Walls and barbed wire” “

Attacks on schools: that’s the latest expression of violence in the Northern Ireland conflict. After the Holy Cross primary school in Belfast attracted the violent protests of Protestant inhabitants of the area last summer, now it’s the turn of other Catholic schools, St. Bride’s in Belfast and St. Patrick’s in Lisburne, to be targeted by the more extreme fringes of the Protestant population, with petrol bomb attacks. The schools remain open, but pupils and teachers arrive in class terrorized. “Students and workers the victims of hatred”. “These threats against teachers are repugnant”, says Father John McManus, spokesman of the diocese of Down and Connor in which the schools are situated. “It’s sad to think that they have now become legitimate objectives of sectarian groups. In our schools, in all these years, we have taught the good news of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness of Christianity, and our pupils have been encouraged to understand those who belong to different religions and to treat them with tolerance”. On the contrary, “those responsible for these attacks are motivated by pure hatred”, concludes Father McManus. A blind violence, heedless of the most elementary human rights, is gripping Belfast at the present time, said the bishop of Down and Connor, Msgr. Patrick Walsh, at the funeral of Danny McColgan, the twenty-year-old Catholic postman massacred by terrorists. “Daniel’s murder”, explained Msgr. Walsh, “violated three fundamental rights: first, that of work, this worker was killed by terrorists who by their gesture said: ‘you don’t have any right to work as a postman, because you’re Catholic’. Second, the right to practice one’s own religion: Daniel was killed because he was a Catholic. Third, the right to life, the most fundamental right of all, the rock on which all civilization is built”. The murder of Daniel McColgan aroused the reaction of many labour organizations. A strike was organized for the 18 January by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and many workers observed two minutes’ silence at midday on Tuesday, 15 January in memory of McColgan and all the other workers killed ever since the Northern Ireland conflict re-exploded in the Sixties. A division rooted in the poorer districts. According to a study conducted at the University of Ulster by the geographer Peter Shirlow, the state of segregation between the Catholic and Protestant communities has actually worsened since the Good Friday agreement, in spite of the fact that more than one “cease-fire” has been signed since 1994. Although sectarian violence is by now rare in many towns and villages in Northern Ireland, as in the more affluent areas of the various cities in the province, walls and barbed wire are still needed in the poorest areas of Belfast to protect the two communities from reciprocal attacks. During the marching season, last summer, the violence degenerated, after the Parades Commission, the commission that decides on the routes that the various Protestant and Catholic parades can take, prevented the Orangemen from traversing Catholic areas, as had happened for centuries. The siege mentality of the Protestants is growing, in Shirlow’s view, because they are losing some of their political privileges. The recent attacks, in North and West Belfast, are the reaction of the more extremist groups to the progress of the peace process.