20.2.05
Sunday Life
Sunday Life Comment: Leave our kids alone
20 February 2005
THE police and education authorities have wasted no time in investigating claims that the UVF has started a recruitment drive - at an Ulster school.
The allegation is that the terror group is trying to rope in kids at Dundonald High School, in east Belfast.
If true, this is a breach of the UVF's ceasefire, and a gross betrayal of the principles of the Good Friday Agreement.
Has this province not suffered enough, at the hands of evil terrorists, representing loyalism and republicanism?
Now we could be witnessing the start of attempts to recruit a new breed of kids, into the ranks of paramilitarism.
It is too early to gauge the seriousness of this latest recruitment campaign for teenagers to join the UVF's youth wing, the Young Citizens Volunteers.
But, the authorities are to be praised for moving so swiftly, to get to the truth, following a complaint from a concerned parent that second-year students were asked to sign-up.
Terrorism has had its day, in this country.
It brought untold suffering and misery to people on both sides of the sectarian divide, for more than 30 years.
We certainly don't want to see another generation of terrorists being groomed in the evil art of killing and maiming.
Today, we offer this simple advice to any young person who is asked to join the UVF, or any other terror group:
Say NO - and mean it.
Sunday Life Comment: Leave our kids alone
20 February 2005
THE police and education authorities have wasted no time in investigating claims that the UVF has started a recruitment drive - at an Ulster school.
The allegation is that the terror group is trying to rope in kids at Dundonald High School, in east Belfast.
If true, this is a breach of the UVF's ceasefire, and a gross betrayal of the principles of the Good Friday Agreement.
Has this province not suffered enough, at the hands of evil terrorists, representing loyalism and republicanism?
Now we could be witnessing the start of attempts to recruit a new breed of kids, into the ranks of paramilitarism.
It is too early to gauge the seriousness of this latest recruitment campaign for teenagers to join the UVF's youth wing, the Young Citizens Volunteers.
But, the authorities are to be praised for moving so swiftly, to get to the truth, following a complaint from a concerned parent that second-year students were asked to sign-up.
Terrorism has had its day, in this country.
It brought untold suffering and misery to people on both sides of the sectarian divide, for more than 30 years.
We certainly don't want to see another generation of terrorists being groomed in the evil art of killing and maiming.
Today, we offer this simple advice to any young person who is asked to join the UVF, or any other terror group:
Say NO - and mean it.
