrady.

"This wasn't just some sort of minor petrol bomb attack. It was clearly a vicious attempt to murder," he said.

The attack early on Friday came just hours after several Catholic families in Belfast escaped serious injury after their homes were petrol-bombed by pro-British loyalists. Police said the attacks were "naked sectarianism" and totally unprovoked.

One house was destroyed and seven others were damaged in the attacks in north Belfast, the scene of violence in recent months between rival Catholic and Protestant youths.

Meanwhile Sinn Fein announced on Friday a monument to Irish Republican Army guerrillas in Northern Ireland is to be removed after talks with Protestants upset that it was sited close to where their loved ones were killed by the group.

Laborers William Hassard and Frederick Love were shot dead by the IRA in County Fermanagh, in the west of the British-ruled province, in 1988. The marble and granite memorial to three IRA men killed in 1992 stands near the spot where they died.

"There was never any intention of placing a monument that would cause offence or indeed further pain to anyone," said Gerry McHugh, of the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein.

McHugh said it had been a mistake to place the memorial at the site in Belleek, and the families of the Catholic IRA men to whom it was dedicated supported the decision to move it.

On Tuesday the IRA apologized for the first time for bombing and shooting hundreds of civilians during its 30-year campaign against British rule in the province. It also acknowledged the "grief and pain" of families of what it termed "combatants."

The IRA has observed a cease-fire since 1997, but dissident groups opposed to the peace process have continued to carry out sporadic attacks in Northern Ireland and Britain. Outbursts of sectarian violence have also flared in Belfast in recent months.

[ex-snook]

Day by day the world sees the oppression of the Irish for which the Irish are blamed. If England treated Ireland like they treated Canada, there never would have been any 'troubles'. England left Canada to govern themselves.

[genefromjersey]

Ah ! God save all here !

Ye'll surely pardon me askin', but isn't Belfast always "on the brink" of some sort of violence from one faction or another ?

Fare thee well, troubled Ulster
'Tis, alas I must leave ye
An' escape from this madhouse
Where no mortal is free.

For the bomb an' the bullet
They have ravaged yer beauty
Ye devour yer children
An' ye're poison to me !

Fair thee well British soldiers-
With yer bynets an' rifles
Ye are twice as imprisoned
As the land ye enslave.

Fair thee well to cold killers
An' to Preachers of Hatred-
May the Divil come claim ye
While you're fresh in the grave !

[slane]

The violence in Belfast is not being caused by England or the English, but by the yobs on both sides of the sectarian divide who are looking for aggo, as the articles posted above make plain. They will continue their tribal feuding regardless of whether NI remains a part of the UK (as the majority of NI residents want it to) or becomes part of the ROI. A quote from the first article sums it up perfectly: "When a 12-year-old at one side of Belfast throws a stone, someone on the other side of Belfast ends up being killed." The ordinary people of NI have reached a point of total frustration and exasperation with the situation, but the hard men on both sides could care less what the other 95% of the population think or want. Unless they decide to stop the spiral of street violence and rioting things will continue to deteriorate.

[Ann Archy]

Clinton fixed this problem....Writer must be a liar.

[Happygal]

Welcome to yet another happy July in Northern Ireland *sigh*

[Voronin]

If only the Serbs had taken a leaf out of the British book of 'dealing with terrorists', then there would have been the same 'success'...

VRN

[wimpycat]

It sounds like this sort of violence is by now culturally ingrained. I think you're right; there will always be someone over there stirring up trouble, even if they get whatever the hell it is they want--does anybody even remember what it is they want these days? Oh well, it doesn't matter, does it? If they got what they wanted, they'd find something else to fight about, I'm convinced.

I hope the decent people of NI will turn their backs on these people, stop glamorizing them and shun them, be they Protestant or Catholic.

[slane]

You are correct - the violence is culturally ingrained, but its only a relative handful of mostly unemployed young men who keep it going, and then only in the interface areas where working-class communities intersect. The fact is that the decent people of NI long ago turned their backs on these thugs and shunned them - but the thugs could care less. There's no reasoning with someone who gets his kicks throwing pipe bombs through a pensioner's front window at 3 a.m., or shooting a total stranger on the street. It's a problem I see no solution to.

[Norn Iron]

Meanwhile, Slane, the Governments tolerate the growing mafia culture that these terrorists on all sides indulge in. Quite a bit of the interface violence flows from the pressure by one or more groups of these gangsters extending 'their sphere of influence'.

[slane]

Of course these are the same Governments that agreed to let all the thugs back out on the streets -so what other outcome did they expect? And speaking of interface violence, the riot in Sandy Row over the weekend must signal a new level of idiocy. It seemed to be rioting for its own sake, without even the excuse of aggro from the other side. The police apparently have their hands tied when it comes to dealing with the violence. And now the lunchpail bomb that has killed a workman at an army centre - the bad old days certainly seem to be coming back, which suits the gangsters just fine.

[Norn Iron]

The Sandy Row rioting seems to have followed a dispute between the police and local thugs. We have 'advanced' to the situation where the police have been rejected by the thugs/gangsters/terrorists who control these little independent republics. It seems that the Governments have delegated justice in these Wild West statelets to the local warlords - a sort of public paramilitary partnership.