TUV Platform piece from todays News Letter: Beneath this week of choreographed charm offensive towards the Muslim community lies, in key quarters, rank hypocrisy. Sinn Fein has been loudest in its effusive talk of brotherhood and denunciation of hate crimes. Yet, as I pointed out to Jennifer McCann in the Assembly she personifies hate crime, having shot a police officer - something for which she, though a government minister in an office which holds responsibility for victims’ issues, is wholly unrepentant. Likewise her IRA showed what it thought of foreigners working in Northern Ireland and in the Republic when they murdered Indian born businessman Jeffrey Agate in Londonderry in 1977 and kidnapped German industrialist Thomas Niedermeyer in 1973. Again, crimes for which they are unrepentant. Indeed their entire murder spree, in the name of Brits Out, was ethnic in motivation. But, in the same week as we saw this outpouring of tolerance towards ethnic minorities, we witnessed the same age old bigotry against a handful of Orangemen merely wanting to return to their hall in North Belfast. And, who are the cheer leaders in denying these Protestants basic tolerance and accommodation, the same Sinn Fein hypocrites! The Parades Commission claims that it wants the Loyal Orders to talk to residents who object to parades. Yet when it comes to the parade by the Ligoniel Lodges one of the core issues is that they don’t pass Nationalist homes! The contentious part of the route is past shop fronts, not houses. Even so, the Orange Order has spoken to those who live near the route of the parade but the core issue seems to be that any parade will always be unacceptable. On Wednesday, for example, Gerry Kelly was asked to spell out what the Order would have to do to accommodate Nationalists. Tellingly he failed to give an answer. While Republicans are eager to show us all how welcoming they are to Muslims; tellingly they have no interest in accommodating their Protestant neighbors. In fact, they are engaged in a culture war against all expressions of Unionist identity in Northern Ireland. That’s why the flag had to go from City Hall and it is why parades in North Belfast, and indeed across Northern Ireland, are the subject of Republican agitation. So, whoever else might be taken in by Sinn Feins posturing, TUV is not. Hate crime is wrong whether Muslims, ethnic minorities, Roman Catholics, or Orangeman and Protestants are the target. Sadly, for some, it seems trampling the rights of Protestants is still ok.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 10:08:24 +0000
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