A Wary Way in the Land of Troubles
Ireland
Jim Doyle / SF Chronicle 22dec96
Belfast, Northern Ireland -- Sheena Campbell was shot to death by a remarkably skilled assassin. She was a 29-year-old political activist, a second-year law student, and the mother of an 11- year-old boy.
The shooting took place shortly after 7 p.m. on Friday, October 16, 1992, in the bar of the former York Hotel on Botanic Avenue -- an upscale and busy area near Queen's University in Belfast.
According to witnesses, she had left the university library with a small group of students. At the pub, she took off her coat and sat with her back to the doorway. Three others were at the table. A man burst through the door with a handkerchief over his face and a semiautomatic pistol in his hand. A split second later, he fired multiple shots into Campbell's upper torso.
She didn't see the gunman. All the wounds were within her heart and lungs. No one else was injured. No one has been charged with her murder.
Slayings like Campbell's haunt anxious Belfast parents, who drum this advice into their children: When you walk into a pub, locate the fire exit first. Never sit with your back to the door.
``You learn survival tactics,'' said Helen Farrimond, a Belfast school teacher and mother of grown children. ``One can become the target of aggression very easily in this country.''
Since 1969, more than 3,400 people have died and 14,000 others have been wounded in the urban guerrilla war's ruthless bombings, assassinations and sectarian violence.
It has been a campaign of terror on both sides: Fervent Republicans want to sever the province's ties to Great Britain, while die-hard Loyalists are determined to keep the six counties of Ulster under British rule. Today, Northern Ireland teeters on the brink of genuine peace vs. another round of bloodshed. A cease- fire in 1994 gave way to violence earlier this year, and peace talks have foundered.
In the United States, people usually only hear about the high-profile cases, like the recent extradition of Belfast fugitive Jimmy Smyth, who hid for eight years as a house painter in San Francisco.
But for tens of thousands of Bay Area residents, the conflict is only a stone's throw away. Their lives are inextricably linked to events in Northern Ireland -- its cycles of violence and its people's hopes for peace.
An estimated 35,000 Irish Americans live in the Bay Area. Most of them are Catholic. Thousands emigrated from Northern Ireland in the 1980s to find jobs and escape the turmoil at home.
The local Irish community has sent clothes, food, and medical supplies to the families of IRA prisoners. Others have donated cash to the IRA -- secretly and illegally. Still others have lobbied the U.S. government to move the British government toward a peaceful reconciliation of the conflict.
Hundreds of these local Irish immigrants have friends and relatives who have been killed, wounded and imprisoned in Northern Ireland.
``If Americans really knew what was going on over there, I think the war would be over,'' said Terri Harte, 35, who grew up in a small village outside Belfast and emigrated to San Francisco in 1982.
Harte has lost two brothers to the conflict. People in the United States, she said, would be outraged by civil rights abuses that make incidents like the beating of Rodney King seem mild.
``I have watched my parents get beaten up with batons in the house,'' she said. ``You think: God, why doesn't the rest of the world know that this is what they put up with on a daily basis?''
In 1921, after centuries of British control over Ireland, the island was partitioned -- the result of a bloody, three-year struggle between Irish rebels and British colonial forces. Britain allowed the formation of an independent Ireland in the south, in exchange for British supervision of Northern Ireland's six counties.
Northern Ireland is only one-fifth the size of the republic, which occupies all but the northeast corner of the island. The British-controlled province is densely populated. Its unemployment rate is the highest in Western Europe. Jobs are so scarce that many people here live on the dole or, like Harte, emigrate.
In the late 1700s, Irish nationalism surfaced in the population, and this fervor soon became identified with the Catholic minority. The lion's share of Protestants, who now command a slim majority of Northern Ireland's population, want to remain part of the United Kingdom.
Today, it is a polarized society -- a place where people cannot help but stand on one side of the divide or the other.
Belfast, home to 350,000 people, boasts a magnificent Opera House and City Hall. It has fine restaurants and museums. Its suburbs are dotted with mansions, ranch houses and golf links.
The capital city of Northern Ireland was a jewel of the Protestant Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th century -- a more liberal and tolerant era. In the 19th century, Northern Ireland's shipyards and linen mills drew many Catholic workers. Today, its ship repair yards and airplane factories are still bustling. And in places like the Mackie linen factory, Protestants and Catholics work side by side.
