On Monday night Belfast witnessed heavy fighting between Protestants and Catholics, probably the worst for 10 years. A photographer was shot in the leg, although his injuries were not considered life threatening, and a demonstrator suffered a fractured skull after a stone dropped on her head. On Monday, some 500 people from both sides ended up fighting each other and attacking the police in the Short Strand area, a Catholic nationalist enclave in the Protestant neighborhoods of East Belfast.
These incidents occurred at the beginning of the period of annual Protestant marches in Northern Ireland which often trigger violent protests by Catholics, reported the news agency Europa Press.
In an unusual request police have advised all journalists and photographers to leave the area “for their own safety”, and sent reinforcements to the area. Officers had to intervene with stun grenades, according to local press, and have also used vehicles mounted with water cannon.
“After several years of relatively calm, is not a good omen for the city at the beginning of the marching season,” said Colm McKevitt, a member of the regional parliament representing the Irish nationalist SDLP party.
In fact, the Police Service of Northern Ireland has attributed the origin and organization of the incidents to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a historic Protestant loyalist paramilitary group that declared the ceasefire in 1994 and formally abandoned the armed struggle in 2007.
Politicians in each community accused the other party of sending agitators to generate violence.
Speaking to the media, the Rev. Mervyn Gibson, a senior representative of the Presbyterian Church and a member of an Orange Order, stressed that Catholic and Protestant communities do not confront each other in a violent manner “without reason” and that tension has been growing for months. The Short Strand area is one of the so-called hot spots of Belfast, a nationalist enclave traditionally dominated by people from the IRA. It is the neighborhood where the renowned McCartney sisters lived. They were supporters of the Republican cause in 2005 but had the courage to stand up against the IRA when they were convinced that one of the IRA strong men in the city had killed their brother, Robert, after a minor dispute in a bar. The sisters ended up leaving the area.
Northern Ireland has suffered more than three decades of fighting between Unionists, who want to remain part of Britain, and Republicans, who want a united Ireland.
“The loyalists feel left out of the peace process. They feel they have been pushed out and that nobody now tries to get on board,” says the Irish Times Jim Wilson, Progressive Unionist Party member. A comment that invites us to think that the riots of these days may be an omen of things to come.
