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March April 2004
COMMUNITY RELATIONS: CURRENT ISSUES (MARCH_APRIL 2004)
Paramilitaries
Paramilitary activity continued. In March-April Loyalists were blamed for shooting a man in both legs in Rathcoole. Outside Belfast, a 16 year-old boy was dragged from his home in Carnhill, Derry/Londonderry and shot in the ankle. In East Belfast a suspicious object found in the Ashbrook area was declared a hoax. In Larne a family were attacked in their home with a pipe bomb. Loyalists were blamed for a pipe bomb attack in Limavady and a St Patrick's day security alert in Carrickmannon near Ballygowan.
In Carrickfergus a loyalist paramilitary mural outside Eden Primary School, which previously sported a picture of a zombie carrying a UFF flag and stepping over IRA graves was painted over and replaced by a cultural design. However, the UDA/UYM insignia remains on the wall. Around the same time, a security alert in West Belfast brought rush hour traffic to a standstill when a controlled explosion had to be carried out on a gas bottle left at a roundabout near Lanark Way.
The home of a nephew of jailed UDA leader Johnny Adair was targeted in a gun attack in North Belfast when shots were fired through the window. Andre Shoukri, a leading North Belfast loyalist, was released from prison. Some papers reported fears of a re-ignited UDA feud. Spokesman for the Loyalist Commission, Rev Mervyn Gibson, played down the threat and said he had been assured the attack was not paramilitary related.
Fears that PIRA hijacking of lorries in and around the border would seriously affect cross-border trade were reported in the media. A number of businesses based in Northern Ireland were reportedly considering transporting goods to Dublin via Great Britain due to ongoing paramilitary activity.
Dissident Real IRA prisoners in Maghaberry were reported to be on the brink of a 'dirty protest' in an attempt to prevent Provisional IRA prisoners from being housed on the same wing. Under the newly introduced 'Compact for Separated Prisoners', launched by Security Minister Jane Kennedy, Real IRA prisoners fear that they will end up sharing cells with Provisional IRA prisoners on the new republican-only wing. During the same period dissident republicans were blamed for issuing death threats against 6 members of Craigavon District Policing Partnership (DPP) and the Real IRA were blamed for sending a primed letter bomb to the home of Tom McBride, chairman of the Strabane DPP. The Army blew up a suspicious package left outside the home of the chairman of Larne's DPP. It was later established that the device was a hoax.
According to the British and Irish governments the review meeting of the Belfast Agreement which took place during this period was to 'focus on paramilitarism' – with the possibility of calling round table talks on the subject on 9th March. The date passed, however, and no such talks took place. Meanwhile, the NewsLetter reported that British sources had indicated that the IRA were assessing the possibility of further disarmament in order to help build confidence in the political process.
Sectarianism
Following the Rangers versus Celtic football match windows of two homes and three cars were smashed in Charnwood Avenue near the Cavehill and Westland Roads in North Belfast. Meanwhile pro-IRA slogans were painted on the walls of Rafferty Orange Hall near Crossgar and Ballyrea Orange Hall in County Armagh was destroyed by arsonists. A bus carrying loyalist bandsmen to a function in Derry/Londonderry was stoned as it passed through the predominantly nationalist town of Toome.
A row erupted when Fermanagh/South Tyrone MLA Maurice Morrow called for clarification from Army headquarters and the Ministry of Defence, over claims that soldiers serving in Bessbrook where allegedly instructed to remove the Union flag patch from their uniforms. Mr Morrow suggests that 'it would appear that the Army hierarchy wish to remove all traces of the national flag from uniforms'.
The dispute over flying of flags continued to make the headlines. In Limavady protestors jeered at councillors arriving at the Borough Council's monthly meeting. Around eighty people protested outside the meeting due to a dispute that broke out following Sinn Fein Mayor Anne Brolly's decision to remove the Union flag from the Council's offices on St Patrick's Day. Mayor Brolly was accused of breaching equality legislation by failing to fly the flag on one of the annual days designated by the Northern Ireland Secretary of State.
A 12 year old Catholic boy was reportedly attacked in front of his mother near Lisnagelvin Shopping Centre in the mainly Protestant Waterside of Derry/Londonderry. Police said a sectarian motive was being investigated.
Parades
The St Patrick's Day parade in Belfast took place without funding from Belfast City Council. Controversy over the lack of inclusivity and cross-community support for the event in previous years lead to a clash between the Council and the parade organisers. The parade itself passed off peacefully. However, violence flared after the event. The PSNI had to separate crowds of up to 200 people in the Shankill. Loyalist representatives claimed republicans returning from the parade had attacked homes and cars in the Peter's Hill area.
A contentious nationalist parade in Co Down passed off peacefully. The St Patrick's Day celebration in Kilkeel has been subject to dispute over the last number of years. A Parades Commission ruling that one of the bands be re routed away from Greencastle Street in the town in order to avoid a Presbyterian church and a monument to members of security forces killed during the Troubles. There was an increased policing presence at the event.