But it also is a city ruled by suspicion and fear.
Belfast has been scarred by violence for the past century. In recent years, bomb attacks and shootings have touched all parts of Belfast. Many churches, meeting halls, shops and pubs are shielded by steel cages and razor wire.
Sheena Campbell had run for election in 1990 as a Sinn Fein candidate in the Upper Ban district, but finished third. She ran on a peace platform, calling for negotiations to resolve the conflict. Sinn Fein -- which means ``ourselves alone'' in Gaelic -- is a political party with close ties to the Irish Republican Army.
A year later, she designed a winning election strategy for local Sinn Fein candidates. She was appointed to the executive council of Sinn Fein.
``She had never been a member of the IRA. She had always been involved in the political process,'' said her fiance, Brendan Curran, an elected Sinn Fein councillor for the Craigavon district. In 1989, Curran was shot in the shoulder and left for dead by a Loyalist paramilitary group. Twenty-three years ago, he was convicted for his involvement in an IRA bombing. He served eight years in prison.
``She was a very bubbly person -- always smiling, always full of life,'' Curran said.
Two days before her death, she had noticed a ``funny-looking man'' who seemed to be following her at the university. A week earlier, she was stopped and questioned by Loyalist gunmen who took special note of her daily class schedule.
``I have no doubt that it was the British intelligence people in conjunction with the RUC (the local Royal Ulster Constabulary police force) and British Army. And I also have no doubt that the order came from high above,'' Curran said.
Sheena Campbell's son, Caolan Campbell, is now 14. He recalled how ``she held my hand sometimes. I remember laughing and hugging and joking with her. . . . When I wasn't too sure, she'd fill in the confidence.''
In a calm voice, the boy said that he has dealt with his anger and ``accepted'' his mother's death.
``I don't believe in violence,'' he said. ``I don't see it as solving anything. I only see it as a last resort. I just want to get on with enjoying my life as much as my mother did. . . . I wouldn't be involved politically. I wouldn't see myself as suited for that.''
But he has strong nationalistic views. ``The British have nothing to do with Ireland and shouldn't be involved,'' he said. ``They should let the people of Ireland work the thing out themselves.''
So-called ``Peacelines,'' nicknamed ``Bloodlines,'' snake through the city of Belfast. They were erected in 1969, during riots between Catholics and Protestants. Temporary walls of sandbags have been replaced by more than a dozen permanent walls of brick, wrought iron and corrugated steel. Some sections have two parallel walls as tall as 40 feet and a ``demilitarized zone'' between them.
Suspicions are so deep here that some people believe you can actually tell the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant by sizing up the distance between a person's eyes.
On the Protestant side of the Peaceline, a pregnant woman leaned against the front door of a brick townhouse and stared at the massive wall a few yards away. She described how a good friend of hers had been shot dead a week before in what news reports portrayed as a war between rival Loyalist paramilitary groups.
She has been harassed by Catholics on the other side of the wall. ``My cars have been hit, my windows have been smashed. They're always shouting abuse. And I'm six months pregnant,'' she said. ``If that's peace, I don't know what it is.''
She has set her sights on emigrating to England.
Francis Shortt, 27, lives with his mother, Catherine, on the Catholic side. ``Living here is like living in a zoo. You can't call that freedom,'' he said, pointing to a huge fence and wire mesh screen that protects his back porch and second-story windows from the bricks, bottles and clay roof tiles that are thrown over the wall.
In 1988, when he was 19, Shortt made the mistake of walking home from a disco through a Protestant neighborhood. A group of teenagers attacked him. He was in a coma for eight weeks.
Throughout Belfast, no area is truly ``safe'' or neutral. Taxicab companies serve different parts of Belfast. So-called ``black'' taxis dominate the Catholic areas but won't travel to the Protestant side. Other firms serve the Protestant areas. A few companies serve the entire city.
It's a high-tech, Orwellian environment. Belfast has the highest level of surveillance of any city in Western Europe.
Helicopters with powerful lenses hover over neighborhoods where there is suspected terrorist activity. The security forces use the penthouse of Belfast's highest building as an observation tower and listening post.
The British Army has 11 battalions of soldiers in Northern Ireland. British troops traverse Belfast in steel-plated lorries that display a telephone number citizens can call if they see anything suspicious. Nervous young foot soldiers patrol working-class Catholic neighborhoods. In October, an IRA bomb attack at the Lisburn Army Barracks seriously injured 20 soldiers and three civilian workers.
