29 April 1999 Edition
Garvaghy - Supremacists will not win
Just over a year ago, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams asked a simple question. Speaking at the party's Ard Fheis, he asked rhetorically if the Good Friday Agreement created a level playing field. He said it ``clearly did not''.
What we did have, said Adams, was ``a very visible playing field, with the equality issue up in lights, the clear prospect of change if we have the strength and commitment to hold people to positions outlined and no hiding place for supremacists''.
This week, the nationalist community of the Garvaghy Road in Portadown endure their 300th day of Orange siege. They have been deliberately ghettoised in their estates, intimidated, victimised and beaten. Rosemary Nelson, the legal representative of a huge number of Garvaghy Road residents, was brutally murdered.
The supremacists have been allowed to maintain their siege by the British government and by the RUC. The Dublin government, a co-guarantor of the Agreement, has been unable or perhaps unwilling to exert real influence. Across the Six Counties, attacks by loyalists on nationalists have gone unchecked and nationalist communities could be easily forgiven for thinking that nothing has really changed. The different parties to the agreement have clearly not been held to the positions and the commitments they made over a year ago.
The unionists and the British government have squandered the last year. During that year, nationalists have been the victims and have carried the costs for the failures of others. The Orange supremacists must be challenged and defeated not just by republicans but by the two governments. Anything less is a clear statement that the Good Friday Agreement is meaningless.
What we did have, said Adams, was ``a very visible playing field, with the equality issue up in lights, the clear prospect of change if we have the strength and commitment to hold people to positions outlined and no hiding place for supremacists''.
This week, the nationalist community of the Garvaghy Road in Portadown endure their 300th day of Orange siege. They have been deliberately ghettoised in their estates, intimidated, victimised and beaten. Rosemary Nelson, the legal representative of a huge number of Garvaghy Road residents, was brutally murdered.
The supremacists have been allowed to maintain their siege by the British government and by the RUC. The Dublin government, a co-guarantor of the Agreement, has been unable or perhaps unwilling to exert real influence. Across the Six Counties, attacks by loyalists on nationalists have gone unchecked and nationalist communities could be easily forgiven for thinking that nothing has really changed. The different parties to the agreement have clearly not been held to the positions and the commitments they made over a year ago.
The unionists and the British government have squandered the last year. During that year, nationalists have been the victims and have carried the costs for the failures of others. The Orange supremacists must be challenged and defeated not just by republicans but by the two governments. Anything less is a clear statement that the Good Friday Agreement is meaningless.