Republican News · Thursday 20 June 2002

50 days of attacks

The Short Strand siege

BY LAURA FRIEL

The tragedy lies with the children's toys, now abandoned amongst the debris of a thousand bricks, broken bottles and stones that carpet the area, the once tended window boxes and the still flowering hanging baskets, all of which bear witness to happier times

"This community has been physically, socially and psychologically persecuted over the last 50 days," says Sinn Féin's Joe O'Donnell. He is standing beside a row of houses in the Clandeboye area of Short Strand, the nationalist enclave in east Belfast that has been the focus of a sustained loyalist attack.

d it's a dismal scene of destruction. Nightly bombardment by mobs of masked loyalists has reduced this quiet residential area to near dereliction. And it's not so much the row of boarded windows and barred doors. Nor even the thousands of broken tiles along the roofs, the burnt fencing, the damaged back gates, the scorch marks or the smell of petrol that are the most distressing elements of this scene.

The tragedy lies with the children's toys, now abandoned amongst the debris of a thousand bricks, broken bottles and stones that carpet the area, the once tended window boxes and the still flowering hanging baskets, all of which bear witness to happier times.

d it lies in the darkened rooms where families are still trying to live their lives. It's in the tired faces of residents too fearful to sleep. The flurry of anxiety when there's a knock at the door and the nightly exodus of children forced to sleep elsewhere.

It lies with the homeowners whose confidence in the future has been destroyed along with their property and the elderly couple who have lived here all their lives but no longer feel able to stay; and two-week-old Eoin Rooney, born during the siege and now living under the shadow of loyalist paramilitary flags and his mother Orla, still denied medical access and other essential amenities by the loyalist blockade.

Loyalist threats have forced the local post office to close indefinitely while local shops, including the only chemist in the area, have been 'ordered' by loyalist paramilitaries not to serve Catholics. "We're all too afraid to go to the shops now anyway," says Mairead O'Donnell.

Loyalist intimidation has left local doctors unable to see their Catholic patients at their surgeries. A letter signed by eleven local GPs condemning loyalist threats against their Catholic patients attending surgeries in east Belfast was circulated to the media last week. The community centre, located within the area, now serves as a temporary GP surgery, baby clinic and distribution point for medication and welfare.

Last Thursday evening, the Short Strand community held a rally to highlight their plight. The location of the rally, within the estate, was deliberately chosen to avoid any suggestion of provocation.

Earlier in the day, a statement from the Loyalist Commission, an umbrella group, announced loyalists were to adopt a 'no first strike' policy. The Loyalist Commission, which involves unionist politicians, Protestant clergy as well as loyalist paramilitaries, was established during the recent loyalist feud as a mechanism to end internecine violence.

Within the northern nationalist community the announcement was met with understandable scepticism. In the Short Strand it was accompanied by another loyalist attack. The rally ended in disarray as news filtered through the crowd that a 500-strong loyalist mob were attacking nationalist homes in Penny Court.

In Madrid Street, Sharon McMullan had been watching television with her children when bottles and bricks were thrown over the newly erected barrier. Sharon's two-year-old daughter had been sitting on the front doorstep playing with her dolls. "I jumped up to check if the child was in the hallway," says Sharon.

As Sharon ran towards the front door a blast bomb exploded injuring the mother of six. Sharon was rushed to hospital by ambulance where she was treated for shrapnel wounds. "If my daughter had been there she'd have been killed," says Sharon.

But this isn't just a story about sectarian violence and intimidation by loyalist paramilitaries. It involves the complicity of so many more. It involves the PSNI and the British Army. It involves unionist politicians and their political agenda. It involves the media and the myths peddled to obscure the real dynamic of sectarianism in the north.

As the residents of Short Strand have pointed out, the nightly invasion of Cluan Place by hundreds of masked loyalists armed with bricks, bottles and petrol bombs could be stopped by a police service prepared to 'throw a jeep across the entrance'.

The failure of the PSNI/RUC to confront loyalism has left the ordinary Protestant community of Cluan as vulnerable as their Catholic neighbours. The residents of Cluan were 'evacuated' by the UVF, employing a mixture of scaremongering and intimidation. Once a quiet community of mostly elderly Protestants, Cluan offered the UVF a convenient location within the Short Strand from which to launch their sectarian onslaught.

