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Date Posted: 00:39:33 07/09/04 Fri GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Police block demonstrators in N. Ireland (Las Vegas Sun)

July 04, 2004


Police Block Demonstrators in N. Ireland
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
ASSOCIATED PRESS


PORTADOWN, Northern Ireland (AP) -

Police blocked about 2,000 Protestants of the Orange Order brotherhood from parading through the Catholic section of this bitterly divided town Sunday. The demonstrators dispersed peacefully after their leaders handed police a letter of protest.

It was the seventh year in a row that the hard-line Protestant fraternal group has been prevented from marching down the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, the major Catholic enclave in this overwhelmingly Protestant town southwest of Belfast.

Orange leaders gave the letter of protest to police commanders at a 10-foot-high steel wall blocking the road. They demanded to be allowed to march to the center of Portadown via Garvaghy Road, where Catholic hard-liners began blocking the Orangemen's usual parade route in 1995.

But police commanders quietly said they were obliged to uphold a ruling from the British government-appointed Parades Commission. Every year since 1998 the expert panel has said the Orange Order won't be allowed through until the group drops its decade-old ban on negotiations with Garvaghy Road leaders.

Portadown's deputy Orange leader, David Burrows, told the crowd they were welcome to protest at police lines - but only peacefully.

"There must come a time when this crazy decision to uphold the (Irish) nationalist veto on our parade comes to an end," Burrows told the crowd.

The dispute over the annual Orange parade triggered riots across this British territory in 1996, 1997 and 1998. But most of the crowd this year piled into cars and left without trouble after Burrows' appeal.

The protests have grown increasingly tepid since police successfully blocked the Orangemen for the first time in 1998. The Orangemen that year stood their ground at the barricades for a week, then quit after three Catholic boys were killed in an arson attack in another mostly Protestant town, Ballymoney.

British army engineers have ensured that Orangemen could not outflank police lines by erecting coils of razor wire, digging and flooding trenches in cow pastures beside the blocked road.

Orange leaders have refused face-to-face talks with Garvaghy Road protest leader, Breandan MacCionnaith, citing his conviction in connection with a 1974 Irish Republican Army bombing of the Royal British Legion building in Portadown.

The Orange Order, a conservative anti-Catholic brotherhood founded near Portadown in 1795, was instrumental in establishing Northern Ireland in 1921, shortly before the predominantly Catholic rest of Ireland won independence from Britain.

Orangemen once controlled many institutions in Northern Ireland but have seen their influence wane since 1972, when Britain dissolved a local Protestant-dominated government and imposed a system of "direct rule" from London that still operates.

Nonetheless, the Orange Order demonstrates its grass roots strength with several weeks of marches across Northern Ireland each summer. Its biggest marches come July 12, the anniversary of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, when the Protestant William II defeated his Catholic rival for the British throne, James II.

---

On the Net:

Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition, http://www.garvaghyroad.org/

Orange Order, http://www.grandorange.org.uk/

Portadown Orangemen's site, http://www.orangenet.org/civilrights/garvaghy.htm

--

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