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Attacks on kids continue; Reid deems UDA truce over

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Chris Thornton

BELFAST — The loyalist protest against Catholic girls walking to Holy Cross school in North Belfast appeared to harden this week after the British government imposed sanctions on the UDA for breaking its cease-fire.

Talks between loyalists who live near the school and parents of the girls were not held in the days after John Reid, the British secretary of state, announced that London would no longer recognize the UDA cease-fire. He made a parallel decision against the LVF, saying it had been directly implicated in the murder of journalist Martin O’Hagan last month.

The decision to take action against the UDA was tied to recent violence in North and West Belfast and not directly to the school protest, which has seen the girls — none older than 11 — run a gauntlet of attacks and abuse for the last seven weeks.

But the UDA is believed to have played an important role in orchestrating the protest, which has seen a pipe bomb, bricks and balloons filled with urine thrown at the children and their parents as they walk from their homes in Ardoyne past houses in the loyalist Glenbryn area.

Several known members of the UDA, the largest loyalist paramilitary group, have been seen at the daily protest as the group appears to be pursuing a strategy of raising sectarian tensions across the North. Security sources say the UDA strategy is aimed at destabilizing the Good Friday agreement and protect criminal rackets.

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The British government also announced that it would build a new security wall — known euphemistically in the North as a “peace line” — between Ardoyne and Glenbryn, to help end small-scale violence between the two sides. But Fr. Aidan Troy, parish priest in the Ardoyne area and chairman of the school’s governors, said “the whole context is not so good for negotiation” in the aftermath of the UDA sanctions.

Troy compared the protesters to the Taliban, saying Afghanistan was the only other place he could think of where girls were prevented from going to school. He has said he is considering legal action against individual protesters.

Loyalists began their opposition to the school walk after claims that known IRA members were among the parents accompanying girls to school. They said the parents could use a longer alternative route, and have recently offered to end the protest if the children are bussed to the school.

A huge security operation is now mounted twice a day to bring the children to school. The girls, some as young as 4, walk with their parents between rows of armored police vans, guarded by RUC officers with flame-proof masks and riot protection gear.

Counselors and doctors have said the girls are suffering serious psychological damage from the protest, with many reported incidents of nightmares and bed-wetting. Several of the girls have been prescribed tranquilizers and several parents have moved their daughters to other schools. This week Education Minister Martin McGuinness announced more funds for the school to help it survive the protest.

Secretary of State Reid has been criticized for the British government’s slow reaction to UDA violence, but he finally acted after the group ignored a final warning he issued in September.

“There becomes a level and scale and attitude and pattern towards violence that becomes intolerable even for the most tolerant people,” he said.

The UDA joined in the joint loyalist cease-fire in 1994, but has largely turned against the Good Friday agreement in recent years. They have been repeatedly linked to attacks on Catholics and one of their main leaders, Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair, was returned to prison last year for orchestrating attacks.

Reid’s decision to specify the UDA and the LVF under new anti-terrorist legislation will have little immediate, practical effect on the groups. But the move will ease the evidential requirements for police to jail people for membership of the gangs, and it could see some of their former prisoners returned to jail. The UVF, the other main loyalist group, was unaffected by the announcement.

Nationalists welcomed the decision. Unionist politicians responded to the announcement by saying Reid should be prepared to take similar action against the IRA.

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