Is Northern Ireland reconnecting with "old demons"?
For the past ten days, riots have broken out every evening in several cities, notably in Belfast.
In loyalist areas, groups of teenagers arm themselves with bricks and Molotov cocktails.
Their target: Catholic Republicans.
On the night of Thursday April 8 to Friday April 9, the police were thus caught between the loyalists, mostly Protestants, and Republicans, mostly Catholics.
For hours, these young people threw projectiles at each other, also attacking the police.
On Friday, the authorities counted more than 50 wounded among the police.
These images resurface the specter of three bloody decades of civil war between loyalists and Republicans, which left 3,500 dead, and which ended in 1998 with the Good Friday agreement.
01:51
At the center of the tensions, Brexit and the return of customs controls between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Fabrice Mourlon, lecturer at Paris-XIII and specialist in Northern Ireland, deciphers for France 24 the reasons for this renewed violence.
France 24: What are the current relations between unionists and republicans in Northern Ireland?
Fabrice Mourlon:
Peace has always been fragile in Northern Ireland.
It is a peace that is still very young: the Good Friday agreements are only a little over 20 years old.
There has been a lot of progress in recent years, but we feel that the tensions are still there.
It boils and we know that it can overflow at any time.
Moreover, riots regularly break out between loyalists and republicans.
For example, violence takes place almost every year, on July 12, during the traditional unionist march called "the Orangemen" [which marks the victory in 1690 of the Protestant King William III over his Catholic rival Jacques II].
The political balance is also fragile, because the Good Friday agreement provides for a systematic political consensus between the two movements.
The Northern Irish Parliament was suspended on several occasions, including once for a period of five years between 2002 and 2007.
Why does Brexit crystallize these new tensions?
Since Brexit was passed in 2016, we knew that the question of Northern Ireland was going to be a problem.
He revived among unionists the fear of leaving the United Kingdom.
What crystallizes this fear is the establishment of the Northern Irish protocol negotiated between London and Brussels.
The latter establishes customs controls between Northern Ireland and England.
And rather than creating a land border between the two Ireland, it establishes a maritime border, in the Irish Sea.
Concretely, all goods which pass through the United Kingdom to arrive in Northern Ireland must be checked.
However, they will be able to circulate freely between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
It must be understood that with Brexit, the place of Northern Ireland becomes a real headache.
The region retains a foothold in the European domestic market, but also remains a nation of the United Kingdom.
For many Unionists, this Northern Irish protocol undermines their British identity.
Some go further and fear that this will be an intermediate step before a reunification between the two Irish and a separation from the United Kingdom.
Overall there has always been a sort of paranoia among the loyalists, who fear being let go at any time by the UK.
Brexit has further fueled this.
Besides Brexit, have other elements fueled these tensions?
Another event, more anecdotal, actually raised the tensions a notch.
In June 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, ignoring the health restrictions in force, twenty-four officials of Sinn Fein, which advocates the reunification of Ireland, decided to attend, in Belfast, the funeral of Bobby Storey, who would have been the intelligence chief of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
At the end of March, the Northern Irish authorities decided not to prosecute them.
It caused a major controversy in the country.
For the Unionists, it was further proof of a double standard that would favor the Republicans.
Who is participating in these riots?
The violence began in the Unionist-majority city of Derry, before spreading to the Lanark Way area in west Belfast.
These are popular areas, where riots have already broken out on several occasions.
It was in Derry that Lyra McKee, a British journalist, was killed in clashes in 2019.
Now we are dealing with a snowball effect.
Violence is emerging everywhere, even in predominantly Republican neighborhoods.
In the riots, we see mainly young people, certainly idle and disillusioned in the face of the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
In my opinion, these riots are as much social as they are political.
I see a phenomenon quite close to what has happened in recent years in certain French suburbs.
Moreover, these young people are certainly encouraged and manipulated by unionist paramilitary groups.
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