The Orange Order announced a photographic competition called 'The Twelfth in Focus'. The winning photographs of the competition will be displayed as part of a travelling exhibition.
A letter addressed to the residents of the Co Antrim village of Dunloy by the Orange Order was rejected by Sinn Fein Councillor for the area Philip McGuigan. The letter the Orange Order claim was written to 'extend the hand of friendship' was not accepted by the councillor who said the planned event on April 11th was a 'triumphalist parade without engagement of the local populace'.
Minority Ethnic Groups
A BBC Radio Five Live programme, entitled 'Race Hate in Northern Ireland', found that, while ethnic minorities make up just one-and-a-half per cent of the population, there have been 322 reported racist attacks in the past 10 months.
At a large gathering in the Cultúrlann Centre on the Falls Road West Belfast, the Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said that the people of the district were against racism. Mr Adams stated ethnic minorities are safe and welcome in the west of the city. 'Under the skin' he said 'we are all the same. We are sending out a message and it is that those who seek to divide us are not going to succeed'.
The month began with police confirming that they had received reports from concerned residents in south Belfast regarding the distribution of racist leaflets entitled 'yellow invasion'. Later in the month residents, helped by community workers, took down posters that appeared on lampposts and walls in the Donegall Pass which included slogans such as, 'keep yellow blood out' and, 'south Belfast is not another China Town'. Loyalists paramilitary leaders then joined the anti-racism campaign by helping produce a new pamphlet aimed at stopping their own members from carrying out attacks. In recent months reports had suggested that Loyalists were behind the attacks, but the leadership denied this was orchestrated.
Sinn Fein, UUP, SDLP, Women's Coalition, PUP, Alliance and the Workers' Party all signed up to the Charter of European Political Parties for a Non-Racist Society.
An inter-ethnic forum was launched in Ballymena with over 60 members. Ballymena Community Forum's ethnic minorities co-ordinator, Eileen Chan-Hu, said members include diverse communities and faiths like Chinese, Indian, Sudanese, Thai, Japanese, Romanian, Portuguese, Filipino, Muslim and Bahá'í.
NIO Minister John Spellar, MP, announced that 21 minority ethnic voluntary organisations would share £0.5m funding to help improve community relations. The funding will help voluntary and community groups improve relations between different ethnic groups and with other communities. Eleven organisations were successful in obtaining core funding and ten received project funding:
Core funded groups
Chinese Welfare Association
Belfast Jewish Community
Ballymena Community Forum
Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities
Traveller Movement (NI)
Bryson House (Multi Cultural Resource Centre)
Indian Community Centre
Derry Travellers Support Group
Belfast Travellers Education and Development Group and Belfast Travellers Support Group.
Mandarin Speakers Association
Belfast Islamic Centre
Project funded groups
South Tyrone Empowerment Programme
Irish Council of Churches
Women of the World
Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities
Wah Hep Chinese Community Association
Derry Travellers Support Group
Belfast Islamic Centre
Al-Nisa Association NI
Northern Ireland Sikh Association
Craigavon Vietnamese Club
Education
The NIO Minister Ian Pearson announced a former Royal Irish Regiment base in Magherafelt is to be made available for a new school in the area. The Army transferred ownership of the site to the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister as a part of the Reinvestment and Reform Initiative (RRI) in May 2002.
Students from schools in Newry, Omagh, Derry/Londonderry and Armagh took part in the 10th Northern Ireland European Youth Parliament at Stormont. The students used the vacant legislative chamber to discuss issues ranging from human rights to global warming and space exploration.
The Irish News reported that more students are expelled from the Catholic maintained schools (CCMS) than any other sector of the education system. In 2001/2002 49 pupils were expelled from CCMS compared to 22 in the controlled sector. However, more students were suspended from controlled schools – 2,443 in 2002/2003.
The Southern Education and Library Board warned that it would be forced to postpone planned maintenance work following a £3.5 million cut in its budget. The chair of the Board said that 'the Board is extremely disappointed that the Department of Education's financial allocation to the Southern Education's Library Board for 2004/2005 is £226,470,000, representing a base increase of just 1.54 per cent over 2003/2004. Meanwhile, a £40 million investment to accommodate new facilities for East Down Institute of Further and Higher Education was announced by NIO minister Jane Kennedy. The money will be spent improving facilities in Newcastle, Downpatrick and Lisburn.
Newspapers reported on a proposal to develop Northern Ireland's first Gaeltacht – exclusively Irish speaking region – in County Tyrone. The intention of the private development is to use a 52-acre site at Altmore to create a village for around 20 Irish speaking families, an education and cultural centre. The aims of the project include, 'to host educational summer programmes for schools and families visiting the area'. Meanwhile NIO minister Jane Kennedy, in reply to a parliamentary question posed by DUP MP Nigel Dodds, said there was 'no demand' for Ulster-Scots to be added to the curriculum and pointed out that 2 per cent of the population spoke the language.