Loyalist paramilitary groups have sworn allegiance to Great Britain and are fighting to protect their Protestant traditions. They specialize in murders of political activists, random drive-by shootings of Catholics and firebombings. Critics compare them to the Ku Klux Klan.
IRA volunteers view themselves as freedom fighters who want to expel the British. Others call them terrorists. The IRA specializes in bombings of government and commercial buildings, as well as shootings of police officers, British soldiers and Protestant vigilantes. In the past two decades, a number of IRA bombs have killed and injured innocent bystanders.
The style of warfare, with its tit- for-tat killings, reminds some of the 1980s crack cocaine wars of Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities.
``It's not Catholics fighting Protestants. It's thugs fighting hoodlums,'' said Jan, a shop owner who lives in the Protestant suburbs.
Still, for many Catholics and Protestants, allegiance to one side or another is a matter of principle -- a part of their heritage. The roots of the conflict go back to the late 1100s, when Henry II sent troops over to subdue the Irish chieftains.
Queen's University professor Charles Hickson grew up in a Protestant area of Belfast, but his heritage is mixed. In the 1920s, Hickson's aunt married an IRA commandant; his father and uncles became Unionists and moved to Northern Ireland.
He's wary of both sides. ``They're all nuts,'' he said. ``As a friend of mine said: `I don't know what they're fighting about. It's not as if they're sitting on an oil well.' ''
At one point, Hickson's sister married a Catholic, so a Loyalist paramilitary group blew up their car. But once the mixed couple made the decision to raise their children as Protestants, the vigilantes invited them back to the community and protected them.
``There is quite a bit of intermarriage, but both sides think of themselves very distinctly,'' Hickson said. ``The culture here has evolved in cancerous ways.''
The afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 23, 1993, a cheerful 7-year-old girl and her parents stopped in a fish market in East Belfast to pick up some crab sticks. Within minutes, they were dead -- blown apart by the IRA's bombing of the shop.
The blast tore through the brick building that housed Frizell's Fish Market on crowded, commercial Shankill Road in a Protestant area, killing a total of nine civilians and injuring more than 50 people.
One of the IRA bombers, a teenager from the Ardoyne neighborhood about a mile away, was killed in the blast. A 21-year-old IRA bomber lost an eye. He was tried and sentenced to nine life terms, but is expected to be granted parole after 14 years or so. The IRA's female getaway driver escaped.
The IRA said the bomb was intended for a meeting of Loyalist paramilitary leaders in an office above the shop.
Among those killed in the attack were Michael Morrison, 27; his common-law wife, Evelyn Baird, 27; and their daughter, Michelle Baird, 7. The couple had two children who survived the blast: Darven, 9, and Lauren, 11 weeks old.
Michael Morrison was a housepainter who was employed by a firm where Protestants and Catholics worked together. He was also an amateur boxer and a flute player. He joined a band called The Shankill Road Defenders, which played melodies and parade marches, and once a year traveled to Scotland to play.
Evelyn Baird was said to be a quiet housewife. When Morrison met her, he went from being the wildest of nine children to the one most committed to family and home.
Their daughter, Michelle, had black hair and brown eyes, and had lost her top front left baby tooth. She loved gymnastics, and a week before she died, she was in a fashion show at school.
Michelle ``was a lovely wee girl. Everywhere her daddy went, she had to go, too,'' said Lilly Morrison, her grandmother. ``If he went to football, she had to go, too. If he went to band (practice), she had to go, too.''
After her death, Michelle's classmates planted a tree in her honor.
``We were never brought up to hate the other side,'' said Dianne Morrison, Michael Morrison's sister. Their late father was a boxing coach who took his sons to matches in Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.
The bombing has left Lilly and Dianne Morrison angry.
``I never hated them until that happened,'' said Dianne Morrison. ``I feel that the IRA gets away with everything here. What angers me is that (Sinn Fein leader) Gerry Adams carried the bomber's coffin, and he couldn't justify what happened on the Shankill. He knew what he was sending those wee boys out to do.
``A lot of money comes from America to the IRA, and without that money, they wouldn't be able to do these things,'' she said. ``And when Gerry Adams goes to America, he's treated like a hero.''
