7/15/2010 Political Rifts Reappear in Northern Irel

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July 14, 2010

Political Rifts Reappear in Northern Ireland

Riots
By JOHN F. BURNS
LONDON Six months after the British gov ernment handed control of the police in Northern Ireland to local
officials, the worst rioting in y ears has left 82 police officers injured in Belfast, the prov incial capital, including
an officer who was hospitalized in stable condition after a concrete slab was dropped on her head from a
rooftop.

The rioting peaked on Monday in the northern Belfast district of A rdoy ne, set off by one of the most emotiv e
occasions on the calendar, the annual July 1 2 marches by the Orange Order. The order, a Protestant fraternal
organization, has been a bulwark of Protestant and British supremacy in the six northern counties of
Ireland. The marches celebrate the Battle of the Boy ne in 1 690, when the Protestant English king, William of
Orange, secured British dominion in Ireland for more than 200 y ears.

Police officials in Northern Ireland said on Wednesday a lone attacker armed with a handgun fired four to six
shots as the riot police combated masked men and y ouths ov ernight in A rdoy ne. Witnesses quoted by The
A ssociated Press said the shots appeared to hav e been aimed at a police surv eillance camera recording the
actions of the rioters.

Hundreds of rioters in A rdoy ne battled the police with gasoline bombs, bricks, metal bars and planks on
Monday after police officers in riot gear mov ed in to remov e about 1 00 protesters who had staged a sit-in to
prev ent the Orange Order marchers from passing through a predominantly Roman Catholic neighborhood.

The confrontation was a throwback to the v iolence that erupted regularly during the Orange Day parades in
the y ears before the 1 998 Good Friday agreement, which set a blueprint for peaceful settlement of the
enmities between the mainly Protestant unionists, who seek to keep the prov ince a permanent part of Britain,
and the mainly Catholic republicans, who want a united Ireland. It led ev entually to the establishment of the
power-sharing gov ernment that has ruled in Belfast since 2007 .

But the parade issue lingered, and it erupted anew last week when the Orange Order rejected a new sy stem for
mediating routes and timing, raising anger, particularly among republicans.

That was followed by the rioting in Belfast, along with lesser disturbances during Orange marches in
Londonderry and Lurgan, which police officials said were prov oked by dissident republicans opposed to
power sharing. Reporters there confirmed hav ing seen members of breakaway factions of the Irish Republican
A rmy among protesters, many of whom were y ouths from Catholic districts in Belfast where there are
crushing unemploy ment rates.

The assistant chief constable A listair Finlay , charged with ov ersight of the police units assigned to contain the
rioting, spoke out against what he called a failure of the unionist and republican leaders of the power-sharing
gov ernment, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, to interv ene in the A rdoy ne confrontation, leav ing the
police to form a human barrier attempting to keep the peace.
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7/15/2010 Political Rifts Reappear in Northern Irel

Later on Tuesday , the two men, respectiv ely first minister and deputy first minister in the gov ernment, issued
a joint statement condemning what they called outright thuggery and v andalism by the rioters.

This will require the community to stand united against all those forces seeking to bring conflict back to our
streets, Mr. McGuinness said.

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