Equality and Human Rights
DUP councillor, Jim Wells criticised Down District Council over the number of Protestants in its workforce. Mr Wells said: 'It is depressing that this is the fourth year in a row that the Equality Commission has expressed concern about the under-representation of Protestants amongst the workforce of Down Council, but the situation has not changed at all since the first report was issued'. At the same time DUP MP Gregory Campbell claimed that figures supplied in answer to a parliamentary question demonstrated that Protestants have been losing out in the allocation of jobs in the past decade. Between 1992 and 2002 it would appear that the Protestant workforce had dropped from 235,330 to 230,804, whereas the Catholic workforce over the same period has risen from 132,940 to 154,218.
Belfast Lord Mayor Martin Morgan SDLP called for the creation of a European Equality Ombudsman.
NIO Minister, John Spellar, announced that changes are to be made to Northern Ireland's Disability rights legislation in order to bring it into line with the changes already announced in the rest of the United Kingdom. The intention is create separate disability legislation, similar to the draft Westminster Disability Bill.
Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen announced the expansion of the 'Passport Express' scheme. From April 2004 applications for Irish passports will be available in almost 40 post offices throughout Northern Ireland.
The Equality Commission paid out £23,500 to two employees to settle claims of sectarianism. The Commission accepted that a senior employee had used 'sectarian language' and had been guilty of 'unacceptable workplace behaviour' in breach of its anti-harassment policy.
Crime and Policing
In the period January – February 2004 Sinn Fein spokesman on policing and criminal justice, Gerry Kelly, told the annual party conference in Dublin that republicans feared getting policing horribly wrong. The party then placed an advertisement in the New York Times entitled 'the truth about policing' listing dissatisfaction with the reform process. A report by the Human Rights Commission suggested that more focus on human rights needs to be given when training new officers. Meanwhile the Police Ombudsman's Office indicated that complaints against the PSNI have dropped since the office opened three years ago and the US envoy to Northern Ireland contradicted the Sinn Fein advert indicating that he would if necessary set out a rebuttal of the complaints listed point by point.
The PSNI took delivery of the first 4 Belgian-made RCV9000 water cannon vehicles in a consignment of 6 that will be used to control riots. The water cannon's will fire water heated to between 3-5 Celsius. According to reports, the heated water will ensure that more vulnerable rioters won't suffer shock from being saturated by cold water.
The Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) confirmed that it had frozen £240,000 believed to be linked with loyalist paramilitaries in East Belfast. The PSNI seized two blank firing pistols, balaclavas and gloves during a search of a garage behind the Mount Vernon flats in North Belfast. The area is a UVF stronghold.
A police officer was treated in hospital after being struck on the face with a brick during disturbances in West Belfast. The incident happened on the Monagh by-pass near Turf Lodge.
Public policy
Plans were announced to open a family centre in parts of the old Holy Cross boys and girls schools off the Crumlin Road. The buildings between the Woodvale Road and the Crumlin Road had been used as family centre in the 1980's until sectarian violence in the area forced the centre to close. Now the hope is to re-open the centre, in part, as a response to the high number of suicides among young people living in the area.
In the ongoing discussion over public leisure services in Belfast, a report by officers at Belfast City Council suggested that a proposed new leisure centre for south Belfast should be built on the existing site at Maysfield. In previous months, proposals to shut Maysfield and relocate the amenities to Botanic, Ormeau Park or the Gasworks led to a public campaign in favour of the retaining the existing site.
NIO minister for Finance and Personnel Ian Pearson responded to a Progress Report by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). The Peace II Programme has assisted more than 3200 projects across all parts of Northern Ireland and the Border region, and has committed more than £440 million, some 80 per cent of its available budget.
DSD announced a £3 million support package for 13 community projects aimed at effecting long-term change in public sector organisations' policies and working methods. Further information is available @ www.dsdni.gov.uk/publications Examples of the projects funded include: the 'Animate' project in the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council area which aims to reduce exploitation of migrant workers, to build capacity and empower migrant workers to achieve an integrated and active role in local communities, and to embed the concept of multiculturalism as an enriching addition to local communities. Another example, the 'Coming to Your Senses' project aims to improve access to arts and cultural services for blind/visually impaired people and to increase the numbers of blind/visually impaired people participating in the Museums and Galleries (NI) programmes, events and activities.
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive announced that it had taken ownership of all land and properties within a section of the Gainsborough area of North Belfast. The intention is to provide 28 new homes for rent along York Road. In addition, an announcement was made that 300 Housing Executive homes in North Belfast are to benefit from major improvements as part of a £450,000 external maintenance scheme.
A new website to promote Northern Ireland was launched www.nitakeacloserlook.gov.uk
Women
A survey by GMB has shown that women on average earn over £80 a week less than men - £355.20 compared to £437.70. That said, in three Northern Ireland council areas women on average earn more than men. This is the only place in the UK were this reversal of the general trend occurs.