She said that peace will come only if ``both sides are left alone. If money didn't come in from other countries to help the IRA, then we could sort something out,'' she said.
Both mother and daughter think the British troops should remain in Northern Ireland.
``If they weren't here, there would be a civil war,'' Dianne said. ``We would have to win to keep this bit of Ulster as British soil.''
Years of living on a knife's edge have taken a toll on the people of Northern Ireland.
They wear a protective shell -- a psychological mask to keep their distance. Full disclosure is not in vogue. Information can be dangerous. There are limits to what anyone wants to know about a stranger, and vice versa.
Even when chatting in a ``nonpolitical'' bar in Belfast, strangers are wary, the questions careful: ``What neighborhood did you grow up in? Where did you go to school?'' With those answers, a person's religion and allegiances can quickly be determined. Seldom does one ask a person's religion. In the wrong situation, that could be hazardous.
A familiar quip in Northern Ireland: ``Whatever you say, say nothing.''
And yet there may be no other people on earth who talk as much. Night after night at the pub, the sharp-witted people of Belfast spin yarns for each other and roar with laughter.
Black humor is rampant. A typical joke: A Belfast resident driving at night in a rural area is stopped at a roadblock by masked men with guns. They demand to know, ``What are you?'' Not knowing whether the gunmen are Protestants or Catholics, the driver anxiously stammers: ``I'm a Prothelic!''
It's an intense, passionate, hard- drinking lifestyle. Middle-aged men and women on both sides of the conflict -- even those who have lost loved ones -- look back fondly at their younger years. In 1969, after decades of relative tranquility, the latest round of ``troubles'' broke out, and many otherwise law-abiding citizens joined the street fighting.
Six months ago, free-lance journalist Eileen Fleming left her cozy digs in San Francisco and moved to Belfast to cover the ``troubles.''
``The Irish people are the friendliest people in the world, except to each other,'' said Fleming. ``There's not a person I know here who hasn't been touched by extreme violence. . . . I've got friends who've seen their friends blown up right next to them, but they shrug it off.''
Eight years ago, Terri Harte journeyed from San Francisco to her hometown of Loughmacrory in Northern Ireland to get married.
Four days after her arrival, two of her brothers were shot dead -- caught in an ambush set by British troops and a Loyalist paramilitary unit on a country road near the village of Drumnakilly.
Her brothers were IRA foot soldiers. Gerard, 29, was an architect with an infant son. Martin, 21, was a carpenter with an infant son.
``My younger brother Nishie and I had to go into a morgue and identify the bodies. It's a scene I'll never forget,'' Harte said. ``They fired so many shots into Gerard's head that his head was blown off. The priest that went in was just shaken. He said no one deserved to die a death like that. . . . I walked out of the morgue totally numb.''
Harte's brothers were hailed as ``the Drumnakilly martyrs'' and buried in an IRA funeral.
``For at least a year after, I'd be sitting on the Muni and I'd just start crying. Even now, I do it,'' Harte said. ``At holidays, you miss them. You get a family picture taken, and you say, we used to have a family, now we have a partial family.''
Her parents took the death of their boys hard. ``It just killed a part of each of them. It's been eight years, and my father's just talked about it for the first time.''
Harte said that growing up in a war zone has left its mark on her. ``You become more aggressive, and you become more defensive. If you grow up in a country like Ireland, you're always a recovering victim. It never goes away.
``Eight years later, if I hear a fire engine, I freak. Every time I see a coffin, every time I see a tragedy or a funeral, I just break down and don't know why. I never hear a helicopter that I don't think: Brits. . . . If I had to see another death, I don't think I could handle it.''
She won't ever move back to Ireland. ``I want my children to stay alive. Even if there was a united Ireland tomorrow, it would be too late for me.''
Despite the risks, there is no shortage of local heroes in Northern Ireland -- people who have transcended their own adversity and toiled for peace.
Mural artists and poets have tried to foster greater understanding of the ``troubles.'' Social activists have built housing for low-income areas, offered job training programs, established integrated schools, counseled families, lobbied for civil liberties and spoken out against violence.
One example is Deirdre McAliskey, 21, a student leader at Queen's University in Belfast.
She's the daughter of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, a former member of British Parliament and civil rights leader who was one of the strongest voices of her generation in the 1960s and 1970s, and still is. Earlier this month, security forces raided her home and seized her computer.
