wfn.org | Elementary school becomes sectarian battleground

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Oct. 8, 2001   News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037New York
10-21-71BP{451}

NOTE: Photographs are available.

By Kathleen LaCamera*

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (UMNS) - The air horns and whistles began to blare
just beyond the wall of tanks and British soldiers blockading the street. A
mother tending a small toddler in a stroller visibly flinched and quickly
made the sign of the cross. Another woman covered her ears and grimaced.

"This is when they started throwing the bangers (firecrackers) yesterday,"
said the woman, looking around nervously. "We thought they were shooting at
us. They threatened to shoot the parents if we walked down the road today."

The people threatening to shoot are Loyalist paramilitary snipers. The
woman's name is Sharon. She is the parent of an 8-year-old girl who attends
the Holy Cross Catholic Primary School in North Belfast. This is their daily
school run.

"We usually take her by car, but since the road has been blocked, we have to
walk," she explained. 

Today, Sharon's husband is walking their daughter through the gauntlet of
Protestant residents. Local protesters who line the road want parents and
students from the Catholic school to use an alternative route and stay away
from the Protestant area that borders the front of the school. Usually,
Sharon's family walks to school together, but this morning Sharon stayed
behind with her younger child because of the death threats. 

Nearby, British soldiers with fingers on the triggers of their
semi-automatic weapons stood ready to deal with any trouble that might break
out. Since early September, children and parents have lined up at the top of
the Ardonyne Road, waiting until the soldiers give them the signal to walk
down the road together. Sharon and other mothers standing in the rain with
her on this cold, gray day agreed the trip to and from school is, quite
simply, terrifying. But they also said they have to defend their right to
walk down the street and into the front door of their local primary school. 

Even those who regularly follow the ebb and flow of events in Northern
Ireland have admitted this is a "low" in some very low moments of
Catholic-Protestant relations. People who live here despair of the image of
sectarian hatred that the standoff at Holy Cross sends to the world. 

The Rev. David Kerr, pastor of the Methodist Belfast Central Mission, noted
with sadness that a new, fairly deep current of sectarianism has erupted.
Kerr's parish has been bombed 34 times in three decades of violence in
Northern Ireland.  

"There has been a broad cessation of violence here, but there are still
these nasty, hidden wars for territorial control," he said. "People thought
you'd get an agreement signed and the next day everything would be
smashing." 

Trouble at Holy Cross is certainly in part about territory. Protestant
residents say their side of the story is not being reported in the press.
They allege that some Catholics are using the school run at Holy Cross to
intimidate and threaten Protestants on their own streets. 

"It's getting worse and worse," explained Janet Sewell, a Methodist laywoman
whose home is a five-minute walk from Holy Cross School. "There are areas
where Protestants are no longer allowed to go." 

Sewell runs the Advice Center of the Belfast Mission. A good deal of her
work focuses on organizing retreats for Catholic and Protestant children
ages 7 to 10 from some of Belfast's most deprived neighborhoods. She
described situations in her neigborhood where elderly residents were
threatened and intimidated as they tried to shop or use the post office. 

"They are ethnically cleansing the area," she added. "They want all the
Protestants out."

As a child, Sewell recalled times when Catholics threw bricks at her school
bus. She said sectarian violence against school children is not something
new. As a mother, she said she does not understand why Catholic parents are
subjecting their children to such a volatile scene every day. She would take
her kids the long way around if she were in their shoes. 

Sewell also said that it is not just parents and children who are walking
down the road to Holy Cross, but convicted killers, let out of prison as
part of the Good Friday peace agreement.  

"They are saying things to the residents like, 'you need another Shankill
bomber,'" she added. In 1993, an IRA bomb exploded on a Saturday morning in
a crowded fish shop on the predominantly Protestant Shankill Road in
Belfast. "I knew five of the nine people killed in that bombing. Two
children died, ages 8 and 11 years old."

The Rev. Doug Baker, who works with the Mediation Network in Belfast,
explained that people in the Unionist (Protestant) community feel they have
been excluded and harassed, and they "aren't going to take it anymore."

"In the whole peace process, Unionists feel Nationalist (Catholics) are
gaining a lot and Unionists are losing a lot," he said. "Nationalists feel,
whatever gains they have made, they are still not on a level playing field."

Resolving the situation at Holy Cross calls for working with Unionists,
rather than condemning them, Baker said. "We need to say, 'You have a
viewpoint we need to hear.'" 

Loyalist paramilitaries themselves say Protestant isolation fuels the
protests at Holy Cross.  

Baker said it is hard to accomplish much when things are as hot as they are
at the school. He suggested that the current challenge is in helping
Protestant residents see alternative ways of calling attention to their real
concerns.

Brendan Bradley, a Catholic from the Survivors of Trauma center, hopes the
day will come soon when the standoff at Holy Cross will be over. Sectarian
violence has already killed five members of his family. He worries about his
nieces who are single parents with children at Holy Cross School. Every day,
Bradley walks with family members down the soldier-lined street to the
school's front door. Bradley concedes that neither side is blameless. 

"We have bigots in both communities," he admitted. "These are two
communities in North Belfast who are mirror images of each other. They don't
recognize themselves when they look at each other." 

Most students at Holy Cross already are taking the "back way" to school.
Only some 50 families continue to bring their children down the road through
the contested front entrance. Many accuse Catholic parents of using their
children for political gain and putting them in a situation of undue
distress.  

Bradley and others making the school run believe the families have to "stand
up to the bully." 

"It's wrong to stop a child from going to school," he said flatly. 

The Rev. David Campton, minister of the Springfield Road Methodist Church in
nearby West Belfast, said there is a danger that Holy Cross could be a
flashpoint for wider discontent. But so far, it is more the exception than
the rule in Northern Ireland. 

"Generally, things have improved over the last three to four years," Campton
said. "We're in a different place now. Even where the official peace process
falters, other things can bring about peace." 

Davie Ervine, a former paramilitary member turned politician, told United
Methodist News Service that in the face of events such as the standoff at
Holy Cross, it is important to remember that "peace is harder to create and
defend than war." Having served 11 years in prison for paramilitary
activities, Ervine was instrumental in bringing about a crucial Loyalist
paramilitary ceasefire in the 1990s.

"Just because we don't have peace today, doesn't mean it won't happen
tomorrow," he said.
# # #      
*LaCamera is a UMNS correspondent based in England.

 

 

 

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United Methodist News Service
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