Republican News · Thursday 10 January 2002

Nationalists living in fear

BY LAURA FRIEL

y hopes of a reprieve, however temporary, from loyalist violence over the Christmas and New Year period were dashed as Catholic families in the North of Ireland continued to be targeted in a sustained campaign of sectarian attack.

Loyalist violence not only continued throughout December and into January, but also included some of the most serious attacks witnessed this year.

During a ferocious knife attack by loyalists from the Tigers Bay area of North Belfast, Joe Murphy was repeatedly stabbed in the face and head. Neighbours who ran to the aid of the seriously injured man physically held his skull together until the ambulance crew arrived.

Patricia Ferran and her four youngest children, only by chance, escaped certain death and serious injury when a bomb constructed out of scaffolding pipe was thrown into her home. The device, the most deadly of its type to date, was packed with shrapnel and explosives.

According to recently released official statistics, 2001 witnessed a 200% increase compared to the pervious year in the number of shootings and bomb attacks. In the year 2000, just over 130 shooting incidents were recorded, compared to just over 330 for last year.

Bomb attacks also increased three fold, with almost a 180 recorded incidents compare to over 60 in 2000. The number of injured recorded by the statistics rose from almost 900 in the previous year to over 1,100 in 2001. The majority of those injured were civilians.

What the statistics don't explicitly reveal, but nevertheless reflect experience on the ground, is that the sustained increase in violence over the last two years has been loyalist. The figures add weight to the northern nationalist community's experience of a sustained loyalist campaign of anti-Catholic violence.

The impact of loyalist violence has also been reflected in housing figures released by the Housing Executive. In 1994 to 1996, around 3,000 people moved into housing within areas dominated by the other religion. In the years that followed, 1996 to 2001, over 6,000 families fled their homes because of sectarian intimidation and moved back among their co religionists.

The overwhelming majority of those who fled their homes have been Catholics. In the early days of the peace process and in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement's promise of freedom from sectarian harassment, thousands of Catholic families ventured outside the ghetto and sought housing in predominantly Protestant areas. But in the five years since the first Drumcree riots thousands of Catholic families have been forced to flee by loyalist mobs.

In an article last summer, Robin Livingstone of the Andersonstown News referred to 'the truth that dare not speak its name'. Sectarian violence is overwhelmingly loyalist and anti-Catholic, but that simple fact is routinely fudged and obscured, by mainstream journalists, broadcasters, politicians and academics.

This collective conspiracy of denial may be more casual than organised but it still represents a framework of interpretation dominated by a British pro-Union agenda. Within the imperative of defending the Union, the suffering of northern nationalists must be continually marginalised and anti-Catholic violence and discrimination obscured.

d there are powerful mechanisms in place to achieve this end. The RUC, now revamped as the PSNI, routinely redefines sectarian loyalist attacks on Catholic homes as trouble between rival groups and reclassifies loyalist pipe bomb attacks as "just fireworks".

The Housing Executive obscures loyalist violence as a key mechanism by insisting that overcrowding and homelessness in Catholic housing estates are underpinned by "choice". Catholics seeking accommodation "choose" "popular" areas and therefore must tolerate lengthy waiting lists, poor repair and overcrowding.

A recent study based on early census returns and conducted by University of Ulster lecturer Dr Peter Shirlow identifies a greater polarisation between the Catholic and Protestant communities in the north. According to the study, an estimated 66% of people now live in an area where the resident population is either 90% Protestant or 90% Catholic.

A survey of six areas segregated by a 'peace wall' found that 62% of the residents consider relations to have deteriorated since the peace process started. 68% of people aged 18 to 25 have never had a meaningful conversation with anyone of the other denomination and 62% have been victims of sectarian abuse. Only 5% of Catholics and 8% of Protestants actually work in an area dominated by the other community.

The majority of both communities refuse to shop, attend health and job centres in the 'wrong' area even when the facilities are more convenient. The picture of segregation exposed by Dr Shirlow is shocking in itself and should send alarm bell ringing.

But without exposing of the role of loyalist violence, more specifically the UDA's current campaign of anti-Catholic violence, the study will feed rather than dispel prevailing myths of sectarianism as reciprocal unpleasantness. Meanwhile, thousands of Catholic families continue to live under the constant threat of imminent loyalist attack.