Posted by Jim on January 6, 2013
A loyalist gunman opened fire tonight in east Belfast as three nights
of rioting by the paramilitary UVF escalated. Tonight again saw attacks
against both the PSNI police and residents of the nationalist Short
Strand enclave.
The PSNI said they had come under fire and arrested a loyalist on
suspicion of attempted murder.
While examples of British state forces in the North coming under fire
from unionist paramilitaries are extremely rare, the incident marks a
potentially significant development in the UVF’s campaign of terror.
There have been paramilitary-orchestrated protests in Belfast since
early December when Alliance members on Belfast City Council voted with
Sinn Fein and the SDLP to restrict the number of days on which the
British union flag flies over City Hall to 15 from 365.
The violence, which stopped over Christmas, began again on Thursday.
Today’s disorder began this afternoon when hundreds of loyalists
returning east from a protest at City Hall again attacked nationalist
homes in the Short Strand enclave, before turning their firepower on
the PSNI. The PSNI turned water cannon against more than 100 loyalists
hurling fireworks, smoke bombs and bricks, before gunshots rang out.
Last night saw open street violence on the Lower Newtownards Road, the
Beersbridge area and in Newtownabbey areas of Belfast. Missiles
including petrol bombs, fireworks, bricks and ball bearings were again
thrown at nationalists and the PSNI.
‘PROTECT THE SHORT STRAND’
Local Sinn Fein Councillor Niall O Donnghaile called on the PSNI to
ensure that attacks on isolated catholic communities like the Short
Strand “masked under the guise of flag protests” are brought to an
immediate end.
“There has been some good work done by the PSNI in keeping unionist
rioters away from this community but significant mistakes have been
made in facilitating illegal protests and marches in East Belfast,” the
former Sinn Fein Lord Mayor added.
East Belfast MP Naomi Long described reports that shots had been fired
in the vicinity as “deeply disturbing.” The Alliance politician said it
was further proof the ongoing protests were becoming inextricably
linked with violence.
“This latest rioting, and chilling reports of shots being fired, mark a
new low and must be unequivocally condemned. The context for policing
them has changed as the protests and violence have become more
orchestrated,” she said.
Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore also condemned the loyalist violence.
“This is the third successive day of unrest in Belfast,” he said.
“These attacks over the past three days are not the mark of legitimate
protest but are the actions of a small group who want to bring Northern
Ireland back to a darker past”.
Posted by Jim on December 21, 2012
Loyalists are again attempting to bring the North to a standstill this evening with road closures in Belfast and across the north.
The demonstrations coincide with evening rush-hour on what is also the busiest shopping weekend of the year.
Trouble broke out at similar protests on Monday night as loyalists again took to the streets over a reduction in the flying of the British Union Jack flag at Belfast City Hall.
Loyalists have been demonstrating against that decision on an almost daily basis for over two weeks.
Dozens of locations have been listed for protests on a website this evening, including areas of Belfast, Bangor, Portadown, Lisburn, Newtownards and Carrickfergus.
Plans to push ahead with the protests came as political leaders held a marathon special meeting at Stormont yesterday to discuss the flags crisis.
After almost eight hours of talks the five main parties issued a joint statement.
The collective response condemned the riots that have marred some of the demonstrations. However, it did not call for an end to the protests.
Protests are taking place this evening at flashpoints such as Twaddell, Hesketh and Crumlin Road in north Belfast as well as at Finaghy and Shaw’s Bridge in the south of the city, the Knock carriageway in the east and Shankill Road and the Broadway roundabout in the west.
Demonstrations are also planned for Larne, Derry, Portadown and Ballymena.
MONDAY MAYHEM
There are fears that the protests could lead to rioting, as seen on Monday night when loyalist mobs erupted into violence in several areas.
The worst of the disturbances took place in the Sandy Row area of Belfast, where a tourist bus was burned out by loyalists armed with petrol bombs. Tourists visiting Belfast city centre had to be taken back to County Wexford in a replacement coach.
Clashes also took place at a flags protest near the Alliance Party office on the Newtownards Road, where a mob of 200 loyalists ran amok.
Belfast Telegraph reporter Adrian Rutherford was punched to the ground and his phone was stolen by a masked man as he reported from the scene in east Belfast.
In other incidents, a taxi driver was attacked by protesters blocking a road in north Belfast. The driver, who did not want to be named, said he stopped at a junction when a man who appeared to be orchestrating the blockade ordered a gang of youths to attack his car.
“I keep hearing that these protests are peaceful when they’re anything but,” he said. “Had they managed to drag me from my car I have no doubt would have been seriously injured or even killed.”
In the county Antrim town of Carrickfergus, five masked loyalists burst into the Town Hall and terrified councillors.
A veteran Alliance Party politician, Sean Neeson said he was left “shaken” after the gang stormed into the council chamber and shouted sectarian abuse at him. One of the gang reportedly called Mr Neeson a “Fenian c***” while another pointed an object, believed to have been a golf umbrella, in the direction of councillors.
