18.5.2006
Reports obtained from:
(1)
North Belfast News,
(2) Sunday Business
Post, (3) Sunday
Tribune
(4)
Irish News,
(5) Irish Republican
News
Friday, 12 May, 2006
Sunday, 14 May, 2006
Tuesday, 16 May, 2006
Wednesday, 17 May, 2006
No escape for families from the viciousness of sectarianism
By North Belfast News, Editorial
The vicious murder of schoolboy Michael McIlveen has sent shockwaves across Ireland, resonating strongly with his heartbroken relatives and the wider community in North Belfast. Ironically his grandparents Ann Marie and Francie McIlveen decided to leave Ardoyne during the height of the conflict in the 1980s and move to Antrim and quieter climes. They could not have realised then that a precious and much loved teenager would become victim of such a foul deed over a decade after the first ceasefire.
The events in Ballymena this week will also bring back painful memories for the parents of Ciaran Cummings who also moved to Antrim from Ardoyne. The 19-year-old was gunned down in July 2001 by the UVF in a blatant sectarian murder at the Greystone roundabout in Antrim. For the parents of Gavin Brett, murdered as he stood with Catholic friends on the Hightown Road, and for Daniel McColgan’s devastated family this week will be even more difficult than others – if that is possible. Think also of the families of Gerard Lawlor, gunned down on the Whitewell Road, Brian Service who was killed in 1998, and schoolboy Thomas Devlin stabbed just nine months ago. All these bereft mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters know too well the devastating heartbreak of the McIlveens at this terrible time. They all have our deepest sympathy.
Copyright © 2006 North Belfast News
Where peace has made no progress
By Colm Heatley
A few yards into Ballymena town centre, the loyalist paramilitary banners that hang from almost every lamppost let the casual visitor know exactly who controls the town.
Most of the kerbstones are painted red, white and blue.
Union Jacks flutter from bedroom windows. Pictures of King Billy and masked loyalist gunmen stare down from the gable walls of terraced houses.
It was underneath one of these flags that 15-year-old Catholic Michael McIlveen was kicked to death last week.
He was on his way home from the local cinema - where he had met Protestant friends - when he was set upon by a loyalist gang wielding baseball bats and knives.
He struggled home after the beating, but collapsed and lapsed into a coma a few hours later. Last Monday, he died.
Last Thursday, five young Protestants were charged with his murder.
The front garden of the family home was turned into a temporary shrine for the sports-mad teenager. Celtic jerseys and the colours of his local hurling team took pride of place as a steady procession of mourners streamed in and out of the house.
They all shared one sentiment - that this was a tragedy waiting to happen. Since Christmas, there has been an upsurge in sectarian attacks in Ballymena, nearly all against Catholics.
Ballymena has always had an unenviable legacy of sectarianism.
In the late 1990s, when the Good Friday Agreement held out hope of progress, Catholic Mass-goers at Harryville Church in the town were pelted with urine-filled balloons by loyalist protesters every week.
Today, the town is festooned with loyalist flags, a carnival of reaction against political progress.
The town centre, a supposedly neutral area, has UDA and UVF emblems almost everywhere.
UDA flags hang from lampposts outside Harryville Church, and just a few feet away hangs a UDA mural ‘‘remembering with pride’’ the organisation’s members - whose targets, of course, were Catholics just like those who attend Mass at Harryville.
Most of Ballymena is a no-go area for nationalists. The UDA, which many believe is behind the orchestrated attacks, has gone from strength-to-strength in the town, tightening its grip on the local heroin trade and recruiting loyalist youths into its ranks in unprecedented numbers.
So far, no significant political pressure has been placed on the group to disarm or to cease its activities.
Many shopping centres, bars, leisure centres, cinemas and pizza parlours are out of bounds for a fifth of Ballymena’s citizens, because those businesses are all located in loyalist areas.
Older nationalists can drink only in bars in William Street, ‘‘but you’d never dream of walking home’’, said one patron of a pub in the street.
This is life for Ballymena’s nationalists, more than eight years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed and almost 12 years since the first IRA ceasefire.
For young nationalists, the only venue which is safe is the small and dingy Trick Shot snooker hall, situated on the outskirts of the town centre.
