posted on Sep, 10 2005 @ 05:13 PM
Violence has erupted in Belfast with rioters shooting at police and soldiers and home made petrol bombs being hurled, shattering the peace that has
settled over the country in the past few years. The rioting began after the annual "Whiterock Parade" Protestant Orange Order march when
participants were angered by a decision by authorities to reroute the march away from Catholic areas of Belfast.
www.news.com.au
Catholic activists and marchers taunted each other as the march passed near the sectarian divide, before demonstrators clashed with police.
A spokesman for the Orange Order claimed nationalist Catholics attacked marchers in east and west Belfast, calling the police response "scandalous and
pathetic".
But Chief Constable Orde said the decision to protest at the march being rerouted had directly caused the violence.
"They (Orange Order leaders) publicly called people onto the streets. I think if you do that you cannot abdicate responsibility. That is simply not
good enough," he said.
A local councillor for Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland's biggest Catholic party, said the trouble was caused by 500 marchers who managed to evade police
blockades and get into Catholic neighbourhoods.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
Once again violence due to relgion. I do not believe the march should have been rerouted. The protesters have been doing this for the past years
without incident and they strongly believe in not just the reason why they are marching, but their simple right to march in the first place.
Once again they are controlled and told what to do by authorities in a political game and the reaction from this action has been to rekindle the war
between the two religious groups in the country.
I do not subscribe to their issue in any form but I do subscribe to their right to March for their beliefs instead of being stifled by regimes of
control.