Belfast riots some of worst in a decade
SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press
BELFAST, Northern Ireland
- 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
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