Dozens Injured in Northern Ireland as Protestants Riot Over Blocked Parade Route

Dozens Injured in Northern Ireland as Protestants Riot Over Blocked Parade Route
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 13, 2013

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Hundreds of police reinforcements from Britain were deployed Saturday on Belfast’s rubble-strewn streets after Protestant riots over a blocked march left 32 officers, a senior lawmaker and at least 8 rioters injured.

Northern Ireland’s police commander, Chief Constable Matt Baggott, blamed leaders of the Orange Order brotherhood for inciting running street battles in two parts of Belfast that lasted six hours and subsided early Saturday. He called the group’s leaders reckless and said they had had no plan for controlling the crowds they had summoned.

The fraternity’s annual July 12 marches always raise tensions with the Roman Catholic minority here. In each of the previous four years, violence has broken out after an Orange parade passed by the mainly Catholic district Ardoyne in north Belfast, the most bitterly divided part of the capital.

This year the British authorities ordered the marchers to avoid the stretch of road nearest Ardoyne, an order that the police enforced by blocking the parade route with seven armored vehicles. Orange leaders took that as a challenge and rallied thousands of supporters to the spot, where some attacked police vehicles and the lines of heavily armored officers behind them.

Chief Baggott said the Orange leaders behaved recklessly and should not duck responsibility for the mayhem.

“Having called thousands of people to protest, they had no plan and no control,” said Chief Baggott, an Englishman who has commanded the Police Service of Northern Ireland since 2009.

Orange leaders said the blockade decision was the problem, not the fury of their own members. But they backed off their original threat to mount indefinite street protests across Northern Ireland and ordered a suspension of protests early Saturday. The order’s leaders declined requests for interviews.

Nigel Dodds, north Belfast’s Protestant member of Parliament and an Orangeman himself, had gone to the riot’s front line to appeal for calm and was knocked unconscious by a brick that fell short of police lines. He was released from the hospital on Saturday.

The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service said it transported eight wounded civilians from the riots. But other rioters are likely to have stayed away from hospitals, because those admitted for riot-related injuries can be identified and arrested by the police.

Britain’s cabinet minister for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers, said it was “vitally important for the Orange Order to make clear now that their protests have come to an end.”

“It would be disastrous if we were to see a recurrence of last night’s violence over the next few days,” she said.

The July 12 parades officially commemorate a 17th-century battlefield victory by the Protestants over Catholics. But in practical terms, the mass military-themed mobilizations — including 550 on Friday alone — provide a graphic annual test of whether Protestants still wield control in a land where the government and the police for decades were almost exclusively Protestant...

An interesting ad from Ireland: you can take it either way

The text on the cup is pure, old-fashioned Orange, but the subtext is a bit subversive, since there has been surrender, and Rome is not in charge in Eire. This ad seems to have something for everyone. It also seems to be converting a partisan holiday into a celebration for natives as well as colonists--expropriating the day to some extent. Happy 12th of July!

England and Ireland are friends; are Israelis and Palestinians next?

Queen leaves on high as Irish crowds finally appear
By Conor Humphries
May 20, 2011

CORK, Ireland (Reuters) - Large crowds cheered Queen Elizabeth for the first time on her historic visit to Ireland on Friday, as police relaxed security for the final day of a bridge-building mission widely seen as a success.

After an arrival marred by bomb scares and a riot by people opposed to Britain's continuing control of Northern Ireland, police appeared to ease security to allow thousands of people within yards of the monarch for the first time.

She responded with an unscheduled walkabout to shake hands with her well-wishers in the center of Cork, Ireland's second city. She later boarded the royal plane past an honor guard.

"This will show the world that the past is the past," said Pamela Hyland, 41, who brought her 9-year-old child to see the queen. "It has taken us decades to achieve peace and this is the icing on the cake."

Organizers slowly breathed a sigh of relief that the four-day trip, the first by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland since independence from London in 1921 and a diplomatic high-wire act, had gone off without a hitch.

Daring gestures included the queen laying a wreath to those who died fighting the British crown and visiting the scene of a massacre of 14 people by British forces. In a speech to the nation, she expressed sympathy to those who suffered during hundreds of years of conflict between the two neighbors.

"It has been a stunning success," said Diarmaid Ferriter, professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin. "We knew what was going to happen in advance, but it's not until you see it that you realize the power of the symbolism."

"It got to people in a way that probably surprised them."

Several dozen nationalists protested a few hundred yards from the queen, but there was no disorder in Cork, known as the rebel county for its resistance to the partition of Ireland during a civil war that followed independence from Britain...

Freedom of speech in Northern Ireland: Ireland's version of a KKK march is met with violence

I woke up yesterday morning and thought, "This is the twelfth of July, the day the Orangemen march in Northern Ireland to celebrate their conquest of the native Irish centuries ago. This won't be good."

Northern Ireland's Chief Constable has called for a major debate on the controversial parades.


Northern Ireland Riots: New Video Released
July 13, 2010
Sky News HD

Carole Erskine, Sky News Online
Dramatic footage of fresh violence in Northern Ireland has been released by police after a second night of riots in north Belfast.

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The video shows masked protestors throwing petrol bombs, bricks and bottles at police officers.

It also shows a police van being attacked by a large group carrying metal poles and weapons - at one point they try to turn the vehicle onto its side.

Officers fired 70 baton rounds and used water cannons to disperse the protestors.

The violent scenes at the flashpoint in the Ardoyne area are all too familiar as crowds targeted officers who had been trying to escort a planned Orange march past streets dividing loyalist and republican neighbourhoods.

Belfast violence

This was the second night of violence in the Ardoyne Road area of north Belfast

Police have also been attacked by rioters in violent clashes elsewhere in Belfast and in other areas across Northern Ireland, including Lurgan, Co Armagh and Armagh City.

Over two nights of trouble 82 police officers have been injured.

Northern Ireland's Chief Constable has called for a major debate on the controversial parades.


http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Twelfth-of-July-A-Festival-of-Bigotry