On Thursday, the loyalist incursion into the Short Strand area during the rally was facilitated by the PSNI and British Army. British soldiers and members of the PSNI allowed the loyalist mob to walk through their cordon. Denied police protection, the residents were forced to engage in hand to hand fighting to expel the loyalist mob.

In the ensuing turmoil the British Army and PSNI fired seven plastic bullets, injuring a number of Short Strand residents. One man was hit in the chest and woman, described as a grandmother in her late 40s, was rushed to hospital with a suspected broken ankle. A photograph of her abandoned blood-filled shoe captured the severity of her injury.

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that Clandeboye is in danger of becoming another Bombay Street - Sinn Féin Councillor Joe O'Donnell

Trimble threatens

Meanwhile, UUP leader and First Minister David Trimble was threatening to collapse the institutions. "Act on Sinn Féin or I will quit," announced Trimble. Speaking on BBC television at the weekend Trimble blamed Sinn Féin and the IRA for the present political crisis and called on the British government to act.

"The NIO and Downing Street don't seem to have the courage to tell the truth. I think it is essential that we face the realities and that we tell the truth and that we do so in order to sustain confidence amongst ordinary people," said Trimble.

But in truth, the only political crisis facing David Trimble came from within his own party. On Saturday, Trimble faced a 120-strong Ulster Unionist executive meeting and anti-Agreement elements within his own party leadership were baying for his blood.

"I, for one, am not prepared to be complicit in a process which turns a blind eye to IRA violence," declared Jeffery Donaldson, turning a blind eye to loyalist violence. Unionists must "act and deal with the IRA's failure to commit themselves to exclusively peaceful means" said Donaldson calling for the exclusion of Sinn Féin.

"If Dr Reid does not face up to the realities of the situation then the Ulster Unionist Party will be left with no alternative but to bring this process down," said UUP Deputy Leader Ken Maginnis.

"The party needs to seek the exclusion of Sinn Féin with support from the DUP and SDLP," said South Antrim MP David Burnside.

To offset any leadership challenge the First Minister was not only prepared sacrifice the people of the Short Strand he was also prepared to beat the Orange drum. Earlier in the week the UUP leader had published a 50-page submission to the Parades Commission championing the right of Orangemen to march through the nationalist Garvaghy Road area.

Stoking the fires of perceived Protestant grievances, Trimble said that the Commission had made 150 determinations on applications by the Portadown Orangemen and none had been in their favour.

In fact there had been only three applications for the 'traditional' Drumcree church parade during this period. The Parades Commission confirmed that of 3,400 parade applications received every year only 5% were subject to restrictions.

Trimble based his figures on what Breandan Mac Cionnaith described as 'the Orange Order's abuse of process', in which Portadown Orangemen had filed for a march down the Garvaghy Road every Sunday for the other 51 weeks of the year, knowing that they would be rerouted.

Trimble's intervention followed comments by DUP Assembly member Sammy Wilson who claimed that republicans were creating flashpoint areas on the Newtownards and Albertbridge Road to stop future Orange marches. "That is what all this trouble is about," said Sammy, "I have no doubt about this."

d in the media, Belfast's Newsletter had been quick to jump on the bandwagon. Euphemistically describing "July as a troublesome month," Monday's editorial continued, "the crisis talks maybe the last chance for Sinn Féin to convince all reasonable people of its democratic credentials or failing that, for Tony Blair to show that he has set acceptable parameters for the continuation of a genuinely democratic process."

Government platitudes

Meanwhile, the London and Dublin governments were mouthing platitudes. British Secretary of State John Reid was urging parents to keep their children out of 'inexcusable' violent clashes while Bertie Ahern advised rather than apportioning blame for recent violence all sides should work to calm the situation.

Ironically, it was PSNI Superintendent Tom Haylett, speaking of loyalist violence in Larne, who inadvertently identified that 'situation'. Hardcore loyalist paramilitaries were trying to drive Catholics out, he said.

"This isn't one community against another. These are innocent Catholic people that pose no threat to anyone. This is pure sectarianism for the sake of sectarianism," said Haylett.

Standing among the ruins of Clandeboye, Joe O'Donnell describes the latest loyalist attacks. "The roof on this house was repaired by the Housing Executive on Friday afternoon only to be wrecked again by loyalists on Saturday morning," says Joe.

"Boarded windows stop petrol bombs smashing into the house but once soaked with petrol they ignite easily and these houses are under the constant threat of being set alight. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that Clandeboye is in danger of becoming another Bombay Street."

The new metal barrier at Madrid Street and Bryson Street