Northern Ireland: Children now at the centre of feud

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, SEPT 4. Sectarian hatred in Northern Ireland touched a new low as clashes broke out in Belfast for the second consecutive day today with petrified Catholic children, as young as three and four, being abused and spat at in a bid to prevent them from walking through a Protestant neighbourhood to reach their school.

There were running battles between the police and Protestant hardliners who alleged that the IRA was using school children as a ``cover'' to intrude into Protestant territory. One policeman was injured when a pipebomb was thrown at security forces, and a schoolgirl was hit with a bottle. The predominantly Protestant enclave of Ardoyne in north Belfast looked like a battle zone with riot police and soldiers erecting barriers to protect children and their parents from the Protestants' fury. After a series of clashes, during which police and local residents engaged in scuffles, the entire area was littered with an assortment of missiles, including stones, bottles and improvised petrol bombs.

There were fears of more violence as an extremist loyalist group, the Red Hand Defenders, warned that it would not tolerate republican intrusion into Protestant property, and asked Catholic parents to stay away from Ardoyne Road. Parents were advised to take their children to the school through a back entrance which does not fall within Protestant terrain. Even hardened Belfast watchers have been shocked by the events of the past two days saying they had never witnessed such scenes of ``naked sectarianism'' before. Images of traumatised school girls, many of whom broke down as they ran the gauntlet of Protestant verbal attack, provoked nationwide outrage aptly reflected in a cartoon which showed a child with a broken arm telling her mother: ``We had religious education on the way to school today.''

Monday was the first day of the new school term but instead of post-holiday reunions children were greeted by threats and abusive chants as they nervously picked their way through police pickets clutching their parents' hands. ``I have grown up in Belfast but I've never come across such hatred,'' said Ms. Sharon MacCabe who escorted her five-year-old daughter to the school. She said she was shocked to see ``sixty year olds'' scream abuses at little girls.

A veteran BBC correspondent said he had ``never seen anything so unpleasant'' in all his years of reporting on Northern Ireland. Even by Northern Ireland standards this was a ``new low''. ``Even in Northern Ireland, even in Belfast - even in Ardoyne - people were jolted and taken aback by yesterday's sheer naked sectarianism, by the eruption of bitterness and bile directed at little girls,'' said The Independent. It said vulnerable young children had been ``thrust into the front line of Northern Ireland conflict.'' ``What they were subjected to can only be classed, both figuratively and literally, as child abuse,'' the newspaper said.

The dispute which first erupted in June is over what Catholic residents of Ardoyne regard as their right to walk through a public road to reach the Holy Cross Catholic Girls Primary School located right in the heart of a Protestant enclave. Protestants question their ``right'' saying republicans insist on walking past their homes to provoke them. They have been complaining of a ``constant state of siege'' by republicans and attempts to bring about a compromise have failed. A Unionist leader said even yesterday five IRA men were seen walking with schoolchildren. Protests against intrusion into Protestant territory would continue ``tomorrow, the day after, and the day after,'' warned Mr. Billy Hutchinson, a Progressive Unionist Party legislator.

While loyalists acknowledged that it was wrong to target children they hastened to hedge it with ``ifs'' and ``buts'' describing the incidents as a reaction to republican ``provocations'' through the summer. Republicans were furious and the Sinn Fein Minister for Education, Mr. Martin McGuinness said he was ``dismayed'' at the way in which innocent children had been targetted. Meanwhile, as tension mounted security forces launched a massive operation to prevent trouble spilling over to other places.

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Section  : International
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