15 February 2001 Edition
SDLP's absurd attack on Sinn Fein
Since the start of this year, loyalists have carried out over 50 pipe bomb attacks on nationalists throughout the Six Counties.
While a number of these attacks have resulted in some physical injury to those targeted, no one has yet been badly injured, but this is only due to luck.
Just two weekends ago, a loyalist gang attacked the home of a nationalist family in the New Lodge area of North Belfast with an incendiary bomb. The explosion and subsequent fire engulfed the house in minutes and were it not for the quick thinking and bravery of neighbours five people might now be dead.
The UDA is clearly behind the attacks and so without a doubt we can say there is no UDA cessation. The UDA intent is to kill and maim Catholics.
More worrying is the fact that the UDA is filling the political vacuum created by the unionist parties. The refusal, on the part of David Trimble in particular, to challenge the `No' unionists of all hues has opened this window of opportunity for the UDA.
It is a very dangerous development, therefore, for two SDLP councillors from Ballynahinch to blame Sinn Féin for pipe bomb attacks on the homes of two Catholic families on Thursday 1 February. Francis Casement and Anne McAleenan were quoted in local papers as saying that Sinn Féin representatives Aiden Carlin and Francie Braniff made inflammatory statements and may have given ideas to the bombers. These remarks attempt to provide some warped justification for the sectarian bombers and fly in the face of the facts. The UDA campaign been ongoing across the North this year, but in Ballynahinch the UDA has been attacking nationalists over the past year as well.
Carlin and Braniff point out that the logic of the SDLP position is to suggest that when their party colleague Danny O'Connor from Larne highlights the plight of those nationalists he represents, then he must in some may be responsible for the campaign being waged against them.
In a week that has seen another ten attacks on nationalist homes, attacks largely downplayed by the media, this attempt by SDLP councillors to score cheap political points against Sinn Féin is dangerous, idiotic, and outrageous.
While a number of these attacks have resulted in some physical injury to those targeted, no one has yet been badly injured, but this is only due to luck.
Just two weekends ago, a loyalist gang attacked the home of a nationalist family in the New Lodge area of North Belfast with an incendiary bomb. The explosion and subsequent fire engulfed the house in minutes and were it not for the quick thinking and bravery of neighbours five people might now be dead.
The UDA is clearly behind the attacks and so without a doubt we can say there is no UDA cessation. The UDA intent is to kill and maim Catholics.
More worrying is the fact that the UDA is filling the political vacuum created by the unionist parties. The refusal, on the part of David Trimble in particular, to challenge the `No' unionists of all hues has opened this window of opportunity for the UDA.
It is a very dangerous development, therefore, for two SDLP councillors from Ballynahinch to blame Sinn Féin for pipe bomb attacks on the homes of two Catholic families on Thursday 1 February. Francis Casement and Anne McAleenan were quoted in local papers as saying that Sinn Féin representatives Aiden Carlin and Francie Braniff made inflammatory statements and may have given ideas to the bombers. These remarks attempt to provide some warped justification for the sectarian bombers and fly in the face of the facts. The UDA campaign been ongoing across the North this year, but in Ballynahinch the UDA has been attacking nationalists over the past year as well.
Carlin and Braniff point out that the logic of the SDLP position is to suggest that when their party colleague Danny O'Connor from Larne highlights the plight of those nationalists he represents, then he must in some may be responsible for the campaign being waged against them.
In a week that has seen another ten attacks on nationalist homes, attacks largely downplayed by the media, this attempt by SDLP councillors to score cheap political points against Sinn Féin is dangerous, idiotic, and outrageous.