Posted on Sun, Sep. 11, 2005


Belfast riots some of worst in a decade


Associated Press

Protestant extremists attacked police and British troops for a second straight night Sunday, littering streets with rubble and burned-out vehicles in widespread violence sparked by anger over a restricted parade. More than 40 police were wounded in the weekend mayhem.

Crowds of masked men and youths confronted police backed by British troops in dozens of hard-line Protestant districts in Belfast and several other towns. Gunmen opened fire in at least two parts of the capital Sunday night.

Nobody was reported shot, but shrapnel from homemade grenades wounded a half-dozen officers during clashes Sunday night with a 700-strong mob in east Belfast, raising the number of police wounded over the past 36 hours to above 40.

Police advised drivers to avoid Protestant parts of the city, where thousands blocked roads and lobbed the grenades a range of other objects at police equipped with helmets, body armor and flame-retardant jumpsuits.

Officers doused crowds with massive water cannons and fired several hundred blunt-nosed plastic bullets.

Chief Constable Hugh Orde, commander of Northern Ireland's mostly Protestant police, blamed the Orange Order - a legal brotherhood with more than 50,000 members - for inspiring the riots. The violence began Saturday when police prevented Orangemen from parading near a hard-line Catholic part of west Belfast.

But police and analysts claimed the march provided a pretext for Northern Ireland's two major outlawed Protestant paramilitary groups, the Ulster Defense Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force, to launch a pre-planned rebellion against police authority. Their current desire for street mayhem reflects their near-total disconnection from the province's decade-old peace process.

The UDA and UVF are supposed to be observing cease-fires and disarming in support of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord, just like the outlawed Irish Republican Army rooted in militant Catholic areas.

But while the IRA has built a major base of support through its Sinn Fein party and has grown central to ongoing negotiations on Northern Ireland's future, the Protestant paramilitary groups have failed to win electoral support and barely register in political talks. Instead they wield power through criminal graft backed by occasional intimidating shows of force.

These days, while IRA veterans are being encouraged to pursue their aims through politics and appear poised within weeks to resume disarmament, the UVF and UDA are openly fighting to keep control of criminal empires - a future challenged by the police and the wider peace process.

Orde said members of both the UVF and UDA, which wield authority in different Protestant districts of Belfast, were orchestrating attacks. He cited the rioters' access this weekend to stockpiles of gasoline-filled bottles, homemade grenades and assault rifles. Police seized a bomb-making factory and seven firearms during the riots.

"We are very lucky we do not have dead officers this morning. It's a tribute to the way they responded and it's a tribute to their tactics," Orde said before rioting resumed Sunday night.

In one particularly blatant sign of outlawed groups' involvement, masked and armed men stopped cars Sunday and checked drivers' licenses at a police-style road checkpoint near the Mount Vernon neighborhood in north Belfast, a UVF stronghold.

Such demonstrations - which have been carried out by both the IRA and Protestant outlaws during previous flashpoints of Northern Ireland's 53-year-old conflict - are designed to mock police authority.

Elsewhere, Protestant gangs sought primarily to line their own pockets. In east Belfast, rioters hijacked a backhoe and used it to topple lampposts and smash open a bank's automated teller machine; in the eastern suburb of Bangor, rioters robbed the passengers of a bus, then burned it on the main road.

In several locations, Catholic hard-liners joined in the all-night melee, tossing rocks, bottles and other objects into police lines and the Protestant crowds beyond.

Orange marches, always a divisive summertime tradition, triggered widespread violence in the mid-1990s but comparatively little in recent years. Belfast's last major riot came July 12, when about 500 Catholics attacked police following a small Orange parade in north Belfast. On that occasion, about 100 officers and 10 civilians were wounded.

This weekend saw the worst riots by Protestants since July 1996, when Protestants rioted across Northern Ireland for four nights straight over another blocked Orange Order parade. On that occasion, police caved in to the pressure, allowing the Protestants to march - and triggering three more nights of even more intense Catholic rioting.

ON THE NET

Northern Ireland Parades Commission, http://www.paradescommission.org

Orange Order, http://www.grandorange.org.uk





© 2005 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com