Like her mother, McAliskey is a political activist and risk-taker. She is not aligned with a political party. ``I am on my own here,'' McAliskey said.
During the past year, she has organized a series of political debates at the university on issues that were never previously aired openly in Northern Ireland. Politicians, students and the media have taken great interest in the forums, which have dealt with such controversial topics as policing, human rights and power-sharing.
These days, she is working toward three main goals: a choice of citizenship; a broad inquiry into human rights violations; and talks about the ``real issues,'' including reforming the police system and the withdrawal of British forces.
In 1981, when Deirdre was 6 years old, her mother and father narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Three armed gunmen from a Loyalist death squad broke down the door with a sledgehammer in rural Tyrone County and fired 12 shots at the couple in front of Deirdre and her brother and sister. Her mother and father each received multiple gunshot wounds.
The event took place even though there were British troops stationed outside their home, ostensibly to protect them.
``Such a horrible thing happened to her parents, and she was there,'' said Mary Denvir, a friend of McAliskey. ``If you've been through that, what do you fear? What could be worse than that? It all fades away.''
Her father has warned McAliskey that her political work is dangerous.
``He's seen the end of the line of what political involvement can mean,'' she said. ``But that shouldn't be `a silencer' for those pursuing civil rights and human rights. If I let go of it, we might as well all go home.''
Fiona O'Hagan lives with her three children -- daughter Nuala, 13, and sons Finbar, 10, and Malachy, 7 -- in a bungalow on a country lane outside a village northwest of Belfast. Her husband, Bernard, is dead
--assassinated at the age of 38.
O'Hagan was born in Belfast. Her family moved to England when she was 5. Her father was a police officer in Birmingham. She later attended teacher training college in England, where she met her future husband in 1976.
Bernard O'Hagan, who grew up in Belfast, was a sociology student with a twinkle in his eye. She recalled the first words out of his mouth: ``Where do you go to cause trouble here?'' Four years later, they were married in a Catholic church.
In 1986, they moved back to Northern Ireland because he longed to make a difference there. He was a college lecturer in computer studies. She taught primary school.
Bernard O'Hagan read Irish history and attended political meetings. In 1989, he was elected as Sinn Fein councillor for the Magherafelt district. People came to him when they had a problem with potholes or running water.
During his run for office, Fiona O'Hagan said, her husband was harassed by the RUC police and Loyalist paramilitary units.
``He was stopped and searched to and from work, and to and from council meetings,'' she said. ``I talked a lot to him about him being a target. I'd tell him, `I'm worried. I don't want to end up a widow.' He sort of dismissed it, because he wasn't the only person it happened to.''
They knew the risk. A Sinn Fein councillor from another district was murdered a year earlier. ``If they pick off people who will publicly stand for Sinn Fein,'' she said, ``then other people won't run for office.''
The O'Hagans had a steel door and steel shutters installed while she was nursing Malachy.
Bernard O'Hagan was shot to death in a college parking lot at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 16, 1991. Eight bullets were fired; he was hit by three, including one fired from a range of 12 inches. A Loyalist paramilitary group claimed responsibility.
A few hundred people escorted the coffin from the hospital to the O'Hagans' home, where a wake was held. The coffin was draped with the tricolor Irish flag and a single red rose.
Finbar, then age 5, asked: ``Does everybody have to die for their country?''
A week after the funeral, Malachy, then 2 years old, re-enacted his father's funeral. He asked his mother to help carry a small metal box from room to room, saying it was his Daddy. He dug an imaginary hole in the house and put the box inside.
Nuala, who was 8, didn't say a word about her father's death and hasn't since. ``If you ask her about it, she just shrugs,'' Fiona O'Hagan said.
O'Hagan has taken down the steel shutters, but still fears for her children's safety.
``Even the day that Bernard was buried in the ground, I said this wasn't the worst that can happen to someone. If would be worse to bury your children,'' she said.
``I don't want my sons going to jail, and I don't want to bury them. . . . I don't worry about Nuala. But the boys have set ideas here. And I'm afraid it won't be sorted out.''
More photographs and information related to this story can be found at: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/special/1996/ireland/photoindex.shtml .
