A controversial statue depicting a paramilitary gunman was unveiled in Derry's city cemetery yesterday at a ceremony organised by the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the political wing of the Irish National Liberation Army.
The three-metre statue, which was erected on the Republican Socialist plot in the cemetery, has been described by the DUP's security spokesman, Mr Gregory Campbell, as "the glorification of violence".
Mr Campbell, who also called for the immediate removal of the statue from the Derry City Council cemetery, said several Protestant families were so upset by it that they wanted the remains of their relatives exhumed and reinterred in another cemetery. Eight men dressed in dark paramilitary uniforms and wearing dark glasses and berets were among a crowd of several hundred people who attended yesterday's unveiling, which was performed by Mrs Peggy O'Hara, the mother of INLA hunger-striker Patsy O'Hara.
In a statement, the O'Hara family described the statue, a memorial to the 10 republicans who died during the 1981 hunger strikes, as a fitting tribute to their memories. "We view with dismay the furore to once again attempt to criminalise Patsy and his comrades. These men died during a war, a war of liberation, and as combatants in that war they are entitled to such a monument," the statement said. "To the ones who would want to have this removed, we say let us remove all the war memorials at the same time, including the World War memorials like the one that stands in our city's Diamond that commemorates a terrible sacrifice for the world."