Northern Ireland: shots fired by INLA paramilitaries at ceremony in Derry
Street atmosphere in Northern Ireland, June 2010 (illustrative image).
AFP - PETER MUHLY
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Northern Ireland is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the deaths of its hunger strikers this year.
Ten Republican fighters who protested against their imprisonment and who died in 1981. The small town of Derry, a town largely marked by tensions between Catholics and Protestants, paid tribute to one of them this weekend, Michael Guess.
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With our correspondent in Dublin
,
Emeline Vin
The scene recalls the "Troubles", the civil war of the 70s to 90s: a dozen men in black, hooded, stand in front of a fresco in tribute to Michael Devine, hunger striker.
Two of them, armed with what looks like a machine gun, fire a dozen times, in the air to the applause of the crowd.
The shots are attributed to the Irish National Liberation Army Organization (INLA), the armed wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, considered a terrorist group and officially disarmed since 2010.
Anger of Unionists
The images of the "ceremony" aroused some anger, especially among the Unionist portion of the population, those attached to membership in the United Kingdom.
Even the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has called to account the police inaction.
A spokeswoman explained that the police chose to let the rally be held in order to collect identification elements of INLA members.
Paramilitary activity, on the Republican side and on the Unionist side, remains a threat in
Northern Ireland
, according to the monitoring bodies set up since the ceasefire.
Schöne Aktion: INLA Volley of Shots für den Hungerstreiker Michael Devine in #Derry pic.twitter.com/gcgz8cv6dQ
- fenian (@swissfenian) August 20, 2021
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To read: Northern Ireland: unanimous refusal of the project to stop the prosecutions related to the civil war
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