Police Battle Protesters After N. Irish March

Sunday July 07, 2002 22:17

by Andrew Cawthorne

DRUMCREE, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - Police fired plastic bullets and turned a water cannon on stone-throwing Protestant rioters on Sunday as the most volatile parade of Northern Ireland's marching season ended in violence.

At least 24 officers and two protesters were injured during the hour-long melee at the village of Drumcree in which Protestants furious they could not march pass a Catholic neighborhood hurled stones, bricks, logs and bottles.

"You scum! This is our road, you can't stop us!" yelled one of the protesters, in his early 20s, as he rushed toward riot police with a large rock in his hands.

Women stood nearby, urging the men "Stand your ground!" as police twice charged the crowd. Some children also threw stones.

The riot was the latest example of the resurgent violence in Northern Ireland that is jeopardizing the British-ruled province's peace process under the 1998 Good Friday accord.

That agreement was meant to end three decades of sectarian strife -- costing more than 3,600 lives -- between pro-British Protestants and Catholics seeking to unite the province of 1.6 million people with Ireland to the south.

The violence at Drumcree began after a peaceful march by some 1,300 members of the hardline Orange Order, named after the 17th century Protestant King William of Orange.

Several dozen young men began throwing stones across a steel barrier put up by police and soldiers on a bridge to stop the Orange Order marching back to Portadown via the Catholic-populated Garvaghy Road neighborhood.

POLICE AND PROTESTERS HURT

Cheered on and then joined by some Orange Order members wearing their traditional orange sashes, the young protesters broke through the blockade and taunted police.

Army paratroopers then moved in to put up a new barricade on the bridge in the shape of a huge metal container full of concrete. Lines of razor wire stopped protesters getting across the fields beside the bridge.

Nine of the injured policemen were taken to hospital, some with head wounds from large rocks hurled into their ranks from a short distance.

At least two protesters were also injured, one with a gash to his arm from a plastic bullet, according to witnesses. Three rioters were arrested.

Assistant Chief Constable Stephen White, in charge of security at Drumcree, was spat upon as he received an official protest from the Orange Order minutes before the riot. He condemned the "mindless, evil thugs" who attacked his men.

"I've worn the uniform all my adult life trying to serve all sides in this community and to be spat upon and have my officers spat upon and having stones thrown at us as we are trying to afford the dignity this institution asked us to afford to, it is very disappointing," he said.

Security forces had deliberately scaled back measures at the march, where big clashes have broken out in the past, after being assured paramilitaries were staying away to help defuse tensions in the province running high after riots in Belfast.

But they were quick to deploy most of a 2,000-strong force on standby in case of trouble.

APPEALS FOR CALM IGNORED

David Burrows, deputy district master of the Portadown Orange Order, appealed for calm. "At the end of the day, this doesn't help our cause and everyone here can see that, many in the world will see," he said.

Earlier, Burrows had called the barrier blocking the road to the Catholic area "an obscenity."

An Irish tri-color flag was burned during the violence and a television cameraman was pushed into a nearby stream as protesters turned on media they accused of being more sympathetic to Catholics.

By evening, persistent rain had helped disperse the crowd. "The sky's own water cannon is now working its best for us," a police spokesman on the scene said.

The Drumcree parade was the start of a week of Protestant celebrations to mark King William's Battle of the Boyne victory on July 12, 1690, over Catholic King James II.

Catholics view the marches as provocative triumphalism.

"We feel intimidated and aggrieved, locked into our own community," Joe Duffy, a leader of the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, told Reuters. His group represents the 6,500 Catholics in the neighborhood of Portadown that the Protestant marchers wanted to pass through after reaching Drumcree.

The Orange Order has marched from Portadown to Drumcree church and back every year, but has been banned since 1998 from passing through the Garvaghy Road. (Additional reporting by Michael Roddy)

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Police Battle Protesters After N. Irish March