[APRIL 10] For over a week, riots have marred the streets across five cities and towns in Northern Ireland. Cars and a bus have been hijacked and burned, young people have thrown petrol bombs at police, and at least 74 officers have been injured.
The escalating unrest threatens to undermine the region's fragile peace between pro-British loyalists who want to remain part of the United Kingdom, and pro-Irish nationalists who would like Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland.
On March 29, police officers were targeted in a petrol bomb attack in a predominately unionist area of Tullymore, in Derry/Londonderry, after an attempt to break up a crowd of approximately 40 people. For five nights, similar scenes unfolded in the city.
By Friday, April 2, the disorder spread to south Belfast, [where rioters from loyalist and nationalist communities clashed along the so-called peace line -- a gated wall separating predominately unionist and nationalist neighborhoods from one another and] where a small protest descended into an attack on police in a loyalist pocket of the Sandy Row area, where 15 police officers were left with burns, head and leg injuries.
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The initial days of disorder came in the same week as authorities said they would not prosecute the leaders of nationalist party Sinn Fein for allegedly breaking coronavirus restrictions last summer when they attended a funeral for Bobby Storey, a former senior figure in the IRA, a paramilitary group who led a decadeslong campaign for an independent and reunified Ireland.Loyalist communities have accused authorities of partisan hypocrisy around that decision, saying that they had taken the decision to cancel their traditional Twelfth of July parades last summer due to Covid-19 and had missed out on events and attending funerals of loved ones because they had adhered to those restrictions.
But many analysts also point to the recent and successful police crackdown on drug gangs and criminal activity supported and run by loyalist paramilitary forces.
[...]
On Thursday evening, clashes continued on Springfield Road in Belfast, with protesters throwing stones at police vehicles on the nationalist side of the peace line.
CNN
So, it's jealous loyalists who started rioting? Christ. The Brits have sown misery all over the planet, haven't they?
The Loyalist Communities Council (LCC), a group that includes representatives of unionist paramilitaries and which is also associated with the UPRG, said in a Friday statement that "none of their associated groups have been involved either directly or indirectly in the violence witnessed in recent days." It added that "the right to peaceful protest is a fundamental human right" but that all actions taken by members of the loyalist community "should be entirely peaceful."
Like Trump (without any emphasis or sincerity) telling the insurrections to go home in peace.
The riots are unfolding amid rising anger over a specific part of the Brexit agreement.
Tensions have been heightened in Northern Ireland ever since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in 2016. But there is rising anger over a specific part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement called the Northern Ireland Protocol, which has been a key point of contention.
Throughout the Brexit negotiations, all parties widely agreed that any agreement would honor the Northern Ireland peace deal, known as the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson saying in 2019 that "we will under no circumstances have checks at or near the border in Northern Ireland. We will respect the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement."
The GFA marked an end to the Troubles -- a term used to describe the period of violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s until its signing in 1998.
The peace accord also began the process of dismantling border controls between the North and the Republic of Ireland, and in 2006, the last watchtower was taken down.
But after the UK left the EU (and its single market), a new plan -- the Northern Ireland (NI) Protocol -- was implemented.
The NI Protocol aims to eliminate the need for border controls between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland (an EU member).
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Northern Ireland Justice minister Naomi Long said on Wednesday that the UK government's "dishonesty and the lack of clarity around these issues has contributed to a sense of anger in parts of our community," saying that the government downplayed the impact that Brexit would have on Northern Ireland.
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Last month, the Loyalist Communities Council said it was withdrawing its support for the GFA, also known as the Belfast Agreement.
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"We should all know well that when politics fail or are perceived to be failing in Northern Ireland, then those who fill the vacuum offer destruction and despair. We cannot allow a new generation of our young people to fall victim to that path or be preyed upon by someone who prefers the shadows, to the light," [First Minister Arlene] Foster told the Northern Irish Assembly.
Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland deny they have been behind an eruption of street violence in the British-ruled province, but they have warned that politicians in London, Dublin and Brussels are playing with fire, saying they underestimate the impact Brexit is having on the sectarian balance.
The sustained nature of rioting in largely Protestant neighborhoods of Belfast and Londonderry is prompting rising alarm in government circles in Dublin and London, with fears mounting the province risks being dragged back into its dark past of sectarian violence between pro-British, mainly Protestant Unionists and mostly Catholic Irish nationalists. Loyalists are seen as Unionist paramilitaries.
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The imposition of a sea border meant a land border between the two halves of Ireland could be avoided, which would have risked sparking a violent reaction from nationalists and the paramilitary Provisional IRA. The reverse has happened — an outcome that some Unionists warned was likely.
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Northern Ireland's Unionists worry the Brexit deal [Boris] Johnson struck with Brussels will in effect start peeling the province away from the U.K., and they say it affects their cultural identity.
