Republican News · Thursday 25 October 2001

Loyalist Pogrom in North Belfast

BY LAURA FRIEL

The first pipe bomb thrown over the rooftop hit eleven-year-old Neidin on the chest before exploding at her feet. Standing with Neidin was eight-year-old Sinead. Just a moment earlier the two friends had been enjoying playing ball outside their homes and under the supervision of Sinead's father.

"There was a ball of fire," says Sinead, "we panicked when the first one came down and then we ran." Before the second pipe bomb exploded Sinead's father grabbed her, lifting the child into his arms.

The second bomb exploded at the spot where Sinead had been standing just moments before. Sinead's mother Kathleen ran out to see her daughter lying limp in her father's arms. "I thought she was dead," says Kathleen.

Both children were rushed to hospital after shrapnel was discovered embedded in Sinead's back. Neidin experienced ringing in her ears and difficulty breathing. Both girls were clearly in a state of shock.

"I could feel a burning in my back," says Sinead, "I was very scared." At the hospital a piece of copper was removed from Sinead's back.

"The children had x-rays to rule out any other shrapnel wounds," says Kathleen, "there was a red friction mark on Nadine's chest where the first bomb had hit her. The medics were concerned that there might be an internal injury."

This was not the first time the children have been attacked. Neidin described surviving another loyalist bomb attack on her Newington Street home just a few weeks earlier. The child was seated on a sofa in her living room when a blast from a bomb thrown into the back yard threw her to the ground. "I'm not safe anywhere. I'm not safe in my house and I'm not safe in the street," says Neidin.

A pogrom is defined as organised persecution of an ethnic group. Its roots lie in the Russian word for destruction and the historic experience of European Jewry. For many people pogrom is a word associated with the past, wrongs belonging to another time and another country. But such a notion is at best misplaced. Persecution in different forms has remained a sad reality for many communities throughout the modern world.

Currently, for nationalists living in North Belfast, who have endured systematic persecution for almost a year at the hands of loyalist paramilitaries, pogrom is the noun which best fits the experience. In the last ten months throughout the north of Ireland, the Catholic community has been subjected to loyalist violence almost daily.

In North Belfast, where the vast majority of the most serious attacks have taken place, normal daily life has virtually been suspended. Here, if you are a member of the Catholic community, you are vulnerable to attack during every aspect of your life, at home, at work, going to school, to chapel, at leisure.

At a conservative estimate there has been over 300 pipe bomb attacks in as many days. But this is only the most serious of a litany of improvised weaponry, including bricks, bolts, bottles, sticks, batons, hammers, hatchets, fireworks, petrol and paint, all of which are currently being used by loyalists in pursuit of their campaign of hatred. And the attacks continued unabated last week.

On Wednesday, Holy Cross children and their parents were filled with terror when a bomb exploded close to the junction of Ardoyne Road and Alliance Avenue as they were walking home through the loyalist blockade.

Children and their parents, who only a few weeks ago were directly targeted during a pipe bomb attack, screamed and ran in panic. Local priest, Fr. Aiden Troy, who had been accompanying the children, was at the scene moments after the blast.

Teresa McKee was at home when a blast bomb was thrown at the back of her home, smashing windows and blowing in the back door. Teresa's terrace house backs onto the loyalist Glenbryn Park. The Catholic mother of two sustained cuts and grazes to her face and was treated for shock. The rear of her home was extensively damaged.

Denying that the timing and location of the attack had been a deliberate attempt to further terrorise already traumatised Catholic school children, PUP loyalist Billy Hutchinson said it was time that Holy Cross parents "stopped whinging."

Fr Troy described it as "extraordinary that it happened just as the children and parents completed their walk from school." It created a new sense of tension, said the priest. "It is nothing short of miraculous that no one was injured or killed."

On the same afternoon in another part of North Belfast, a family were sitting down to tea when loyalists smashed their front window. The gang had broken through an interface gate on Duncairn Gardens. The Catholic family targeted in the attack had received a number of recent death threats.

The attack followed a loyalist incursion on the previous night when a number of pipe bombs were thrown at Catholic homes. Two bombs exploded close to homes on the junction of Duncairn Gardens and Hallidays Road. A third device failed to detonate after being thrown at a house in Newington Street. On the same night several hundred loyalists attacked nationalist residents in the Whitewell area of North Belfast after a failed incursion attempt.

On Thursday a group of people standing on the Antrim Road narrowly escaped injury when a pipe bomb was thrown at them from a passing car. The attack happened outside the Northern Bank premises at Newington. The bomb, described by Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly as "a sophisticated grenade type device", failed to fully detonate.

Dermot Winters (21) was walking along the Cliftonville Road in the early hours of Saturday morning when three men approached him and attempted to drag Dermot into a white Vauxhall car. The young Catholic was beaten around the head with a hammer but managed to fight off his attackers until a passing motorist intervened.

"They shouted 'let's kill the Fenian bastard'," says Dermott. "They really hit me full force with the hammer but I had put my hands around the back of my head to protect myself; that probably saved me."

Last Sunday, there was an incursion attempt by a 50-strong loyalist mob in the Limestone Road area of North Belfast, during which nine pipe bombs were thrown at nationalist residents. During the disturbance a loyalist sustained a gunshot wound. It was reported as non-life threatening.

A Catholic couple and their four children, aged between 5 and 14, survived a pipe bomb attack on their Deerpark Road home. The attack took place shortly after 9pm on Tuesday night. The explosion shattered windows and damaged a neighbour's car exposing the deadly potential of the device. The family were later treated for shock.

To label the campaign of intimidation currently being pursued by loyalists against northern nationalists, a pogrom implies more than the organised nature of the violence itself. By definition, a pogrom involves a certain official complacency, a tacit acceptance, even complicity within the wider institutions of the state and civil society.

Nationalist residents under attack in North Belfast repeatedly complain that the RUC are failing to confront loyalist violence. Last month Carmel Grant described an armed RUC patrol ignoring her pleas for help during a loyalist bombardment of her Newington Avenue home. The family were left to fend for themselves while the RUC sat in their armoured vehicle a few feet away.

More recently, the RUC's reluctance to identify the serious nature of some loyalist attacks has left residents believing that members of the RUC are deliberately manipulating the evidence. In an attempt to disguise the real extent of loyalist violence, incidents which are clearly pipe bomb attacks are being classified as 'only fireworks'.