Trouble also flared in Lisburn and Portadown as the blockades closed dozens of roads across the North.
OMINOUS DEVELOPMENTS
Later in the week, British Union Jack flags were newly erected at a number of sectarian interfaces. The move came as loyalist paramilitary groups ended their support for an agreement on the reduction of flag-flying in the North.
As part of the new campaign of intimidation, flags were erected near Catholic schools and in dozens of other controversial locations — including outside Holy Cross Girls Primary School in north Belfast, the scene of a bitter loyalist protest a decade ago which made headlines around the world.
In east Belfast, members of the UVF have been accused of orchestrating the protests and being involved in violent incidents sucb as attacks on the offices of the SDLP and Alliance parties in the North. On Wednesday, five Assembly members from Sinn Fein and Alliance received death threats in the form of bullets posted to their offices.
This week, the PSNI said they had arrested sixteen people across the North, nine children and just seven adults. Among those held were children aged 11 and 12. However, it is understood that no loyalist paramilitaries have yet been arrested or threatened with the revocation of their release licences — a routine PSNI tactic against former republican prisoners.
eirigi’s Pádraic Mac Coitir said the flags protests had confirmed that the North remains a hostile place for nationalists.
“How many times have constitutional nationalists told us the Orange state is no more and that we live in a more tolerant society?” he asked.
“The issue of flags is a smokescreen for the wider sectarianism being waged by unionists.
“Sinn Féin and the SDLP bowed to pressure during a debate in Belfast city council and agreed to let that flag on certain days, including the birthday of the English queen.
“Already in many parts of Belfast unionists are putting up more flags, especially in so-called interfaces.”
He warned that loyalists would be allowed to continue with their disturbances thanks to “their allies in the PSNI”.
“This is in stark contrast to the PSNI response to peaceful marches and protests held by republicans.”
Just after making this statement earlier this week, Mr Mac Coitir was arrested and imprisoned this week by the PSNI. He is currently being held at Maghaberry jail in connection with a peaceful sit-down protest in north Belfast against a sectarian Orange Order parade in July, 2010.
Posted by Jim on December 17, 2012
I came to America forty years ago. One of the early protests I helped to organize was outside the United Nations – to protest the inhumane and racist mistreatment of the Price sisters imprisoned in England. The late Paul Dwyer and I spoke. The other speaker was the father of Marian and Dolours, Albert, whom we had brought out from Belfast. For years later I would visit Albert when I went home to Ireland. And now, after all these years, I am protesting the mistreatment of Marian Price. This is the sort of thing that for centuries has ensured Irish-Americans retain an ongoing visceral fury at British injustice. The British establishment professes bewilderment at the “ intransigence” of Irish-Americans — that they are “still going on about The Famine, etc.” Well, for a current explanation for our fury, look no further than the mistreatment of Marian Price — made all the more outrageous since it is happening in the middle of the Irish peace-process : “For if they do these things with a green tree, what shall be done with the dry?” (Luke 23:32). A singularly gratuitous example of the anti-Marian cruelty is the apparent stalling, even stonewalling, of the Parole Commissioners regarding Marian’s “ application for release”. “Parole Commissioners” may well now enter the Irish-American lexicon in the same breath as The Famine, Gombeenman, Cromwell, etc., etc. … And don’t blame Irish-Americans , but the reason : gratuitous mistreatment of the Irish.
Fr. Sean Mc Manus President Irish National Caucus
P.O. BOX 15128 Capitol Hill Washington, DC 20003-0849
Tel. 202-544-0568 Fax. 202-488-7537
sean@irishnationalcaucus.org
Posted by admin on December 12, 2012
as reported by Niall O’Dowd Irish Central
The latest British inquiry into the death of Pat Finucane is again leaving massive questions unanswered.The Guardian newspaper editorial headline said it best; “Pat Finucane murder: collusion, contrition, but not the whole truth.”
My strong belief is that the whole truth is that Margaret Thatcher ordered the Pat Finucane murder on February 12, 1989.
That is the key reason that no British Prime Minister will ever allow a public inquiry into the killing of the Belfast civil rights lawyer gunned down in front of his wife and children at his home.
He was shot 14 times while his widow, Geraldine, who was injured, tried to save him.
His only offense was to defend suspected IRA men and women too well in their court hearings.
I am not at all surprised that David Cameron uttered words of regret and then refused a public inquiry after the Da Silva report was issued yesterday.
Geraldine Finucane, a woman of immense courage,called it for what it was.
“This report is a sham. This report is a whitewash. This report is a confidence trick dressed up as independent scrutiny and given invisible clothes of reliability. Most of all, most hurtful and insulting of all, this report is not the truth,” she told reporters afterwards.
She knows what the truth is. The order to kill her husband came all the way from the top and David Cameron or any other British Prime Minister can never allow that truth to be revealed.
He can’t admit the British kill civil rights lawyers, can he?
Patrick Finucane was bringing the case of the Gibraltar 3, three IRA members shot dead in cold blood in March 1988, to Europe, which was going to be a massive embarrassment for Thatcher, who very likely gave the order for them to be shot dead also.
That court later found the three had been shot unlawfully. They had their hands up in surrender when they were shot down.
Finucane was doomed by a top government official. A member of Thatcher’s government Douglas Hogg, a Home Office minister, stood up in the House of Commons three weeks before Finucane was murdered and stated that some lawyers in Northern Ireland were “unduly sympathetic” to Irish Republicans.
He was directly referring to Finucane and signaling the killers to go ahead.
The new inquiry shows that MI5 was perfectly aware of the Finucane murder plot as were the RUC Special branch.
The Stevens inquiry into the Finucane killings stated, “My Enquiry team also investigated an allegation that senior RUC officers briefed the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Rt Hon Douglas Hogg QC, MP, that ‘some solicitors were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA.”
Mr Hogg repeated this view…and the Enquiry concludes that “the Minister was compromised.”
In this latest enquiry, Sir Desmond Da Silva wrote, “My review of the evidence relating to Patrick Finucane’s case has left me in no doubt that agents of the State were involved in carrying out serious violations of human rights up to and including murder.”
Those agents did not act alone, they did so on orders from on high — all the way to 10 Downing Street.
Thatcher’s reaction to the finding that her minister was responsible for the death of a lawyer?
She promoted him to Minister for Agriculture, all the better to keep him quiet.
Hogg was not alone in fingering Finucane of course. It went much higher in the government, all the way to the top.
It was a time when Thatcher apparently believed she could win the war if only those pesky lawyers would stop getting guilty terrorists off. She also faced massive embarrassment in Europe over the Gibraltar killings.
The killing was sanctioned and carried out by the British state. Of all the crimes committed in Northern Ireland, the Finucane murder is the one which successive British government, of whatever hue, have most resisted investigating.
Pat’s problem was that he was too good at his job of defending Irish men and women arrested for alleged crimes against the state.
He had to be got rid of. The leader of the gang that killed him was a British special branch agent named Tommy Lyttle. The man who confessed to being the Ulster Defense Association hit man was Ken Barrett, also a special branch agent.
The UDA man who supplied the gun was William Stobie, also a special branch agent. He was killed by the UDA, by a British agent in 2001, when he threatened to tell the truth about what happened to Pat Finucane.
Hogg and Thatcher might as well have been in the room when the gun went off fourteen times – they were just as culpable. The naming was the equivalent of painting a target on Finucane’s back – everyone knew who Hogg meant.
The British government had made their preference known.
And all the whitewash in the world will never remove the truth about what happened to Pat Finucane
Posted by Jim on
The British Prime Minister has admitted the assassination of Pat Finucane was “an appalling crime” which involved three state agents, the RUC police and the British Army, but he has stopped short of ordering a public inquiry.
In a statement to the Westminster parliament this afternoon Mr Cameron said there had been “shocking” levels of state collusion but no “over-arching state conspiracy”. He was speaking following the release of an official report on the murder of the Belfast defence lawyer by British barrister Desmond de Silva.
His comments went further than any previous statement by a British Prime Minister, but appeared to draw a veil over the potential involvement by the Tory government of the day in the atrocity.
The de Silva report confirms that the British Army suggested Finucane as a target and were heavily involved in the murder and subsequent cover-up. But the report does not succeed in identifying those politically responsible for the assassination plan, or make any link to the comment by Minister Douglas Hogg in the government of Margaret Thatcher, just weeks before the murder, that “some solicitors were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA”.
The review finds that actions by employees of the state “actively facilitated” the killing, and that 85% of the intelligence obtained by the UDA came from the British Crown. In a two year period, there were 89,270 separate incidents of what were described as “leaks” from the Crown forces to UDA.
Cameron told MPs today that the British Army and Special Branch had advance notice of a series of planned UDA assassinations, but “nothing was done”. Employees of the state and stage agents played “key roles” in the Finucane murder, and he admitted: “It cannot be argued that these were rogue agents.”
The Finucane family had suffered “the most grievous wrongs” but Cameron continued to disagree about the need for a public inquiry, claiming the de Silva report provides “the fullest possible account of the murder of Pat Finucane and the extent of state collusion”.
He said the degree of collusion exposed was “unacceptable” and said in a message to the family: “I am deeply sorry.”
John Finucane was eight when the death squad of British agents and UDA loyalists burst into the family home and gunned down his father while they were eating Sunday dinner.
Speaking before today’s statement, he said: “No matter what the circumstances, it’s not easy for anyone to lose their father at a very young age, never mind in such a violent fashion.
“In the case of my father we see that those [state] agencies not just failed to protect him but instigated the murder and then covered the matter up.. That’s quite shocking and remains so for me and my family.”