LONDON – Dozens of police officers have been injured in more than a week of riots in Northern Ireland, where anger over the effects of Brexit in the UK region intersects with crime and the impact of the Covid pandemic -19.
The disorder highlights the lingering challenges surrounding the UK’s split with the European Union for British and EU leaders, who are eager to prevent the delicate arrangements for trade management between the bloc and its bloc. former member state breaking a hard-to-achieve peace in northern ireland that ended decades of violence.
On Thursday, the White House expressed concern about the violence. Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration joined British, Irish and Northern Irish leaders in their calls for calm and reaffirmed US support for “a safe and prosperous Northern Ireland in which all communities have a voice and enjoy the gains of peace gains. “
A poster on 12 February in Larne (Northern Ireland) highlighted opposition to some aspects of the Brexit protocol.
Photo:
clodagh kilcoyne / Reuters
Northern Irish politicians and analysts say night riots in predominantly Protestant areas reflect resentment among pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland over what they perceive as a series of concessions to Irish nationalists, who want the region to move away from the United Kingdom and join the Republic of Ireland.
Highlights include Brexit-related trade agreements, which are concerned unionists are weakening bonds between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, while strengthening the region’s ties with Ireland and the EU.
Also at stake are complaints surrounding surveillance of Covid-19 restrictions, as well as the more turbulent world of Northern Irish crime, which British security services say is dominated by gangs linked to former paramilitary groups. .
“What we saw last night … was a very dangerous escalation of events,” Michelle O’Neill, deputy leader of Sinn Féin, the largest Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland, said on Thursday during a emergency meeting of legislators in the region.
Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the largest unionist group in Northern Ireland, said: “There can be no place in our society for violence or the threat of violence and we must ‘stop”.
Police received a Molotov cocktail, masonry, bottles and fireworks during the riots Wednesday night in west Belfast, the Northern Ireland Police Service reported on Thursday. More than 600 people were present during sustained attacks on officers, police said. A bus was hijacked and set on fire. Police said school-age children took part in the riots, which turned into clashes between groups in Protestant and Catholic districts.
Wednesday’s unrest in Belfast followed days of similar unrest in western and eastern Northern Ireland. Fifty-five police officers have been injured in an attempt to quell last week’s riots, police said.
Aftermath: A bus burned west of Belfast, Northern Ireland, after another night of street riots.
Photo:
Peter Morrison / Associated Press
Some Belfast lawmakers blamed the violence of criminal gangs related to anti-Irish terror suits angry at police progress in disrupting drug trafficking networks. They accuse the gloomy leaders of encouraging blocky-tired teenagers to take to the streets. Some also highlighted unionist resentment over the late March police decision not to prosecute anyone for breaching public health rules for attending a funeral last year for a former member of the Irish Republican Army, Bobby Storey.
Others pointed to Brexit. The UK left the EU in late 2020 after four years arguing over trade and other aspects of its future relationship with its neighbor.
Northern Ireland was one of the most thorny issues in the negotiations. The region is part of the United Kingdom, but shares a 310-mile land border with Ireland, an EU member state. Leaders in London, Dublin and Brussels were concerned that erecting customs posts and other border infrastructure along the border for police trade after Brexit would threaten peace by upsetting Irish nationalists.
Instead, they agreed on a protocol that would avoid the need for a land border by forcing Northern Ireland to follow some EU rules and to conduct inspections of goods entering the region from the rest of the UK to ensure that comply with EU standards.
That plan infuriated the unionists. The Democratic Unionist Party had torpedoed former Prime Minister Theresa May to help current incumbent Boris Johnson gain power, understanding she would never agree to the proposal.
The DUP and other unionist groups in Northern Ireland have since pushed for the protocol to be removed or replaced, saying it is damaging Northern Ireland’s economy and undermining Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.
Riot police were on the streets of Belfast on Wednesday night.
Photo:
jason cairnduff / Reuters
“There is no doubt that there is anger throughout the unionist community over the protocol,” said Graham Walker, a policy professor at Queen’s University Belfast. He said the short-term concern was that the unrest would spread and attract dissatisfied nationalist youth.
It is unclear how tensions around the protocol can be resolved. The UK and the EU have faced its implementation during the diplomatic skirmishes over vaccines and London’s unilateral decision to give companies operating in Northern Ireland more time to meet their requirements.
—Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this article
Write to Jason Douglas to [email protected]
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