Well meaning acts will not counter sectarianism
By Padraig MacDabhaid
The Housing Executive in the North last week unveiled a plan in which
community groups, politicians and the RUC will be asked to help devise
strategies to deal with intimidation on mixed estates.
In the report, which was launched on Wednesday 19 May, the Housing
Executive says it intends to work with local community groups to remove
sectarian symbols from mixed estates, devise local action plans for areas
affected by intimidation, and slow down or stop mixed estates from becoming
segregated.
Last week, with the launch of the Housing Executive's new strategy, the RUC
began removing loyalist flags and bunting in Antrim. Catholics in Antrim
suffer nightly intimidation from loyalists, with armed and masked loyalists
able to roam the streets and block roads. How will the removal of a few
flags, which were immediately replaced, help end such activity?
The answer is simple, it will not.
There are now almost 40 houses up for sale in Antrim; the vast majority are
Catholic. There are similar situations in what were mixed estates
throughout the Six Counties.
The latest to suffer loyalist intimidation is a family forced to leave
their Antrim home on Sunday, 24 May. The family had to leave the estate
after the mother, a 38 year-old Protestant woman, was threatened by known
loyalists because she is married to a Catholic. The woman was around at her
brother's house having a cup of tea on Saturday evening when a crowd of
men, whom she was told later were LVF, burst into the house. I asked them
to leave because the kids were terrified and screaming and one of the men
said that he was going to put me in hospital before Sunday night was out.
The woman lost her little girl to leukaemia and now says she is terrified
that she won't be able to return home. She says the intimidation has been
going on for years but this is the first time she ever considered moving.
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