They are corralled into two housing estates at the north end of the town, Dunclug – where Michael McIlveen lived - and the tiny Fisherwick estate, whose residents only had central heating put into their houses two years ago.
Dunclug is a typical council housing estate with a smattering of greenery at the top end of it. Locals playing hurling have to do it on the tiny basketball court, the hoops acting as goals.
When the Troubles began, most Catholics lived on the south side of the town, but sectarian intimidation forced them to move. Ironically, it is only in these two mainly nationalist estates that Protestants and Catholics mix openly.
Protestant teenagers, who walk around wearing Rangers jerseys, are counted as friends by the local Catholics. Last week, some of the Rangers jerseys were emblazoned with the words ‘‘Mickey Bo’’, McIlveen’s nickname, as a mark of respect.
In another twist, one of those charged with the murder has a Catholic mother, and has close relatives who live near the McIlveens.
Life for Dunclug’s younger nationalist residents is punctuated by sectarian attacks and pervaded with a sense of despair, growing anger and resentment at their impotence in the face of sustained attacks.
In recent months, the attacks have become more organised, vicious and bold. Since January, locals say that loyalists have been out cruising in cars, armed with baseball bats and knives, on the prowl for nationalists, a claim supported by Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the victims of these midnight ‘sorties’.
The premeditated nature of these attacks is a chilling echo of the darkest days of the Troubles and Lenny Murphy’s Shankill Butchers gang, which killed more than a dozen Catholics.
Barry McGill is 18 years old, and was a close friend of McIlveen. Three weeks ago, he was sitting near his home in Dunclug when a car full of loyalists pulled up. They held him down and tried to carve a Union Jack on his stomach with a kitchen knife.
‘‘I was just minding my own business when it happened,” he said. ‘‘They came in and did it for nothing. They are bad bastards who wanted to get any Catholic they could. We are second-class citizens here - that’s all.”
No one has been charged with the attack and, like most young nationalists, McGill won’t venture into the town anymore unless he has a crowd with him.
But that, in turn, leads to PSNI attention and unwanted ‘‘stop and search’’ procedures, which nationalists complain are meted out unfairly and disproportionately.
‘‘How come I can’t walk into the town without being searched but the loyalists can saunter around with baseball bats and knives?” asks McGill.
The case of Robert Hamill, a Catholic man kicked to death by loyalists in front of an RUC Landrover in Portadown in May 1997, still plays on the minds of nationalists in Ballymena, who view their situation as similar to that of nationalists in Portadown during that time.
On Easter Saturday, another young nationalist from the Dunclug estate was beaten in a sectarian attack in the town’s Tower shopping centre. Kirk McCaughren, 20, was stabbed and punched and was left with a punctured lung in the daylight attack.
The police later charged him with causing an affray, but didn’t charge any of his dozen or so attackers. McIlveen’s mother Gina, meanwhile, was punched in the face in the same shopping centre at Christmas.
Again, loyalists were responsible.
At least three Catholic families have been forced from their homes in Ballymena because of sectarian intimidation.
The frequency of attacks has also meant that many jobs in Ballymena are off limits to young nationalist men and women, who fear that loyalists would wait until closing time and attack them.
In the Dunclug and Fisherwick estates, unemployment is high, even though Ballymena is one of the most prosperous towns in the north. Surprisingly, despite the attacks, there is little talk of revenge.
‘‘If a Catholic goes out and stabs a Protestant teenager, then people will say we are as bad as them,” said McGill.
However, a friend of his admits that McIlveen’s murder ‘‘has left me bitter’’.
The recent sectarian beatings come after a sustained wave of attacks on Catholic homes in Ballymena and the nearby village of Ahoghill last summer.
In Ahoghill, just five miles from the centre of Ballymena, loyalists petrol-bombed the homes of the last remaining nationalists in the village.
Families who had lived there for generations fled. The PSNI was criticised for its response - it gave fire-blankets to the nationalists who chose to stay on.
In response to such intimidation, young nationalists have ‘‘rebelled’’ by wearing Celtic shirts and hanging up tricolours in their estates.
Declan O’Loan, a local SDLP councillor and husband of the Police Ombudsman, said that, in years gone by, Catholics were always the primary targets of attack, but that over the past five years there had been less inclination to suffer in silence.
