Appeal for Calm in N. Ireland

B E L F A S T, Northern Ireland, July 5, 2000 -- — Police commanders andpoliticians appealed today for Protestant hard-liners to calloff street protests that have caused rioting, fear and destructionacross Northern Ireland.

At daybreak, Belfast commuters picked their way carefully downroads strewn with shattered glass, rubble and occasional burned-outvehicles, the product of a third consecutive night of unrest inhard-line Protestant neighborhoods.

In the most serious incident,unidentified gunmen exchanged fire with police in north Belfast butnobody was reported injured.

Goal: Reverse Parade Ban

The mounting attacks on police and Catholic properties aredesigned to force British authorities to reverse their decision tobar a traditional Protestant parade from a Catholic neighborhoodthis Sunday. The now-annual dispute first triggered widespreadviolence in 1996, when police eventually reversed a decision toblock the same parade by the Orange Order.

Many Catholics despise Orange parades, which often featuredrum-thumping “kick the pope” bands and commemorate 300-year-oldProtestant victories over Catholics. More than 2,000 such paradesare staged each summer, only a few dozen of which go throughpredominantly Catholic areas.

This time Northern Ireland’s police force, the Royal UlsterConstabulary, has responded firmly when challenged, particularly infarm fields near Portadown, 30 miles southwest of Belfast.

There, security forces for the past three nights have preventedProtestant mobs from reaching the nearby Garvaghy Road, where mostof Portadown’s Catholic minority lives.

This morning, British army engineers erected a20-foot-high steel barricade backed by concrete across theOrangemen’s intended path.

Firecrackers, Slingshots and Acid

Late Tuesday, police came under attack from a 500-strongProtestant mob. Attackers hurled firecrackers and rocks, fired ballbearings from slingshots, and squirted acid from syringes at rowsof riot police, who were heavily girded with body armor, helmets,shields and flame-retardant uniforms. Police said nine officerssuffered injuries ranging from acid burns to punctured eardrums.

In response, police deployed two mobile water cannons on loanfrom Belgian police — the first time such riot-control weapons hadbeen used in Northern Ireland since the early 1970s.

After repeatedly dousing the crowd, riot police with clubs andlocked-together shields pushed protesters back up a hill to theAnglican church that is the focal point for the annual march. Theyarrested four people and the rest gradually dispersed.

Leaders of the Orange Order, Northern Ireland’s major Protestantfraternal group with more than 50,000 members, said they wouldcontinue to call for supporters to rally at the confrontation pointand to block roads across the British territory. They say they’redetermined to march down the Garvaghy Road back into Portadown onSunday.

Protestant ‘Views and Rights…Ignored’

“We don’t want to see violence, but the ordinary Protestantpeople now are so frustrated, so angry, because our views andrights have been ignored throughout this so-called peace process,”said David Jones, chief spokesman for the Orange Order inPortadown.

Politicians from the province’s two major Catholic-supportedparties and the biggest Protestant-supported party, the UlsterUnionists, called that position irresponsible.

“You cannot call people onto the roads and then be able tocontrol events. We’ve learned that lesson year after year,” saidReg Empey, an Ulster Unionist member of Northern Ireland’s newProtestant-Catholic administration, the cornerstone of a 1998 peaceaccord.

“The leadership of the Orange Order have a very heavyresponsibility to call off the protests on the hill, and theprotests all over Northern Ireland which they had asked for,” saidBrid Rodgers, who represents the Social Democratic and Labor Party,the major Catholic-supported party in the power-sharingadministration.

“There is nothing at all that justifies shooting incidents orthrowing bricks,” said Paul Berry, a member of the hard-lineDemocratic Unionist Party. “But we must understand that there isgreat frustration within the Protestant unionist community over therights that are being taken away from us.”