Lilly Morrison, a Protestant, lost her son and 7-year-old granddaughter in an IRA bombing on Shankill Road in 1993, and like her daughter, Dianne, is still angry. ``I never hated them until that happened,'' Dianne said. ``I feel that the IRA gets away with everything here. . . . A lot of money comes from America to the IRA, and without that money, they wouldn't be able to do these things.''
Caolan Campbell reflected on how his mother, a member of Sinn Fein, was shot dead in a Belfast hotel in 1992. ``I don't believe in violence,'' he said, as his stepfather, Brendan Curran, listened. ``I don't see it as solving anything. I only see it as a last resort.'' But the 14-year-old expressed strong nationalistic views: ``The British have nothing to do with Ireland and shouldn't be involved.''
BRITAIN'S GRIM REGIME IN NORTHERN IRELAND
Traditionally, the British have viewed the conflict in Northern Ireland as a case of ``civil disorder.''
``You hear it described as two tribes fighting against each other with the British in the middle,'' said artist Donal Daly. ``I would compare it to the death squads in South America.''
Daly's twin sister was the one who found their mother's body bound to a chair, her hands tied to her feet. She had been shot five times in the head. The killing took place on June 26, 1980. Daly and his sister were 10 years old.
``I was lucky. I didn't see the body. My sister did,'' said Daly, now 26. ``She's very quiet. She never talks about it.''
In the past decade, London-based Amnesty International and the European Court of Human Rights have issued reports and findings on political killings and the denial of basic civil liberties in Northern Ireland. These reports cite numerous cases in which Loyalist paramilitaries killed political activists and elected officials, including instances of alleged collusion between death squads, British troops and RUC police officers.
The reports also document the atrocities committed by the IRA, including bombings that have killed and maimed innocent bystanders and punitive ``kneecappings'' of IRA members.
None of these findings has received much attention from the media, which has been content to report the latest IRA bombing and to discount the conflict as an intractable feud between two clans of religious zealots.
But the reports fuel the Irish nationalist view that Northern Ireland is a totalitarian society: a police state run by the British government. Decisions on important matters rest in a British director who is not elected by local residents and answerable only to Westminster and the British Parliament.
Donal Daly, who refused to give his sister's name, blames their mother's killing on a Loyalist death squad and British soldiers.
Miriam Daly was a lecturer of economics and social history at Queen's University. She was also a political activist, who had tended Republican prisoners at the Maze Prison and briefly headed a socialist party. She traveled to the United States in the late 1970s, where she received a replica of the Liberty Bell from the mayor of Philadelphia.
``It's the people who have the brains who hold the most threat to a totalitarian society,'' her son said. ``The British aren't stupid. They never were. . . . I can see why she was a political target. But they will not honor her by saying we're at war. When they kill us, they say it's justified. But when the British soldier dies, they say it's murder. They say we're criminals and terrorists.''
John Steele, the British government official in charge of law enforcement in Northern Ireland, stressed that the British government is dedicated to ``the rule of law'' -- but acknowledged that some mistakes have been made.
``In any organization, there can be individuals who don't do things in the way that the organization approves of,'' Steele said in an interview in his office suite at Stormont Castle. ``And if that does happen, it's because people have gone out of line.''
But, he added, the Protestant- dominated RUC police force has come a long way toward ending past abuses.
``They're trying to prove themselves a professional police force serving the whole community and not just an anti-terrorist force,'' he said. ``For 25 years, they were operating in a hostile environment, and that does create a certain defensiveness.''
He said that a withdrawal of British forces from Northern Ireland would be tantamount to caving in to terrorist demands and that it ``could potentially destabilize the whole of Ireland.''
``We nearly got something recently: peace,'' Steele said, puffing on a cigar. ``It's a noble effort, and we're struggling for it.''
Daly painted his first mural at the age of 17: a mosaic of IRA volunteers with arms and grenades. He later painted a mural to commemorate his mother's death.
``She had a lot of strength,'' Daly said. ``People held her in high esteem. She was a great one for spiriting people on.''
DIVIDING THE CHILDREN
Northern Ireland is chock-full of children at play -- and of edgy teenage soldiers bristling with machine guns. Sometimes, the real guns get pointed at the kids.
Like children in gang-filled neighborhoods in the United States, these youngsters are caught in a highly segregated society where turf is paramount: a detour through the wrong neighborhood, or even on the wrong side of the street, can be life-threatening. Police intimidate them, and they are occasionally the victims of random shootings and bombings.