‘‘In the past, Catholics seemed almost to accept their fate and accept the intimidation, but over the past five years there has been a rising self-confidence and young people in particular don’t want to sit back,” he said. ‘‘They are more assertive than past generations.”
That assertiveness, combined with a growing Catholic population, has infuriated Ballymena’s loyalists who, through sectarian attacks, are determined to maintain their status in the town.
The rise of the Sinn Fein vote in Ballymena and surrounding areas has also led to a sustained assault on the nationalist community.
Paddy, a local community worker in whom many of the young people of the area confide, said the situation meant that, for most young Catholics, life experience doesn’t exist outside Dunclug housing estate.
‘‘They can’t go into the town and they don’t have any resources, so they end up drinking out of boredom,” he said.
‘‘We have all the difficulties of every other working-class area, plus the problems of a loyalist town that tells Catholics they can’t leave their estate or they’ll be beaten up.
‘‘For a lot of these kids, there is nothing to do, and the future doesn’t look too rosy for them.”
Inside the estates there are no facilities to occupy young people, and a number of boarded-up houses are the former dwellings of local heroin dealers chased out by Dunclug’s residents.
For nationalists in Ballymena, the peace process has delivered no real change; if anything, they feel that their situation has deteriorated over the past ten years.
In the Fisherwick estate, a tiny nationalist enclave even farther from Ballymena town centre, dissident republicans have had some success in recruiting local young people.
Last year, five young people from the estate were arrested over their alleged involvement in a fire-bombing campaign in the north Antrim area. However, support for dissident republicans is still extremely small.
Since the death of McIlveen, there has been something of an outpouring of cross-community grief in Ballymena. Local Protestants left flowers and sympathy cards at the spot where he was beaten to death.
However, the street violence being perpetrated against nationalists in Ballymena is played out against a backdrop of political intolerance and religious fundamentalism, which is frequently expressed by the town’s DUP politicians.
The council insists on flying the Union Jack 365 days a year.
Party members, including Ian Paisley Jr, attended the Harryville Church protests, while his father is well-known for his firebrand pro-union speeches.
However, the McIlveen family has been generous in its praise of Ian Paisley, who didn’t visit the house but prayed with them over the phone. He has been invited to attend the funeral.
McIlveen’s murder has been unusual mainly for the attention it has attracted. When another Catholic teenager was stabbed to death by loyalists in north Belfast last year, barely a ripple was created.
Catholics in Ballymena feel that unless radical moves are taken to ensure the loyalist attacks are brought to an end, another innocent life will be lost.
Within a fortnight, the Orange marches will begin in earnest and sectarian tensions will be ratcheted up.
Providing security for nationalists in Ballymena will be a key test for both the PSNI and unionist politicians if a new era is to be created in the North.
Copyright © 2006 Sunday Business Post
Ballymena Catholics seen as second-class citizens
By Suzanne Breen, Sunday Tribune
Barry knows he was lucky. He lifts his Celtic shirt to show the knife wounds where the loyalist gang tried to carve a Union Jack on his chest. "They jumped me from behind as I walked to Dunclug.
"They punched me in the face and then they took out a Stanley knife. They were calling me a Fenian bastard as they beat me. I managed to get away. Catholics have to watch their backs in Ballymena every hour of the day. I was lucky to escape with only black eyes and scars. I could have ended up like Michael."
We're at the spot where Michael McIlveen, 15, was fatally beaten last weekend. "He was one of my best mates," says Barry, 18. "We'd some great times together. He wanted to join the Irish Army.
"All he ever talked about was getting out of here and heading down South when he left school." All day, young people arrive at the scene, leaving flowers and messages.
'Alright big lad. You're in a better place than any of us. Ryan'. 'A new beautiful angel. We'd so much fun. Michaela'. 'Sleep well, you deserve somewhere better than here. Aine.' 'I only ever talked to you once or twice but you were nice to me and lovely looking.'
Older people leave crucifixes and holy pictures. Teenagers bring teddy bears and Celtic jerseys. A girl stands by a row of red candles, replacing every one as it burns out. "I want to keep a warm glow here for Michael," she says.
