10/8/2001 News media contact: Linda Bloom · (646) 369-3759 · New York
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."
David 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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