The segregation starts early. Catholic and Protestant children attend separate schools in different parts of town. They play on separate sports teams and rarely play together. Only top students go on to attend integrated colleges such as Queen's University, and by that time, their attitudes and prejudices are ingrained.
Lasting change will come, some educators believe, when the system brings Catholic and Protestant children together. But for now, the divisions are firmly in place.
In West Belfast on a recent afternoon, six soldiers on foot patrol -- dressed in camouflage and helmets -- moved cautiously up a narrow street in a Catholic Nationalist neighborhood known to have IRA sympathies. They brushed against the walls of brick townhouses and made sudden turns to protect their flanks.
When one soldier came upon a group of children -- ranging in age from 6 to 8 years old -- playing on the sidewalk, he turned toward them and pointed his gun at their mid-sections for a few seconds. They didn't flinch.
Soon after, another soldier came across two young boys playing on a street corner. He, too, trained his automatic weapon on them as if they posed a threat.
The next morning, a different contingent of soldiers and tanks blocked off the streets near the Social Security Agency office where a bomb had been planted.
Once again, a British soldier aimed his rifle at a mother and her 4-year-old daughter, who were holding hands. He tracked them in his telescopic sight as they slowly rounded a corner on foot.
John Steele, who oversees British and local security forces in the Belfast area, said that every effort is being made to protect the civil liberties of citizens in Northern Ireland -- especially children. In recent years, he said, there have been no instances of young children assisting terrorists by handling weapons or explosives.
``The general policy is that they should be treated as children,'' he said. ``Even if these children are throwing bricks at you, the policy is to treat them as children.''
At St. Louise's secondary school in West Belfast, hundreds of girls queue up for a city bus at the end of a school day. They're dressed in pleated brown skirts with brown- and-yellow ties and mufflers.
These schoolgirls are street smart and wickedly funny. They're full of themselves and filled with hope.
Yet when asked whether they'd like to go to school with Protestants, the 13- and 14-year-old Catholic girls broke out in laughter. One quipped: ``We'd get our heads beat in.'' Another said: ``I don't think it's a good idea. It would be too much hassle.''
Asked whether they socialize with Protestants, they replied: ``No.'' Asked whether they had a strong dislike for Protestants, they said: ``No.''
Charles Hickson, a Queen's University professor, grew up in a Protestant neighborhood and attended Protestant schools.
``The ethnic pulls are strong,'' he said. ``And that's because of the school system.''
The Cranmore Integrated Primary School is a pioneering institution: It celebrates diversity in a place where less than 2 percent of the children attend integrated schools.
The school is housed in a redbrick mansion in one of Belfast's quiet Protestant suburbs. Many of its children are from highly segregated working-class neighborhoods.
``Our aim is to prepare children for a pluralistic society in the 21st century. We look forward, not backward,'' said Helen Farrimond, the school's head teacher. ``The disease of Northern Ireland society is looking backward. We've become strangled by the past.''
The school's sweatshirts carry a bilingual logo in English and Gaelic. The students are told to zip up their jackets so as to hide the logo when they travel to and from school.
The home of one of the school's new families was firebombed because of their decision to send their child to an integrated school. The family subsequently left the community.
``The problem in Northern Ireland is that every statement that you make, every thing that you do, has political implications,'' Farrimond said, ``because religion and politics are inextricably linked. They influence every facet of our lives. So therefore, when one becomes involved in integrated education, those not involved in it assume that that is a vote against the choices they have made.''
Farrimond and other like-minded educators are trying to set up integrated schools throughout the province.
``This is my political stance,'' she said. ``I know that we can make a difference -- not today or tomorrow, but certainly for future generations.''
HOW THE SIDES LINE UP
Pro-British:
Unionists. Those who want Northern Ireland's six counties to remain united with Britain. The Unionist Party is a middle-class, mainstream Protestant party.
Loyalist paramilitary groups. Outlawed groups known for their assassinations and bombings. Their members pledge their loyalty to Britain and fight to preserve Protestant rule of what they call Ulster. There are three main organizations: the UFF, Ulster Freedom Fighters; the UDA, Ulster Defence Association; and the UVF, Ulster Volunteer Force.
UDR. The Ulster Defence Regiment, a part-time security force of Protestant Loyalists recruited by the British Army beginning in 1970 and renamed the Royal Irish Regiment in 1992.
RUC. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, Northern Ireland's local police force. More than 90 percent of its officers are Protestants.
Orangemen. A society established in 1795 to maintain Protestant ascendancy in Northern Ireland. Its members march on July 12 to celebrate England's victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Pro-Independence Nationalists. Those who favor a united Ireland without British interference. Composed mainly of Catholics, but there are also some prominent Protestant nationalists.
Republicans. Militant Irish nationalists. Some support an armed struggle against the British. Others run for political office or advocate peaceful protest and civil disobedience.
IRA. Irish Republican Army. Known for its shootings of British soldiers and RUC officers and its bombings of high-profile targets. The Provisional Irish Republican Army is the predominant IRA faction operating today.
Sinn Fein. A Republican political party, headed by Gerry Adams and closely tied to the IRA. Sinn Fein means ``ourselves alone'' in Gaelic.
SDLP. The Social Democratic and Labor Party, a popular Catholic nationalist party headed by John Hume. Espouses nonviolence.
A HISTORY OF THE TROUBLES
1541 -- Ireland comes under the rule of England's Henry VIII.
1641 -- Catholic uprising in Ulster is suppressed. English general Oliver Cromwell retaliates by taking away the land rights of 44,000 Catholics in Ulster and adjacent counties.
1690 -- William III of England wins the Battle of the Boyne, defeating the Catholic James II. Protestants take over the Irish Parliament.
1722 -- Author and pamphleteer Jonathan Swift urges fellow countrymen to boycott English goods and burn ``every Thing that came from England, except their People and their Coals.''
1791 -- The United Irishmen Society is formed. Encouraged by the French Revolution, many Catholics and Protestants take up the cause of Irish nationalism during the next decade.
1795 -- Loyal Orange Institution established to proclaim Protestant ascendancy.
1800 -- The Parliament in Westminster passes an Act of Union formally binding Ireland with England and abolishing the Irish Parliament.
1829 -- Daniel O'Connell, an Irish Catholic, takes a seat in British Parliament and begins working for repeal of the union. Nationalistic sentiments become identified mainly with Catholics.
1916 -- Easter Rising uprising occurs, provoked by Irish impatience with lack of home rule. Guerrilla warfare led by Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, a member of Sinn Fein.
1921 -- Britain agrees to partition Ireland. Collins and Irish statesman Arthur Griffith set up Irish Free State (the Republic of Ireland). Several northern counties of Ireland go to Britain.
1922 -- Irish Republican Army refuses to accept a separate Northern Ireland under British rule. Michael Collins is assassinated.
1969 -- Fueled by long-simmering animosity between Catholics and Protestants, the current ``troubles'' begin. Loyalist attacks on Catholic areas set off rioting in Belfast. Eight people die. British troops sent in. Provisional Irish Republican Army begins a 25-year sniping and bombing campaign against British troops, the RUC police and high- profile targets.
1972 -- Bloody Sunday massacre on January 30. British troops fire on civil rights march in the city of Derry. Thirteen people are shot dead. The British embassy in Dublin is burned down.
1979 -- Lord Louis Mountbatten, his 14-year-old grandson, 82-year- old Lady Bradbourne and a teenage boat helper are killed in the IRA bombing of the fishing boat ``Shadow Five,'' off the coast of Sligo, Ireland.
1981 -- Hunger strike at the Maze Prison, near Belfast. Ten prisoners who protest British policies die, including Bobby Sands, an elected member of the British Parliament.
1983 -- IRA bombing at Harrods department store in London. Six people killed; 90 injured.
1984 -- IRA bomb attack on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at hotel in Brighton, England. Thatcher escapes, but five people are killed.
April 1993 -- IRA bomb in the City, London's financial district, kills a photographer and injures 44 people.
October 1993 -- Eleven people die in IRA bombing of fish market on Shankill Road in Belfast.
September 1994 -- IRA calls cease-fire. A few weeks later, Loyalists call cease-fire. Over the next two years, preliminary peace talks stall, as IRA refuses to renounce use of violence and to lay down its arms; Britain refuses to hold ``all-party'' talks that include the IRA.
February 1996 -- IRA breaks cease-fire with bomb attack on London's Canary Wharf.
October 1996 -- Twenty-three soldiers and civilians injured in IRA bombing of Lisburn Army Barracks outside Belfast.
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