A pensioner in a nearby house watches the makeshift shrine from her bedroom at night. "It's to make sure loyalists don't wreck it. The neighbours call me Miss Marple because I miss nothing."
"Even in death, you're not safe – that's how much they hate us," says a 26-year-old mother. "I called my wee lad Ruairi. Now, I'm kicking myself for giving him a Catholic name. It's too dangerous."
Some Catholics have 999 keyed into their mobile phones for when they're in certain parts of town at night. Few people want their names printed. "You're out of here tonight. I've to live here," says the young mother.
Catholics make up a fifth of Ballymena's population. Many see the town as a crucible of sectarianism. The vast majority live in North Ballymena but the best shopping, social and recreational facilities – the cinema, leisure centre, and Superbowl – are in the Protestant south of town.
"Everyday activities, like shopping, carry huge risks," says Deirdre. Last year, she was heavily pregnant when threatened by a known UDA man in the Tower Centre. "He called me a Fenian bastard, right in the middle of the shopping centre, and he went to hit me.
"I lifted my two-year-old in front of me to protect my stomach. Later, I received threats they'd kill my kids. I told the police but they're not interested."
Deirdre, who lives in the working-class Dunclug Estate, is a friend of the McIlveen's. She was godmother at the christening of Michael's niece a fortnight ago. "Michael was godfather. He was a bag of nerves because he wanted to get it right.
"He kept whispering to me 'what do we have to do now?'. He was very shy so I pretended he'd to make a speech at the end and he nearly died. We recorded the ceremony. Watching it breaks my heart. I never thought then that I'd be buying his wreath."
Black flags in the streets outside, erected for the hunger-strikers, now serve a double purpose. Real IRA graffiti adorns the gable walls. Moving Hearts' 'No time for love', blasts from a parked car: "Come on all you people who give to your sisters and brothers the will to fight on/They say you can used to this war, that doesn't mean that this war isn't on."
In a middle-class Catholic development, off the Doury Road, no republican music is playing. But there's just as much anger about the murder.
"I'm not bigoted, my father is a Protestant, but this is a Protestant town for a Protestant people and that'll never change," says Teresa as she drinks coffee in her beautiful, sun-lit kitchen. The family dog Lassie is digging a hole in the back garden.
"Michael McIlveen played netball out there with my son Darren. He was so quiet. Even if loyalists yelled abuse at him, he'd never answer back. Darren's been on diazepam since Michael's murder. Imagine – a 16-year-old boy on diazepam.
"I found my 15-year-old daughter crying in bed yesterday. She's too frightened to go to school. My sister's moving to England and she says I should do the same.
"I don't want to leave but it'll be worse when Darren's older and wants to go to pubs at night. My mother never slept a wink until my brothers came home on weekend nights. I don't want to go through that.
"Just say Darren starts seeing a Protestant girl? I wouldn't mind at all but it's dangerous when they visit Protestant areas." Teresa talks of an old school-friend, Michael Reid, who was at a house in the Protestant Harryville part of town.
He was beaten on the head with a saucepan, stabbed, and had the cord of a mobile phone charger pulled around his neck. He heard his assailants discuss ways of sawing up his body. He pretended to be dead and managed to escape. Last year, Neil White, 30, was convicted of Reid's attempted murder.
Cross-community dating means loyalists sometimes learn the mobile numbers of Catholic teenagers, says Teresa's friend Michelle: "A wee girl visiting Michael McIlveen in intensive care was texted: 'We didn't just kill one nationalist. We killed a bit of all the nationalists in Ballymena.'"
Michelle's brother, Stephen, 17, says it was dangerous before Michael's murder. On Easter Saturday Kirk McCaughern, 20, was stabbed during a confrontation in the Tower Centre. "The loyalist who did it was at an Orange parade two days later. As it passed the chapel, he danced and roared to show everybody he was proud of what he did."
Sean, a Sinn Féin member, says: "When my young fellow goes to the dentist in town, he takes off his St Patrick's school uniform because it identifies him as a Catholic.
"When my children go to the cinema, they ring me five minutes before they come out so I can pick them up immediately. Standing outside is too dangerous. The police don't protect us. Supt Terry Shevlin has ornamental elephants in his office. They're more use than his officers."
