Posted by admin on July 1, 2014
MP Naomi Long condemns those who put up the flag off Island Street, accusing them of exacerbating racist tensions in the area.
A Ku Klux Klan flag has been placed in an area of Belfast at the centre of a recent surge in racist attacks in the city.
East Belfast MP Naomi Long has condemned those who put up the symbol of the KKK movement, accusing them of heightening racist tensions in her constituency.
There has been a spike in racist attacks in Belfast, with the Police Service of Northern Ireland confirming its officers are investigating up to three racist incidents every day. A large proportion of racist attacks and intimidation is taking place in the loyalist east.
The Alliance party MP said the appearance of a KKK flag off Island Street in the east of the city gives “an even more sinister edge” to xenophobic attacks in the area.
Long said: “Yet again we see those who wish to bully anyone different from them use flags and emblems to assert dominance and control over a community. To put up these flags in broad daylight shows just how brazen the culprits are.
“To use flags hailing a hate group such as the KKK is sickening and lends a further menacing element to recent events. It is essential that every right-thinking person unites against those who engage in racist, bigoted or otherwise intolerant behaviour and does so with consistency.”
The annual benchmark report on human rights and racial equality by the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities , released last month, said there were 982 racist incidents in 2013-14 compared with 750 such incidents during the previous year.
It noted that over the last five years 75% of all complaints to the Equality Commission in Northern Ireland about harassment in offices, shops or factories are related to racial abuse and intimidation.
Over the last year Northern Ireland has become one of the worst hot spots for racist crimes and race-hate-linked incidents in the UK, but the authors of the report say the region is home to only 1% of all the non-EU/EEA migrants who have come into the UK.
Sandy Boyer
Posted by admin on June 29, 2014
Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton are serving life in prison for
the killing of a police officer in the North of Ireland in 2009.
“No evidence exists linking the men to the killing; instead the
prosecution case hinged on the testimony of a paid perjurer who is
discredited by his own father and whose eyewitness testimony is
medically impossible.”
Both men were found guilty and convicted by a single judge without a
jury under special powers in a ‘Diplock Court’.
“Despite the original prosecution case being destroyed during a two-week
appeal hearing in October 2013, both men had their appeals dismissed on
29th May 2014.”
A high profile campaign calling for Justice for the Craigavon Two headed
by iconic miscarriage of justice victim Gerry Conlon of the Guildford 4
continues to campaign for this miscarriage of justice to be rectified.
We ask you to support Justice for the Craigavon Two by helping us end
this miscarriage of justice.
Please sign the petition and ask everyone you know to do likewise:
http://chn.ge/VvfPBd
———–
To:
Chris Grayling MP, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
David Ford MLA, Stormont Minister of Justice
End the miscarriage of justice of the ‘Craigavon Two’ Brendan McConville
and John Paul Wootton.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
————-
Please sign the petition and ask everyone you know to do likewise:
Posted by admin on
The Drumcree marching dispute in Portadown could be reignited after the
Parades Commission this week stunned nationalist residents by initially
permitting an Orange march on the lower end of the Garvaghy Road, the
scene of some of the North’s most intense parades violence, before
changing its mind.
While the decision was almost immediately rescinded amid an outcry, the
commission appeared to continue to vacillate. Local unionist MP David
Simpson said he was told at a meeting with the newly-appointed
commission that the march remains “under review”.
Nationalists living on the Garvaghy Road have called on the PSNI to
enforce the decision amid fears that an attempt to hold an inflammatory
sectarian march by the “back door” will go ahead regardless this
Saturday, June 28th.
Attempts by the anti-Catholic Orange Order to march through the Catholic
enclave every July in the late 1990s saw conflagrations which often
reached across the north of Ireland, and were linked to a number of
loyalist killings at that time. The tensions were only defused in 1998
when the parade from Drumcree church began to be consistently rerouted
away from the nationalist area.
Members of the Orange Order are now seeking to walk along a section of
the lower Garvaghy Road to mark the “dedication and unfurling” of a
refurbished ‘Orange Arch’, a structure constructed over the thoroughfare
and their largest official emblem of the marching season.
After initially being given the go-ahead, the Parades Commission did a
U-turn and eventually banned the sectarian display — but there are
fears the PSNI may still turn a blind eye, despite a recent court
judgment requiring them to enforce such parade decisions.
Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition spokesman Breandan MacCionnaith said
local people would be monitoring the situation.
