Protestants began Northern Ireland's most divisive annual commemoration yesterday with towering bonfires, sporadic acts of violence and menacing appearances by masked gunmen.
The British territory was braced for daylong parades by tens of thousands of Northern Ireland members of the Orange Order, the major British Protestant group.
The ``Twelfth,'' an official holiday in Northern Ireland marked each July 12, officially commemorates the 1690 Battle of the Boyne. On that day the forces of the newly crowned Protestant king of England, William of Orange, defeated an army loyal to James II, Will-iam's deposed Catholic rival.
But the parades amount to a show of communal strength by Northern Ireland's Protestant majority, featuring conservatively dressed men in suits and bowler hats as well as groups of teenagers and young men playing fife and drum in ``kick the pope'' bands.
The Twelfth this year got off to its traditional start with hundreds of towering bonfires constructed of pallets, old furniture, scrap wood and tires lit at midnight.
In Belfast, heavy-drinking crowds cheered as bonfires deco-rated with hate symbols -- chiefly Irish flags and election posters for Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked political party -- burned to the ground.
Beside at least two Belfast bonfires, masked gunmen from outlawed anti-Catholic paramilitary groups fired handguns and submachine guns into the air.
Representatives from two rival gangs, the Ulster Defense Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force, read out statements vowing to defend Protestant areas from any IRA attacks -- a sign that although all three groups are supposed to be observing ceasefires, they remain armed and organized in defiance of the 1998 peace accord.
"We are better prepared now than at any time in the past," declared one masked UDA man, to the cheers of the crowd. "It's still no surrender to the enemies of Ulster, no matter where they may be."
Police reported trouble in a half-dozen areas across the territory, with no serious injuries reported.
One man was arrested for throwing gasoline bombs at police armored vehicles in north Belfast. In Kilrea, 50km to the northwest, police fired warning shots in the air to drive back two rival gangs fighting in the town's main square. In Limavady, 100km northwest, police repeatedly suffered barrages of bottles, rocks and bricks as they tried to clear away the remains of a bonfire lit in the middle of a street.
The British governor, Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy, appealed to Orange Order leaders to ensure that their members and supporting bands don't violate a range of restrictions on where they are allowed to march.
All sides have warned of possible street clashes after the main parade through Belfast, when individual lodges of Orangemen walk back to their local lodges -- in several cases past Catholic districts. Orangemen have threatened to mount evening protests over the barring of bands and supporters from one parade past Ardoyne, a Catholic enclave in north Belfast.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS