September 2001

Comment on the violence against school girls in Ardoyne, North-Belfast

Need for the truth!

The terrible pictures of frightened school children in Ardoyne, North-Belfast, running the gauntlet of hatred through a hail of stones, bottles, and abuse of the worst kind cannot fail to move. These pictures went around the world with good reason.

To show reality is one thing, to understand it is quite another. In many commentaries these pictures are accompanied by prejudice which has nothing to do with reality at all. This is true for Germany as well.Even the victims are discredited: Protestant terror groups throwing bombs at children are seen as despicable... but portrayed only as another facet of the perceived hatred between protestants and catholics. Why else would the catholics be so inflexible and insist on using the front door to their school?

Just imagine this scene in South-Africa during Apartheid. No democratic commentator would have been found to demand from a black mother in such a situation to use the back door instead.

Beating up someone of different color would immediately and rightly be recognized as racist. However, recognizing anti-irish and anti-catholic hatred as racism seems to be too difficult for some political commentators. Yet this is not about black against white or catholic against protestant. This IS about equality with those identifying themselves as Irish in Northern Ireland refusing to be treated as second class citizens.

220 sectarian attacks and 3 murders

Given the encouraged view that this is part of a religious and irrational conflict, there is astonishment over this "sudden" eruption of violence. It is most certainly not sudden but part of an orchestrated, ongoing and hushed up campaign. Since the beginning of this year, the UDA, an extreme right wing loyalist organisation (which threw the bomb at the Holy Cross children) has organised violence against catholics to such an extent that calling it a pogrom is not an exaggeration. Since January there have been more than 220 attacks: Catholic homes are petrol bombed some set on fire. Catholic shoppers and any protestants who might live peacefully with their catholic neighbors are terrorised. There have been three murders - generally in places where the UDA has influence.

One of these murders happened in Glengormley, North Belfast, in July. The UDA publicly murdered a young man standing with his friends in front of a GAA club (Gaelic Athletic Association). They assumed him to be catholic. The victim was a protestant teenager who had been out with his catholic friends there. His best friend was badly injured. The next day, hundreds of protestant and catholic people gathered in silence to pay their respect to the murdered teenager. An Ardoyne citizen bitterly told me afterwards: "It's the media who made a protestant out of this boy. While he was living, nobody was interested in his religion." 

Tacit consent

The violence of the UDA, which they openly boast about under the alias of "Red Hand Defenders" for the bomb attack on the school children and other atrocities, is only one aspect of this depressing issue. The other is the tacit consent of almost all leading politicians of pro-british, unionist parties, the shallow and embarrassing squirmings with which the Northern Ireland Secretary of State Reid and his Chief Constable try to hide their inaction against this terror. Chief Constable Flanagan and Secretary of State Reid refuse to declare the ceasefire of the UDA to be over. It is hard to believe that during this wave of terror in the last months not one perpetrator has been arrested. The Chief Constable has reluctantly admitted that the violence originates with the UDA but added immediately that it isn't clear whether these are single groups of the UDA and to what extend their actions are sanctioned by the leaders.

Since their creation in 1971 the UDA has tight connections to unionist/loyalist politicians like the then Minister of Home Affairs of Northern Ireland William Craig (Vanguard Unionist Party / VUP) and to the security apparatus of British Army and Northern Ireland police (RUC). It took more than two decades until the UDA was banned in 1992 after having murdered hundreds of catholic civilians. Many new and independent investigations indicate that RUC and British Army passed information and logistics to the UDA death squads. These connections might be the reason for the lack of arrests and looking the other way. For not attending scenes at all when called... or much too late. For people having to defend their homes, sometimes in their pyjamas, against groups of murderers armed with sledge hammers.

The British Secretary of State for Northern-Ireland, Dr. John Reid, made mention of barbarism in his comments about the Holy Cross situation. He forgot to mention that this barbarism grows from racism and discriminiation on which Northern Ireland is founded. Hatred is organised by those who want to prevent equality for the Irish half of the population. And they are found in the state offices, among the pro-british politicians and paramilitaries.

On the Irish side there exists no organization with an anti-protestant agenda. Therefore there are no organized racist attacks from catholics against protestants and those who might preach hatred against protestants remain isolated. Thus, the many people who had come to show solidarity with the school children and their parents by accompanying them on their way to school on the 4th day of the siege, joined in a minute of mourning for the protestant boy who had been run over by a car on Tuesday.

The peace process must and shall accomplish the change to a democratic society. Some positive steps have been taken already. The tolerance for the anti-catholic wave of violence by the British Secretary of State for Northern-Ireland and the unionist politicians are a serious set-back.

Racist violence must not be ignored

In view of the continuing violence against the girls of the Holy Cross school, the Pat Finucane Centre for human rights in Derry has called for an act of solidarity. The Centre demands that protestant politicians and church officials accompany the children on their way to school as a sign that this violence against children will not be tolerated any longer.

So what about us? It is frightening and disgraceful that organised racism within Europe in the year 2001, can be hushed up for months. Not ignoring it is the first step of solidarity. What has become obvious over these past few days is that publicity makes it more difficult for the racists and might force politicians to act.

Uschi Grandel, Karen A. Krieger für die Save the Good Friday Agreement Coalition

Jutta Oehring, Würzburg, Mitglied bei Amnesty International

Claudia Tuemmers für die Irland Gruppe Köln (IGK)

Paul Stern für die Irlandinitiative Bielefeld

Björn Eisele für Friends of Sinn Fein (FSF) Bamberg/Lichtenfels

Dagmar Sattler, Trier

Anita Heiliger, Dermot O'Connor für die Irlandinitiative Heidelberg

Sabine Hochhaus, stellvertretende Betriebsratsvorsitzende, Frankfurt

Ingrid Sträter, Soest

Irland Gruppe Omega, Berlin

ViSdP: Uschi Grandel, Holzhaussiedlung 15, D 84069 Schierling, uschi@info-nordirland.de

888 Pogroms against catholics with increasing loyalist violence