Ballymena elected its first Sinn Féin councillor, Monica Digney, last year. "Her treatment by some DUP councillors encourages sectarianism on the street," says Sean.
"When she tries to speak, some drum the tables to drown her out. They try to belittle her. The ceasefire and the peace process hasn't changed unionists here."
Sean says nationalists will be penned in by Orange marches every fortnight this summer: "You'd think King Billy was from Ballymena, the way they're always celebrating him."
In the living-room of his home on the Fisherwick Estate, Anthony Lee, 30, sits under pictures of Bobby Sands and Francis Hughes. He's one of five people facing charges of Real IRA membership and firebomb possession following arrests last year. He's pleading not guilty.
"Anti-Agreement republicanism here is growing. We grew up being told to keep our heads down but that's changing. When I was sixteen our family was told they were scum and should get out of Ballymena. We stayed. The days are gone when loyalists could come into our estates and take down Tricolours.
"You see ordinary Catholics starting to wear Celtic and GAA tops despite the risks. They won't accept being second-class citizens." His friend, Ryan Agnew, 26, says: "My father's in Sinn Féin but I think they're losing touch with the feeling on the ground.
"The peace process improved nothing. We're angry about Michael's murder but republicans would never do the same to a Protestant teenager. Our young people are putting up posters saying 'No more sectarian attacks'. Ballymena isn't like 'Gangs of New York' with both sides as bad as each other.
"Only one community is under siege. Catholic schools and churches here have suffered numerous attacks. The chapel at Harryville needs so much security protection it looks like a prison not a church."
John Dickey who runs the North Antrim Victims' Support Network says: "Ballymena Protestants are wrongly demonised and nobody defends them.
"Unfortunately, when unionist politicians don't speak up for them, they drift towards paramilitaries. Michael McIlveen's murder was atrocious but plenty of 15-year-old Protestants have been murdered in Northern Ireland and we heard little about it.
"Nationalist politicians are using this death for political leverage. It's untrue to say Ballymena is dangerous for Catholics. Protestant teenagers get beaten up as well. Two Protestant families in Dunclug and Millfield have just been warned by police they're not safe.
"Relations between the communities have never been so tense. The police privately admit Ballymena is one of the strongest areas for dissident republicans. The dissidents are trying to take over the place. Sinn Féin getting on the council has incited hatred too.
"Monica Digney says the hunger-strikers were heroes and she agrees with everything they did. What sort of message does that send out, supporting terrorists who butchered Protestants?"
Michael McIlveen's funeral takes place tomorrow. Back at the scene where he was attacked, a woman says: "Some people think this will be a turning-point. I'd like to hope he'll be the last young Catholic beaten or killed here. But this is Ballymena."
Copyright © 2006 Sunday Tribune
Courageous invitation a challenge to Paisley
By Susan McKay, Irish News
Michael McIlveen was just 15 when he was beaten to death by loyalists in Ballymena 10 days ago. His mother, Gina, has invited her MP, the Reverend Ian Paisley, to her son's funeral. This is a gesture which is as breathtakingly generous as Gordon Wilson's when he forgave the IRA after it murdered his daughter Marie in 1987. Gina McIlveen has asked the elected leader of the majority of the Protestant people to be by her side as she buries her son, murdered by Protestants because he was a Catholic. The invitation is courageous. It also contains a challenge. She is asking the DUP to show respect.
Paisley offered sympathy to the family and condemned the murder but he also made excuses for it. The UDA recently claimed that republicans had broken a deal under which the UDA mural overlooking the Catholic church in Harryville and other sectarian emblems would be removed in exchange for the removal of tricolours from nationalist estates. Speaking after Michael's murder, Paisley said: "There's problems in Ballymena when people don't keep their word." Last summer, Ian Paisley jnr predicted trouble if a republican parade was allowed in the town. Loyalists were intimidating and burning Catholics out of local villages at the time and this campaign escalated.
There is a shocking level of sectarian violence in Ballymena and the UDA is behind much of it, enlisting teenagers into its Ulster Young Militants, filling their heads with hatred and sending them out to fight. The UDA's quasi-political spokesmen condemned Michael's murder and called on the SDLP and Sinn Féin to combat an "evil, evil campaign" in the nationalist community. This is presumably a reference to the existence of a small numb