Irish Republican News and Information, 3 June 2002, http://irlnet.com/rmlist/ 


 

150 FLEE HOMES AS ENCLAVE COMES UNDER SIEGE

A weekend of intense clashes in east Belfast has left the nationalist enclave of the Short Strand "looking like Beirut", according to local councillor Joe O'Donnell.

Many Catholic families also had to be evacuated during a loyalist onslaught after they they were threatened by loyalists that their houses were to be burnt out. At least wo homes were set ablaze by petros bombs and over a hundred have fled the area.

As the demographic tide turns against them, loyalist paramilitaries have turned on the tiny Short Strand enclave in east Belfast in a bid to cleanse the growing Catholic population from the area.

Councillor O'Donnell said the attacks on the Short Strand were 'like 1969 all over again'.

Nationalist residents today were repairing their homes after a weekend in which their houses came under sustained attack for up to 72 hours.

At the height of the trouble at the weekend, there were reports of shots being fired by both loyalists and nationalists.

Rioting broke out on Friday night in the Short Strand area when loyalists erected flags and bunting along an interface which has been the scene of sectarian rioting in recent weeks. Loyalists threw a number of blast bombs on the Newtownards Road.

Rioting flared again on Saturday night when bricks, bottles, petrol bombs and fireworks were all thrown.

Mr Joe O'Donnell, Sinn Fein councillor for the Short Strand area, said loyalists had put the Catholic area under siege.

"I understand there have been shots fired from here tonight, but there was gunfire into here first," he said last night.

"We stood and watched 40 or 50 semi-uniformed loyalist paramilitaries march down and line up on the Albertbridge Road. I'm now standing with 150 people who have been evicted from their homes."

Mr O'Donnell said houses in the Short Strand had been decimated. "This area is completely surrounded by a wall and 70,000 unionists and yet we are the ones targeting them. I'm standing here and it looks like Beirut."

Short Strand residents accused the UVF of attacking nationalist houses in the area in an effort to create its own sectarian interface.

All the houses at one interface have had their windows boarded up after weekend attacks.

'LIKE BOMBAY STREET'

"This is Bombay Street all over again," said mother-of-three Margaret McDowell, "they are trying to burn us out of our own homes just like they did in Bombay Street in 1969.

"They started attacking our homes on Friday night with pipe bombs, stones and petrol bombs and they didn't stop the whole weekend.

"There was up to five reports of shots throughout Saturday night.

"They broke all the windows in the houses and then they started throwing bags of petrol over onto the roofs to try and set the houses alight."

But Margaret McDowell said that the attacks on nationalist homes could easily be stopped.

"The attacks on our homes are coming from Clune Place on the other side of the fence.

"It is only one street and if the police wanted to stop it all they would have to do was put a Land Rover in the street."

And the Short Strand mother says that residents feel betrayed by the lack of coverage in the mainstream media.

"We tried to contact the media all weekend but no one wants to know.

"Unionist politicians are saying this is tit-for-tat, but it's not.

"They are attacking our homes because they want to force Catholics out of east Belfast. That is what this is all about, nothing else."

The mother-of-three said that the attacks on their homes have become so relentless that people are now forced to keep fire extinguishers and water hoses in their hallways.

"Most of the people in this estate own their own homes," she said. "The last thing anyone wants to do is to start trouble - who would want to get their own home attacked.

"But we are sitting ducks and no one wants to know."

Joe O'Donnell said he had no doubts that the attacks were being orchestrated by the UVF.

"The Short Strand is a small nationalist community surrounded on all sides," he said.

"A community like ours would be mad to try and start something when we are so heavily outnumbered.

"But that is the way it is being portrayed in the media. I have no doubt that the UVF is trying to open up a sectarian interface for its own ends.

"The loyalists are moving their attacks from one part of the estate to the next so that no one knows where the next attack is going to come from. They have put flags and bunting up outside St Matthew's Catholic Church.

"They have attacked pensioners bungalows beside the church so much that there are huge gaping holes in the roofs. Sooner or later someone is going to be killed unless the outside world starts taking notice of what is happening to the Short Strand," Mr O'Donnell said.

COLERAINE ASSAULT

There was also trouble in north Belfast and in County Derry in a weekend of loyalist violence.

St Anthony's Catholic church on the Woodstock Road sustained smoke damage when a firebomb was thrown through a window. Police are treating the matter as arson.

In Coleraine, up to 40 loyalists chased two Catholic men into the mixed Somerset Drive estate in the Heights area. One man was later dragged from a house in the estate by a loyalist "lynch mob", but escaped serious injury.