“We said to people at a public meeting if the review decision stands
people should not go towards the interface area at all,” he said. “They
should go and watch the Armagh match on TV.
“A lot of it will boil down to how loyalists are policed by the cops.
The cops have a duty to enforce the determination and there should be
no-one associated with the parade or arch permitted near the Garvaghy
Road [this Saturday evening].”
Adding to local concerns is the fact that many foreign nationals live in
the interface area at the bottom of the Garvaghy Road known as Victoria
Terrace. Threats to foreign workers, particularly to the North’s largely
Catholic Polish community, have been a significant feature of this
year’s marching season.
Polish flags have appeared on loyalist bonfires and two Polish men
suffered a racist attack close to a loyalist bonfire site in Lisburn
last weekend. The bonfires are due to be set ablaze on July 11th, the
eve of the height of the marching season the ‘Twelfth’, which
commemorates a famous 17th century Protestant battle victory over
Catholics.
Loyalist flags glorifying the ultra-right British National Party and the
openly racist English MP Enoch Powell have also begun appearing in west
Belfast. One such flag, which carries the words “Enoch Powell was right”
was put up close to one bonfire site. The flag is understood to be a
reference to Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech warning of
racial conflict. Elsewhere, intimidatory flags have begun appearing
outside Catholic churches in County Antrim.
TALKS
Tensions are also building in north Belfast after a nationalist
residents group said it had been excluded from dialogue organised by
local churchmen to deal with loyalist demands for an Orange parade on
the Twelfth through the nationalist areas of Ardoyne, Mountainview and
The Dales.
Announcing multi-party talks due to begin at Stormont on Wednesday,
British Direct Ruler Theresa Villiers said she was most concerned at the
situation in north Belfast which she said was “volatile”. She said the
ongoing loyalist ‘protest camp’ at the interface with the Twaddell Road
had made things “extremely difficult”.
All sides should accept the decision of the Parades Commission regarding
this year’s parade, she said: “The crucial thing is that whatever their
determination is that it is respected”.
Nationalist residents spokesman Dee Fennell said attempts to exclude his
more hardline Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective (GARC) from talks to
resolve the dispute were “disappointing and unhelpful”.
Pointing to loyalist calls for all stakeholders to be included in the
talks, he said that it was not “appropriate to exclude a legitimate
residents’ group in the area from any process that would hopefully end
sectarian parades through this area”.
Posted by admin on June 22, 2014
The families and friends of those killed in the Loughinisand massacre
gathered at the County Down village this week to remember the 20th
anniversary of those killed on June 18 1994.
The six men killed were Adrian Rogan, Patrick O’Hare, Eamon Byrne, who
were in their thirties, Malcolm Jenkinson and Daniel McCreanor, both in
their fifties, and 87-year-old Barney Greene. They died after a UVF
gang burst into the Heights Bar and began shooting indiscriminately
during a World Cup game between Ireland and Italy.
No-one has ever been convicted for the attack. On Wednesday, a memorial
Mass to mark the 20th anniversary of the atrocity was followed by a
candlelit procession to the Heights bar.
Some relatives of those who died spoke about their pain 20 years on. One
woman who lost her husband said: “This year is particularly hard.”
Earlier this month, the Police Ombudsman notified the PSNI that he is to
take legal action over the force’s refusal to provide information on
more than 100 occasions, stalling investigations into the Heights Bar
attack and some 60 other deaths.
Aidan O’Toole, the barman who survived the attack, said he still grieves
for those killed.
“I remember that night like it was yesterday and with the World Cup on
this year, the mood and feelings are particularly poignant,” he said. “I
survived that night but my thoughts are with those that didn’t. There’s
not a day that goes past that I don’t think about them and their
families.
“We’ll not stop until we get to the truth as to why Loughinisland was
allowed to happen and why there was nobody ever brought to court. The
only time we are in a court these days is when we are trying to get the
police to tell the truth. Why can’t they let us know what happened?”
A lawyer for the families, Niall Murphy of KRW law, described a fresh
appeal by the PSNI for witnesses to come forward as “an insult to the
families’ intelligence”.
“The fact is that there was an over-whelming response from the public
about this case,” he said. “All of the key exhibits in this case were
found by the public not the police. Within hours, the getaway car was
found by member of the public but far from retaining it for forensic
purposes the police destroyed it within months.
“Members of the public also found the guns, the balaclavas, the boiler
suits and the gloves, but far from securing forensic evidence from the
suspects arrested, police refused to take DNA and fingerprints from nine
of 16 people arrested.
