Police Tangle With Protesters Over Banned March in N. Ireland
Protesters and police clashed for a second day Monday after Northern Ireland’s Parades Commission banned a bitterly divisive Protestant march through a Catholic neighborhood for the third year running.
The decision to ban the march set for Sunday down the Garvaghy Road was met with defiance by the Orange Order, the province’s major Protestant group. “Everything goes ahead as planned,” said Orange Order spokesman David Jones.
Sporadic protests erupted Monday evening near the Drumcree church, where British security forces for the last two years have prevented Orangemen from parading past a nearby Roman Catholic neighborhood.
About 50 people behind the banner of the Ulster Freedom Fighters--an outlawed pro-British paramilitary group--briefly marched to the church, 50 yards from a line of police and British army vehicles blocking the way.
A crowd of several hundred threw rocks and other missiles at the security forces before police intervened. Later, masked gunmen in front of an Ulster Freedom Fighters banner fired shots in a Protestant area of nearby Portadown, 25 miles southwest of Belfast, the provincial capital.
The commission said it might permit a march on the road later if members of the Orange Order agreed to consult with Catholics in Portadown.
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