Tensions high after Garvaghy march ban
Tension throughout the Six Counties has risen following the 29 June Parades
Commission ruling banning Orangemen from marching down the nationalist
Garvaghy Road next Sunday, 4 July.
Almost immediately, the Orange Volunteers and Red Hand Defenders issued a
joint statement warning of attacks on those involved in the ``sell out''.
According to the loyalists groups' statements, their units were being ``put
on standby from midnight''. Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly has urged nationalists
to be calm in the face of these threats from the Red Hand Defenders and
Orange Volunteers. He said: ``Given that these groups have been responsible
for scores of attacks on Catholics, including deaths, I would urge
vigilance and calm at this difficult and dangerous time.'' In the early
hours of Tuesday morning, loyalists attacked a Catholic woman and her young
son in Finaghy in South Belfast, pushing a pipe bomb through the letter box
of her door.
Within hours of the commission ruling, up to 1,000 Orangemen attempted to
march down the Garvaghy Road. Denis Watson, County Grand Master of Armagh,
announced that the County Armagh Lodge would be at Drumcree for 12 July
instead of Killlylea in a direct response to the Parades Commission's
ruling. ``We are going into dark days once again and I would appeal to
ensure that there is unity within this institution and that we stand
together until our rights are restored,'' he said, in a statement that can
only confirm the fear that another lengthy standoff at Drumcree is
imminent.
Sinn Féin Assembly member Dara O'Hagan, welcoming the Parade Commission's
ruling said: ``In the context of a twelve-month siege and of massive
intimidation and sectarian harassment by the Orange Order and its
supporters, it is the correct and only decision that could have been made.
Direct dialogue is the only way to resolve this issue.'' However, Portadown
District Master Harold Gracey has stated that ``under no circumstances''
would he engage in dialogue with residents' spokesperson Breandán Mac
Cionnaith again, demonstrating the Orange Order's continuing refusal to
resolve the parades issue.
The Parades Commission ruling came at a time of increasing unease among
nationalists, fearful that the Orange Order was intent on raising the
temperature if the Drumcree ruling went against the Portadown Orangemen.
On Saturday 26 June, it was revealed that the Orange Order has applied for
a further 1,300 parades in the next six weeks. A Parades Commission
spokesperson confirmed that the Orange Order had indeed applied for the
extra 1,300 parades throughout the North and that the commission was
``working its way through them''.
Orange Order spokesperson attempted to justify the parades by saying
they were ``an expression of Orange culture'', but nationalists see the extra
parades as an obvious attempt to further inflame an already tense
situation. Now, nationalist communities throughout the North are bracing
themselves for a summer of conflict, especially those communities targeted
by the Orange Order in literature they published at an ``evening of culture''
in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast in March, areas such as Bellaghy, Dunloy,
Newtownbutler, and Roslea, predominantly nationalist towns which have
opposed Orange parades in the past.
Orange Parades pass through nationalist areas
Nationalist areas in the Six Counties were unenthusiastic witnesses to a
number of Orange Parades last weekend, marches which went ahead largely due
to the RUC's saturation of nationalist areas.
In the Springfield Road in West Belfast on 26 June, an Orange march passed
off without incident. At a peaceful protest staged by nationalists, hemmed
in behind a large RUC blockade, Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition
spokesperson Breandán Mac Cionnaith called on nationalists to stand
together in a show of strength on the parades issue.
He said: ``It should no longer be left to the local communities to defend
their rights - we need a Six-County organisation to stand up to the Orange
Order.'' Springfield Road Residents' spokesperson John McGivern described
the march as ``a total insult'' to the residents of the area and repeated the
call for nationalists to stand together against the Orange Order.
Meanwhile, a contentious Orange parade also passed through the County
Tyrone village of Mountfield. Residents' spokesperson for the area Barney
McAleer described the Orange march through the 100% nationalist village on
27 June as nothing more than ``an Orange coat-trailing exercise which had
little to do with religion''. He further stated that nationalist residents
had tried to accommodate the Orange Order but had been met by an adamant
refusal to engage in dialogue.
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