18.2.04
DAILY TELEGRAPH
Streets of shame that lead to despair
(Filed: 18/02/2004)
Ted Oliver in Belfast reports on how life in the city's ghettos is ruled by men in balaclavas
Six years on, the Good Friday Agreement has the look of an initiative coming apart at the seams. Westminster rule seems likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. Men in balaclavas continue to terrorise the ghettos, ignoring the rule of law and acting as judges, juries and, all too often, executioners.
Was it not this, in large part, that the agreement was meant to eliminate? At Easter 1998 many of those who had lived through 30 years of hatred, violence and disruption gave a substantial mandate to the peace moves in an all-Ireland referendum.
Events of the past six weeks in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast - probably the most deprived and beleaguered part of western Europe - bear witness to how far away a truly peaceful society remains.
Yesterday the funeral took place of yet another young man who has felt driven to take his own life. Life for such individuals - Roman Catholics, living in a confined space, surrounded by some of the city's toughest loyalist areas - was never going to be easy.
Jobs are scarce. There are few places to meet to socialise or talk about their worries. Drug and alcohol abuse is widespread. Enter into the equation a brutal regime of punishment beatings and threats carried out by a republican paramilitary group and you have a recipe for the human tragedy that is now manifesting itself in a spate of suicides.
The gangsters from the Irish National Liberation Army, responsible for murdering Airey Neave at Westminster in 1979 and 17 people - 11 of them soldiers - in the Droppin Well disco bombing at Ballykelly, Co Londonderry, in 1982, are still around, torturing and threatening the youth of Ardoyne and driving them to suicide, killing them as surely as if they had shot them in the head.
The INLA and all the other republican and loyalist terrorist groups should long ago have been absorbed, according to the Good Friday optimism, into the political process. Instead they openly walk the streets of Ardoyne, regularly dishing out savage beatings to teenagers who have committed minor crimes or simply challenged their authority. Their victims are often trussed and stuffed, bruised and bleeding, down manhole covers into the drains.
It is difficult to imagine life in Ardoyne unless you live there. The police are not welcome. The appearance of soldiers would spark a riot. And it is one of the many ironies of Northern Ireland that the one group which could stop the INLA thugs can only stand back and watch.
The area is home for dozens of Provisional IRA men with the firepower to stop their rivals. But they are under orders not to interfere, since any violent response would be used by unionists as further reason for excluding Sinn Fein from any participation in the government of the province.
Is this crazy situation what the Good Friday Agreement was supposed to bring the people of Ulster? Look past Ardoyne to the loyalist housing estates in Co Down, Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry where like-minded thugs from the UDA, UVF and LVF carry out nightly beatings to keep control of the people.
They are earning millions of pounds a year from extortion, drugs and prostitution. They, too, should have long gone but show little signs of diminishing in power. As young men hang or poison themselves at the rate of two per week in Ardoyne and the gangsters from both traditions line their pockets, the unionists continue to bicker, the "middle of the road" has all but vanished and the IRA refuses to disarm or disband.
Sinn Fein will not say the war is over, and the Government seems to have run out of answers or even questions. Yes, towns and cities are not being blown apart. Soldiers and police are not being murdered. For the majority, life has an air of normality. For many, "peace" has even brought increased prosperity.
But one wonders how long this situation - with much of the misery inflicted by paramilitaries of all persuasions going unreported either by the media or to the police - can continue before the despair felt by those suicidal young men spreads across Northern Ireland.
Streets of shame that lead to despair
(Filed: 18/02/2004)
Ted Oliver in Belfast reports on how life in the city's ghettos is ruled by men in balaclavas
Six years on, the Good Friday Agreement has the look of an initiative coming apart at the seams. Westminster rule seems likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. Men in balaclavas continue to terrorise the ghettos, ignoring the rule of law and acting as judges, juries and, all too often, executioners.
Was it not this, in large part, that the agreement was meant to eliminate? At Easter 1998 many of those who had lived through 30 years of hatred, violence and disruption gave a substantial mandate to the peace moves in an all-Ireland referendum.
Events of the past six weeks in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast - probably the most deprived and beleaguered part of western Europe - bear witness to how far away a truly peaceful society remains.
Yesterday the funeral took place of yet another young man who has felt driven to take his own life. Life for such individuals - Roman Catholics, living in a confined space, surrounded by some of the city's toughest loyalist areas - was never going to be easy.
Jobs are scarce. There are few places to meet to socialise or talk about their worries. Drug and alcohol abuse is widespread. Enter into the equation a brutal regime of punishment beatings and threats carried out by a republican paramilitary group and you have a recipe for the human tragedy that is now manifesting itself in a spate of suicides.
The gangsters from the Irish National Liberation Army, responsible for murdering Airey Neave at Westminster in 1979 and 17 people - 11 of them soldiers - in the Droppin Well disco bombing at Ballykelly, Co Londonderry, in 1982, are still around, torturing and threatening the youth of Ardoyne and driving them to suicide, killing them as surely as if they had shot them in the head.
The INLA and all the other republican and loyalist terrorist groups should long ago have been absorbed, according to the Good Friday optimism, into the political process. Instead they openly walk the streets of Ardoyne, regularly dishing out savage beatings to teenagers who have committed minor crimes or simply challenged their authority. Their victims are often trussed and stuffed, bruised and bleeding, down manhole covers into the drains.
It is difficult to imagine life in Ardoyne unless you live there. The police are not welcome. The appearance of soldiers would spark a riot. And it is one of the many ironies of Northern Ireland that the one group which could stop the INLA thugs can only stand back and watch.
The area is home for dozens of Provisional IRA men with the firepower to stop their rivals. But they are under orders not to interfere, since any violent response would be used by unionists as further reason for excluding Sinn Fein from any participation in the government of the province.
Is this crazy situation what the Good Friday Agreement was supposed to bring the people of Ulster? Look past Ardoyne to the loyalist housing estates in Co Down, Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry where like-minded thugs from the UDA, UVF and LVF carry out nightly beatings to keep control of the people.
They are earning millions of pounds a year from extortion, drugs and prostitution. They, too, should have long gone but show little signs of diminishing in power. As young men hang or poison themselves at the rate of two per week in Ardoyne and the gangsters from both traditions line their pockets, the unionists continue to bicker, the "middle of the road" has all but vanished and the IRA refuses to disarm or disband.
Sinn Fein will not say the war is over, and the Government seems to have run out of answers or even questions. Yes, towns and cities are not being blown apart. Soldiers and police are not being murdered. For the majority, life has an air of normality. For many, "peace" has even brought increased prosperity.
But one wonders how long this situation - with much of the misery inflicted by paramilitaries of all persuasions going unreported either by the media or to the police - can continue before the despair felt by those suicidal young men spreads across Northern Ireland.
