Marching season is open season on Catholics

BY PEADAR WHELAN

Kevin McDaid

» BY PEADAR WHELAN

IF THE SAVAGE attack on Paul McCauley tells us anything, it is that July and August, the height of the so-called Orange marching season in the Six Counties, could also be described as open season on Catholics.
The serious attack on a young Catholic in Antrim Town on Friday 5th August mirrors the assault on Paul McCauley in July 2006 and the attack that left 15-year-old Michael ‘Mickey Bo’ McIlveen dead in Ballymena in May 2006.
The schoolboy suffered a vicious beating at the hands of a loyalist gang as he returned home from Ballymena town centre. He died later  in hospital.
Loyalists mocked the teenager when they burned an effigy wearing a Celtic shirt bearing his nickname on an Eleventh Night bonfire.
In May 2009, Coleraine Catholic Kevin McDaid was beaten to death when UDA thugs invaded the small Catholic Somerset Drive enclave and bludgeoned him to death.
This month, Jordan Duffy, a 17-year-old GAA member, was walking with friends when they were confronted by three loyalists in the Station Road. Jordan’s two friends escaped the loyalists but he was caught.
The loyalists set upon the young student, beating him about the head.
So serious were the teenager’s injuries that he was transferred straightaway from Antrim Area Hospital to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
Three men, all in their 20s, appeared in court on Monday 8th August on charges of attempted murder and were remanded in custody.
The attack on Jordan Duffy is one of a number of serious attacks directed at nationalists throughout July.
The scene was set by the UVF-orchestrated attack on the Short Strand in east Belfast in early July and the orgy of rioting that erupted in Ballyclare, Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey in County Antrim over the weekend before The Twelfth.
The trouble was sparked when the PSNI removed a number of loyalist flags from the front of the local Catholic church.
Cars and other vehicles were hijacked and burned and petrol bombs were hurled at the PSNI in the violence that was clearly orchestrated by the UDA and UVF.
Catholic homes in Magherafelt, County Derry, were targeted by up to 50 loyalists who had gathered near a bonfire.
In Coleraine, County Derry, two shotgun blasts shattered the windows in the home of a Catholic family in Kingsbury Gardens. A teenager who was in the house at the time escaped injury.
Loyalists, however, don’t always vent their bigotry on Catholics as foreign nationals often find themselves in the firing line.
On The Twelfth a Slovakian familiy were targeted in an arson attack in the staunchly loyalist Ballykeel estate in Ballymena. Two days earlier, on 10th July, a shot was fired into the home of a Polish family in the Larne Road area of the town.
Of course, desecrating the Church of Our Lady in Harryville, Ballymena, is as traditional for some unionists as putting on a sash. So, true to form, the church which was the focus of a loyalist picket between 1996 and 1998 was daubed in paint in the early hours of Saturday morning 9th July.
Four members of a soccer team from Ardoyne in north Belfast were on the receiving end of loyalist mob rule when they were ambushed by a 30-strong gang at Alliance Avenue. Ironically, members of the soccer team had travelled to Dundalk to get away from the trouble anticipated when the scheduled Orange parade passed through the area.
According to 31-year-old Anthony Braniff, the players disembarked on Alliance Avenue because the driver was afraid to drive into Ardoyne due to the trouble.
The loyalists were armed with knives, golf clubs and sticks.
The four most seriously injured people sustained head injuries that needed stitches, one was stabbed, another suffered a broken leg, and the fourth was beaten about the body with a golf club.
“They were out to kill someone,” Anthony Braniff said.
The icing on The Twelfth cake for loyalist bandsmen in Ballycastle, County Antrim, was that they got the chance to beat a Catholic.
A 21-year-old man was knocked to the ground by a bandsman using a flagpole before up to 15 members of the band started kicking as he lay prone.
Apart from being a Catholic, he had committed the heinous ‘crime’ of crossing a road between loyalist bands who were marching in what is a majority nationalist town.
In recent years, the Orange Order, aided by the media have been trying to repackage the Twelfth as (a) a celebration of Orange culture and (b) a family friendly ‘Orangefest’.
Clearly, Orange Order leaders haven’t managed to convince their own followers that the marching season is anything other than open season on ‘Taigs’. Maybe the Orange Order should try harder and speak out louder.