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"More than 600,000 young people have been born in Northern Ireland since the Belfast Agreement was signed," lamented Abby Wallace this week in the Irish Times, using another term for the Good Friday Agreement. "But under the broad umbrella of the 'peace generation,' not all young people have felt this peace in the same way. This is because our leaders have failed to build on the Belfast Agreement in a way which would allow all of Northern Ireland's youth to feel that we are no longer living in the past.
"More than 90 percent of Northern Ireland's young people are still educated in segregated schools," noted Wallace, a radio journalist and postgraduate politics student at Belfast's Queen's University.
VOA News
Segregation has never worked out well. Anywhere.
"To date there has been a spectacular collective failure to understand properly the scale and nature of unionist and loyalist anger," Loyalist paramilitaries said in a joint statement last week. "Indeed, there is a complete failure to understand loyalists as people and equal citizens."
Sounds like MAGA (white nationalist) grievance.
Sinn Fein, which always saw the Good Friday Agreement as a steppingstone to eventual Irish reunification, is pushing for a so-called border poll on the future of the British-ruled province, to the increasing frustration of Northern Ireland's Unionists.
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British and EU officials are now scrambling to see if they can tweak the trading arrangements to make them less intrusive, and they say they are making progress. But it remains unclear whether that will be a long-term cure.
[U]nderneath all of this is the growing fear among loyalists that Brexit will increase the likelihood of Northern Ireland’s leaving the U.K. to reunify with the Irish Republic, a member of the E.U. The controversy of the moment centers on the question of borders. As part of Brexit negotiations with the E.U., U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed to avoid reimposition of the land border that separates Ireland from Northern Ireland–and, therefore, the E.U. from Britain. Instead, the two sides agreed on the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, which establishes a trade boundary in the Irish Sea.
MSN
Unification is a terrible thing, is it not?
There is still haggling to be done over the movement of food, animals and plants across that boundary to ensure that products leaving the U.K. meet E.U. legal, regulatory and health standards. There are also outstanding questions ranging from the future of steel and aluminum tariffs to the movement of pets across the border. The E.U. had argued that an alignment of standards on the manufacture of many products would mean fewer and faster border checks, but Johnson’s government is reluctant to make commitments that make it harder for the U.K. to sign future trade deals with other countries.
All of this leaves loyalists in Northern Ireland feeling pushed to the European side and fearful of a unified Ireland, while facing product shortages as new customs processes slow the movement of goods. This surge of anger comes as the governing and staunchly loyalist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) preps for a serious electoral challenge next year. To fend off criticism that the DUP, supporters of Brexit, is responsible for Northern Ireland’s current predicament, its leaders have demanded that the protocol be scrapped entirely. If that’s not enough to blunt criticism of the party, a fragmentation of its voting bloc could leave the Northern Ireland Assembly in the hands of nationalists led by a Sinn Fein First Minister. That’s a nightmare scenario for loyalists and a serious challenge to the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace 23 years ago.
Britain has agreed with the European Union that it will respond to the bloc's legal action over how it has introduced new trading rules for Northern Ireland by mid-May, a spokeswoman for the government said on Wednesday.
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The EU launched legal action against Britain in March for unilaterally changing trading arrangements for Northern Ireland that Brussels says are in breach of the Brexit divorce deal agreed with London last year.
Britain has denied that the move undermines the part of the Brexit deal that governs trade to the British province, saying it extended the grace period for checks on goods moving to Northern Ireland to ease their passage.
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Since leaving the EU's single market at the end of last year, supermarkets in Northern Ireland have seen some shortages of food, and the British government has also delayed introducing checks on parcels and pets.
The difficulties stem from the terms of Britain's withdrawal agreement, which leaves Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods and so requires checks on goods arriving there from other parts of the United Kingdom.
MSN
The European Parliament’s ratification of the EU’s trade deal with the UK is set to move a step closer on Thursday with lawmakers poised to endorse the agreement, despite tensions over new trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.
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MEPs put the ratification process on ice earlier this year in protest at unilateral British moves that the EU said violated the two sides’ Northern Ireland protocol.
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Brussels and London have both emphasised the need to apply the protocol, part of the UK’s 2019 Brexit treaty, in a way that minimises the risk of further stoking sectarian tensions that boiled over into eight consecutive nights of rioting in Belfast this month.
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It is widely expected that the final vote will take place this month, as the assembly has now completed detailed scrutiny of the 1,246 page text, and failure to vote it through would force the EU to ask the UK for a further extension of provisional application of the deal, which provides for tariff-free, quota-free trade on most goods.
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Brussels still has legal action under way against the UK for its decision earlier this year to unilaterally extend grace periods for some of the protocols’ requirements for ensuring food safety. Britain and the EU agreed this week that London would have until mid-May to respond to the EU’s objections.
Financial Times
Good luck to all you Irish. I have a feeling Boris Johnson (and all of England, to be honest) doesn't care for the Irish loyalists any more than Trump cares for his base.
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