End loyalist siege of nationalists areas
With loyalist violence spreading throughout the North and attacks on small,
isolated nationalist areas occurring almost nightly, it looks likely that
with the looming Drumcree crisis the intensity and seriousness of these
attacks will grow.
Nowhere will the effects of this increased loyalist violence be felt more
keenly than in the small, isolated and vulnerable enclaves of North
Belfast. In the past four years of Drumcree, the Whitewell, Graymount and
Ligoniel areas on the outskirts of North Belfast have been targeted as
loyalist mobs, backed by loyalist death squads, laid siege to the areas.
Already, nationalists in Ligoniel have come under nightly attack and when
An Phoblacht visited the area this week locals expressed their fear that
once again they will be cut off as they were last year when loyalists
ripped out phone lines and tried to cut off electricity supplies. Since
last Monday, 17 May, the only road from Belfast into Ligoniel has been
blocked every night by loyalist gangs hiding in the Glenbank Park who
stoned buses and cars going into or leaving the estate.
The RUC have been criticised for doing nothing except to weld the gates of
the park shut.
Said Jack McGarry of Sinn Féin: ``All this does is ensure that any
nationalists who would like to use the park now can't. The RUC are doing
nothing to prevent these mobs gathering and coming into the park. Sometimes
they are coming up the road and gathering; it's intimidation''.
Colette expressed her fear that the gangs will next target the homes beside
the doctor's surgery, which house old age pensioners and some lone parents
``Those people were terrified last year'', she said.
Phoblacht has also learnt that a car blown up by the British army in
Ligoniel in the early hours of Wednesday morning had been hijacked by
loyalists and was to be used in a gun attack on a nationalist in the area.
According to local sources a car, which had been hijacked by armed men on
the Upper Crumlin Road earlier, was found abandoned in Ligoniel at about
1.30am and the RUC came on the scene at about 2pm when a senior RUC man
told people that three gunmen had been in the car.
Local people believe that the loyalists were planning to attack someone who
lived locally and suspect that something happened that forced them to
abandon the car and flee. British army bomb disposal units arrived and the
area was evacuated between 4am and 7 am, when they blew up the vehicle in a
`controlled explosion'.
Meanwhile, the RUC visited a local man on the estate on Tuesday evening,
hours before the incident with the car, and told him that his details were
in the hands of loyalists, warning him he ``is on a UFF death list''. The
man's house is across from where the hijacked car was found.
This is the fourth time in the past two years that the RUC have visited the
man.
The man said he was told by the RUC that, ``the UFF are doing sweeps in
nationalist areas''.
Sinn Fein Assembly member for North Belfast Gerry Kelly has warned
nationalists to be vigilant but has called on unionists to, ``work within
their communities to ensure that the systematic violence aimed at small,
vulnerable nationalists communities is stopped.
``With the build up to the Twelfth and particularly with the tension
surrounding Drumcree Ligoniel, Whitewell and Graymount as well as the area
bordering Tiger's Bay are targeted by loyalists. It is a `tradition' we can
do without and I hope that communities and political leaders in unionists
areas will do their utmost to prevent anti-Catholic violence before lives
are lost''.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)