February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando, according to the international decommissioning body charged with monitoring and verifying the decommissioning progress, have both put an unspecified total of weapons beyond use.
Meanwhile, the Ulster Defense Association, the largest of the loyalist paramilitary groups, has reportedly started its own process of decommissioning.
This can only be positive news for a peace process that has been rocked in recent months by violence aimed not just at the security forces, but also civilians who found themselves in the wrong place and the wrong time.
For in Northern Ireland, you don’t need a gun to kill, and you don’t need a bomb to give vent to your sectarian hatred.
As we have seen in recent weeks, all it takes are fists and feet, while baseball bats, knives and other weapons that would be not unfamiliar to people from medieval times have been employed on more than once occasion to take an innocent life.
Still, the decommissioning of what would have to be significant arsenals by the UVF and RHC has to be welcomed.
At the same time, it is no less crucial now that the ignorance and suspicion that has been the fuel of sectarian violence now be addressed by political and community leaders on every side.
The decommissioning of weapons is really a relatively simple matter when compared to the burying of deep-seated fear and distrust stretching back through too many generations.