GARVAGHY ROAD RESIDENTS COALITION
Portadown
Co. Armagh, Ireland
Phone/Fax: Int.Code +44 (0)1762 392898
E-Mail Garvaghy @ aol.com
3:00pm Local Time
The following article was printed in today's Sunday Mail (an English publication) by a reporter who was on the Drumcree hillside yesterday, July 11. Although the implication is wrong that the Garvaghy Road Residents have something to do with the week long standoff and military siege of their community, because the matter was taken out of their hands by the Parades Commission and the British Government weeks ago, this article displays an attitude present on the Drumcree church hillside rarely reported on.
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From The Sunday Mail (England)
IT WAS a crude but symbolic gesture: a severed pig’s head stuck on a wooden stave and waved tauntingly at the ranks of Royal Ulster Constabulary men opposite.
But for those watching it was a shocking image which summed up the almost primeval depth of enmity which exists in this troubled province.
In the killing fields of Bosnia or some incomprehensible African conflict, it might have passed as unremarkable.
But here, under fluttering Union Flags, it carried a disturbingly blunt message. Unless the politicians from London can pull a miracle of a peace deal out of the bag -- and there was precious little sign of this yesterday -- then the ugly historical hatreds which have plagued Northern Ireland for centuries will boil over.
At the heart of Drumcree lies a simple conflict of interests: the right of the loyalist Protestant Orange Orders to walk what they refer to as the Queen’s Highway versus the right of the nationalist Catholic community to live on those same streets without intimidation and fear. Also at stake is democracy -- and the right of the Government to insist on the rule of law and order in the interests of all the citizens of Northern Ireland. But on the hillside opposite the police lines in Drumcree, anarchy is taking over.
The leaders of the Orange Orders -- those sashed and bowler-hatted men who wish to march with pride and dignity -- may be militant in their demands to uphold the traditions of their forefathers. But they are, on the whole, peaceful God-fearing men, seemingly far removed from the thugs who have highjacked their cause.
Their legitimate protests, however, have uncorked a vicious and violent monster which they cannot control. A monster which throws petrol and nailbombs at mostly Protestant police officers, torches churches and hounds innocent Catholics out of their homes.
Today in Ulster the talk is of 'ethnic cleansing,' a term which emerged from the bitter war in Bosnia.
Few would have expected to see on British soil the murderous process practised by the Serbs of driving enemies from their villages. But here we have fellow British countrymen prepared to kill, maim and intimidate under the national Standard and in the name of the Queen.
And what is it, if not ethnic cleansing, when militant members of the many loyalist groups here - the UDA, UVF, UFF, LVF -- force an elderly Catholic couple to flee their home of 27 years in terror after masked men hurled petrol bombs through their windows for the second time in a week?
Some of the ugliest scenes of sectarianism were in more remote Protestant areas where there are small enclaves of Catholics whose homes and businesses and even primary schools were targeted by mobs.
Elsewhere, in waves of almost medieval retribution, masked gangs reduced Catholic churches to ashes, justifying their actions with selective Biblical quotations about dealing with ‘the infidel’ by destroying their altars and graven images.
A Bible left open on the dashboard of an Orangemen’s car outside Drumcree Parish had Psalm 37 highlighted: ‘Fret not thyself because of evil doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity for they shall soon be cut down like the grass,’ it extolled.
It is hardly surprising that Catholic communities, like those in the Garvaghy Road, live in genuine fear of eradication.
It may sound like hysterical nationalist propaganda, but even RUC officers who have spent the past seven nights keeping the Garvaghy Road residents and the Orange Order supporters apart, and who have been subjected to violence, abuse and threats themselves, are in little doubt what would happen if marauding loyalists were successful in breaking through the trenches and coils of barbed wire.
‘Look at them, they are baying for blood,’ said one as the mob opposite burned the Irish tricolour. ‘It would be a pogrom,’ said another, recalling the violent attacks on Jews in Russia as the security forces came under yet another night of assault from petrol bombs.
While the Orange Order leaders would prefer to distance themselves from the talk of ethnic cleansing and the outbreaks of lawlessness which they have blamed on ‘sinister elements,’ some of those dark forces are within their own ranks.
Standing in the holy grounds around the beautiful Drumcree church, one Orangeman, who admitted being a loyalist paramilitary, said he would not only die for the right to march down the barricaded road, but would go much further. The ginger-haired man, in his thirties, told me: ‘We have to burn the Catholics out and kill their children with swords. All of them.’
In case I hadn’t heard him above the almost tribal beating of the great lambeg drums and sectarian songs, he repeated it.
‘You think I’m joking. Well I’m not. It may sound extreme but if you don’t kill the kids they will grow up and will be killing you. We must have them all out.’
As an outsider it is hard to comprehend the intransigence of both sides of the conflict who have now backed themselves into a corner from which it will be difficult for either to emerge without losing face.
Why, we ask with naïve simplicity, can’t the Orange Orders take their traditional parade somewhere else?
Why don’t the Drumcree Catholics stay inside their homes and allow the triumphalist march to pass without fuss? But there is no simple answer. There never was. That is how it all came about in the first place.
‘We have walked this way for nearly 200 years and if we don’t stick at it we may as well give up our sashes forever,’ one Orangeman told me.
Every stone, every blade of grass in this country has a historical significance to one side or the other who, inflamed to the point of unreason, both see Drumcree as their last stand. To the Catholics and the Protestant Orangemen it is little less than a fight for survival.
But as one commentator noted: ‘Instead of civil and religious liberty, the issue has become the rule of law versus the law of the jungle.’