LONDON (AP) – Young people threw bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police and set fire to hijacked cars and a bus during a week of violence on the streets of Northern Ireland. Police responded with rubber bullets and water cannons.
The streets were calmer on Friday night, while community leaders called for calm after the death of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, aged 99. But small gangs of youths hit police with objects and set a car on fire during sporadic outbreaks in Belfast.
The chaotic scenes evoked memories of decades of Catholic-Protestant conflict, known as the “Problems.” A 1998 peace agreement put an end to widespread violence, but did not resolve the deep-rooted tensions in Northern Ireland.
A look at the background of the new violence:
WHY IS NORTHERN IRELAND A COMPETITIVE LAND?
Geographically, Northern Ireland is part of Ireland. Politically, it is part of the United Kingdom.
Ireland, long dominated by its older neighbor, was liberated about 100 years ago, after centuries of colonization and a troubled union. Twenty-six of its 32 counties have become an independent country, with a Roman Catholic majority. Six northern counties, which have a Protestant majority, remained British.
The Catholic minority in Northern Ireland has been discriminated against in terms of jobs, housing and other areas in the Protestant state. In the 1960s, a Catholic civil rights movement called for change, but faced a harsh response from the government and police. Some people on both Catholic and Protestant sides have formed armed groups that have escalated the violence with bombings and shootings.
The British Army was deployed in 1969, initially to keep the peace. The situation deteriorated in a conflict between Irish Republican militants who wanted to unite with the south, loyalist paramilitaries seeking to maintain British and British troops in Northern Ireland.
In the three decades of conflict, more than 3,600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in bombings and shootings. Most were in Northern Ireland, although the Irish Republican Army detonated bombs in London and other British cities.
HOW DID THE CONFLICT END?
In the 1990s, after secret talks and with the help of diplomatic efforts by Ireland, Britain and the United States, the fighters reached a peace agreement. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 prompted paramilitaries to lay down their arms and set up a Catholic-Protestant government to share power for Northern Ireland. The issue of the final status of Northern Ireland has been postponed: it will remain British as long as it was the desire of the majority, but a future referendum on reunification has not been ruled out.
While the peace was largely resisted, small groups of the Irish Republican Army staged occasional attacks on security forces and outbreaks of sectarian violence on the streets.
Politically, the power-sharing agreement has had periods of success and failure. The Belfast administration collapsed in January 2017 due to a wrong green energy project. It has been suspended for more than two years amid a rift between British unionist parties and Irish nationalist parties over cultural and political issues, including the status of the Irish language. The Government of Northern Ireland resumed work in early 2020, but deep mistrust remains on both sides.
HOW DID BREXIT COMPLICATE THINGS?
Northern Ireland has been called the “problem child” of Brexit, Britain’s divorce from the European Union. Being the only part of the UK that borders an EU nation – Ireland – was the most difficult issue to resolve after the UK voted narrowly in 2016 to leave the bloc of 27 nations.
An open Irish border, across which people and goods move freely, underlies the peace process, allowing people in Northern Ireland to feel at home, both in Ireland and in the UK.
The UK Conservative government’s insistence on a “tough Brexit” that has taken the country out of the EU’s economic order has meant creating new barriers and trade checks. Both the United Kingdom and the EU have agreed that the border could not be in Ireland because of the risk posed by the peace process. The alternative was to put it, metaphorically, in the Irish Sea – between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom
The agreement has alarmed British unionists, who say it is weakening Northern Ireland’s place in the UK and could strengthen Ireland’s reunification demands.
WHY HAS VIOLENCE BREAK NOW?
The violence was largely in Protestant areas in and around the second city of Belfast and Northern Ireland, Londonderry, although the riots spread to Catholic neighborhoods.
Britain left the EU’s economic embrace on December 31, and new trade arrangements quickly became irritating for unionists in Northern Ireland who want to stay in Britain Early trade problems exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic have led to some empty supermarket shelves , feeding the alarm. . Border staff were temporarily withdrawn from Northern Irish ports in February after the graffiti threat appeared to target port workers.
He was outraged that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had long insisted there would be no new controls on trade as a result of Brexit, had downplayed the changes made by leaving the EU. Some in the British loyalist community in Northern Ireland feel as if their identity is under threat.
“Many loyalists believe that, de facto, Northern Ireland has ceased to be part of Britain as long as it was,” Henry Patterson, a university professor at the University of Ulster, told Sky News.
Unionists are also outraged by the police’s decision not to pursue IRA-linked Sinn Fein politicians who attended the funeral of a former commander of the Irish Republican Army in June, despite coronavirus restrictions.
Meanwhile, outlawed armed groups continue to act as criminal drug gangs and still exert influence in working-class communities – although major paramilitaries have denied involvement in recent unrest.
Many of those involved in the violence were teenagers and even children up to 12 years old. They grew up in trouble, but live in areas where poverty and unemployment remain high and where sectarian divisions have not healed. Two decades after the Good Friday peace agreement, concrete “walls of peace” still separate the Catholic and Protestant working-class areas of Belfast.
The coronavirus pandemic added new layers of economic damage, education disruptions and blockage-induced boredom.
Despite calls for peace from political leaders in Belfast, London, Dublin and Washington, the issue can be difficult to resolve.
“These are areas of multiple shortcomings with the meaning of not losing much,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University Belfast. “And when (people) are mobilized by social media telling them ‘It’s enough, it’s time to defend Ulster’, then many of them – too many – respond to that.”