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Bomb Over Belfast |
The latest event in the political and religious struggle in North Ireland has unfolded, this time with children as the target. On Wednesday, September 6, Protestant extremists threw a homemade grenade at Catholic schoolgirls and their parents as they walked to Holy Cross Primary School. None of the children were hurt, but the blast sent two police officers to the hospital with shrapnel wounds.
The immediate cause of this conflict concerns the front door to the school. The school itself lies in Ardoyne, a Protestant neighborhood in a largely Catholic section of Belfast, the capital of North Ireland. The front door to the school faces Upper Ardoyne Avenue, where Protestant protestors have been taunting, spitting, and throwing rocks and bottles at the girls since school began on September 4. The Protestants claim they are sick of being harassed by Catholics and demand that the students take a different route to the school and enter through the back door. The Catholics say they have the right to use the front door and refuse to stand down.
Three Protestant militants were arrested and the radical group The Red Hand Defenders claimed responsibility for the attack. The Red Hand Defenders is believed to be a cover name for the militant Ulster Defense Association that claims to be following a cease-fire treaty signed in 1998. UDA flags fly on lampposts all over Ardoyne, yet this latest attack is still being questioned. Both Protestant and Catholic political leaders are astonished that the violence has been turned towards the children.
Just a day before the attack, a Catholic driver crushed a sixteen-year old Protestant boy during a riot in a nearby neighborhood. Both Protestants and Catholics were united in prayer at his funeral on Friday, but most say the unity won't last for long. Residents are already moving out of Ardoyne and wondering whether or not the violence will ever end. In the past ten months alone over 200 bombings and shootings have targeted Catholics in Belfast, killing three, including a Protestant teen that was mistaken for a Catholic.
One problem for the Catholics lies with the Irish Republican Army, better known as the IRA. The IRA is basically the Catholic equivalent of the Ulster Defense Association, an infamous militant group responsible for numerous bombings and shootings in North Ireland. Since the cease-fire treaty in 1998, the IRA hasn't made any offensive moves toward Protestants, but it also hasn't done anything in retaliation. When asked when they will take offensive action against Protestants, political representatives of the IRA (The group Sinn Fein) reportedly just shrugged and walked away. Catholics expect retaliation soon, however, and with open arms: their hope is that within a few years all Protestants will be driven out of Ardoyne.
These events are recent but the North Irish conflict is not new. This violence is part of a thirty-year argument over the British control of North Ireland. North Ireland is mainly Protestant and joined with Britain in 1920 because of similar government and religious interests. Since then, Catholics, militants, and Irish republicans have tried to reunite the province with the rest of Ireland.