“So, far from securing and preserving evidence, police have been
refusing the gather evidence and when they did, in the case of the car,
they destroyed the evidence”.
In 2011 a report by the then police ombudsman found that a female
witness who came forward in 2009 had her details handed to the relative
of a suspect by a serving police officer. A former senior officer who
worked on the case has also refused to cooperate with the ombudsman.
Mr Murphy said that any further appeal for co-operation should be
directed at the police themselves.
“This is a case, where we have the incredible position that the
Ombudsman has had to take High Court Judicial Review proceedings to gain
access to intelligence that he is entitled to inspect,” he added.
Clare Rogan, whose husband Adrian was one of those murdered, said that
two decades on, her pain continues. “All anniversaries are difficult to
deal with, however this year is particularly hard,” she said.
“It is hard to believe 20 years have passed. What is more difficult to
believe is that the police are still refusing to cooperate with the
Police Ombudsman after all these years. What has the chief constable got
to hide? Who are the police trying to protect after all this time?”
Posted by admin on June 20, 2014
Brian Feeney.Irish News ( Belfast). Wednesday, June 18, 2014.
You may not have noticed , because the Irish and British governments have been denying it, but something has gone seriously wrong with the British-Irish joint approach to The North.
It’s true that Eamon Gilmore has been a failure as minister responsible for British-Irish oversight here and that in his time the Irish government has abdicated its responsibility.
There may be many reasons for that failure. As minister of foreign affairs he must have found it more congenial to go swanning around to meetings of OSCE discussing Azerbaijan or Ukraine or making speeches to almost empty meetings of the UN General Assembly.
He was away often enough to cause concern in his own party and demands that he take on a ministry more associated with the socio-economic problems of Ireland than somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Whatever the reason, he simply didn’t engage with the deteriorating circumstances in The North either on the streets or in the Stormont Executive. Now he’s gone, but in a curious departure.
Of course he’s still minister of foreign affairs – he’s only resigned as leader of the Labour party but there will be a reshuffle and a new face in Iveagh House.
However, Gilmore’s shortcomings as the man dealing withThe North were only half the problem.
There’s the rub. In some ways more important has been the sea change in the attitude of the British government since the Conservatives came in 2010.
Broadly speaking instead of following the joint approach that was repeatedly successful since 1985, the Conservatives have taken the side of Unionists. Instead of exposing this change the Irish government has remained silent.
Gilmore was satisfied when he could point to meetings with our proconsul in Dublin or Belfast even though nothing came from any of them. The Irish government continued to claim everything was rosy even when they were excluded from the so-called economic package Robinson and McGuinness signed up to in Downing street last year.
The same with the investment conference in autumn 2012. No Irish[Government] presence. Not a cheep from Dublin. Not a cheep through the flag protests and the incredible interpretation of the law by the PSNI leadership.
Why did the British and Irish governments acquiesce in the appointment of Haass last year but hang him out to dry in January?
Why do the British give succour to unionist stonewalling on the contentious items which have caused mayhem on the streets and cost millions of pounds? Why won’t they meet Sinn Féin? So far this year Sinn Féin have formally asked three times for a meeting with Cameron and have been turned down on each occasion.
What we do know is that something has gone badly wrong which is damaging the political process here. Perhaps that is why there has belatedly been a change in personnel at the NIO with the appointment of a new permanent secretary, sir Jonathan Stephens, on June 2. He has 15 years experience at the NIO during two previous stints. There have been other NIO reinforcements too. Is it too much to hope that the Cabinet Office has at last realised that the camarilla around proconsuls since 2010 has made a mess of things?
What finally allowed light to dawn? Was it the dangerous fiasco of Adams’s arrest on the basis of tapes that could never lead to a conviction? Was it the nonsense and hypocrisy around the OTRs? [ On the Runs]. Or was it a combination of events which indicated that instead of any coherent policy being followed in The North there was disengagement and favouritism towards Unionism which could only lead to intransigence? Alarm bells should have rung a long time ago but perhaps the final evidence was Eamon Gilmore’s solo run in having talks reconvened which everyone knows will go absolutely nowhere.
Note the silence about them from the proconsul[Feeney’s nickname for the NI Secretary of State]. They’re intended to fail as Unionists have already indicated. Let’s hope that gives the new regime North and South time to bed in over the summer so there can be a new beginning.