THE POLICE Service of Northern Ireland has described as a “disgrace” the sectarian rioting that broke out in east Belfast on Monday night.
Police fired baton rounds during the disturbances involving some 200 people, most of them youths, at the nationalist and loyalist interface in the Short Strand area.
The trouble erupted during a nationalist rally in the Short Strand celebrating the closing of the Mount Pottinger PSNI station in east Belfast.
“Once again our country is caught in the spotlight of disorder and communal hatred,” the PSNI said. “Let’s be clear where the blame lies here, it lies with the criminal who picked up a stone, or a bottle, or any other missile and who attacked the police and other citizens going about their business,” the police said. “As often happens, the police were caught between two opposing groups determined to attack each other.”
SDLP MP for South Belfast Dr Alasdair McDonnell said: “It was frankly madness to organise a protest meeting at the interface on a bank holiday. Now Sinn Féin spokesmen are claiming the protest had no connection with the rioting. This is nonsense, the same sort of pernicious nonsense we used to hear from the marching orders after their coat-trailing parades led to violence.”
“If Sinn Féin is once again sponsoring interface kiddy rioting in order to compete with the dissidents for community control, we are in a very dangerous situation. It would send a strong signal that they have abandoned even the lip service they have paid to the concept of a shared future and settled once more for ghetto politics.”
East Belfast Sinn Féin representative Niall Ó Donnghaile said his family home was attacked by nationalist “anti-social elements”. He said there had been sectarian trouble and hooliganism in the area for weeks. “Those involved in such activity are serving no purpose other than attacking the Short Strand community,” he said.
“The PSNI would have been made well aware of these problems and, in my opinion, have failed to deal with the situation adequately,” he complained, saying the use of plastic bullets was “completely uncalled for and unjustified”.
