Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Old tensions revive in Northern Ireland

Old tensions revive in Northern Ireland
A brutal killing blamed on the IRA is a reminder of the British province's
legacy of paramilitary violence.
By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 12, 2007
CULLYHANNA, NORTHERN IRELAND — The boys of South Armagh -- real men, "hard
men," they call them -- never were ones to bow to anybody.
The British army for 30 years was mostly unable to drive in and out of its
command here in the rolling green heartland of the Irish Republican Army.
Roadside bombs and IRA snipers forced the soldiers into helicopters. And
when they pulled out for the last time in August, they got a proper
send-off. "The fools realize they will never break the spirit of
republicanism," said a sign wielded by the crowd assembled to say a
resentful goodbye.
Now, this militant rural county on the dividing line between Northern
Ireland and the independent Republic of Ireland is officially at peace.
The IRA handed in its weapons, and the leaders of a new joint government
between pro-British unionists and the IRA's political ally, Sinn Fein, met
with President Bush at the White House for the first time Friday in an
effort to attract new investment into a newly peaceful Northern Ireland.
Maybe nobody told the South Armagh boys the war was over. The killing in
October of Paul Quinn, a 21-year-old truck driver who grew up in this
sleepy emerald village -- a slaying so brutal that lots of people start
crying just describing what happened -- has rocked the new power-sharing
government in Belfast and offered a stark reminder, if any were needed,
that Northern Ireland's legacy of paramilitary violence remains alive and
well in these long-turbulent borderlands.
Sinn Fein leaders have attributed Quinn's slaying to the shady workings of
criminal gangs that still hold sway in this region long known as "bandit
country." But Quinn's family and friends say he was beaten to death by men
with links to the IRA, raising incendiary questions about the
once-militant organization's ability to control its rank and file as it
disarms and joins the new government.
The fact that anyone was willing to call in the police and publicly point
the finger at the IRA at all signals a remarkable transformation in a
region that for decades has regarded the group as a national army, its
gunmen as heroes and the police as dangerous British stooges.
Hundreds of residents have turned out at meetings over the last few weeks,
demanding that the Sinn Fein leadership ferret out those they say are
responsible for the crime.
"IRA are murderin scum" were the words painted, incredibly, on a wall in
the center of town after Quinn's funeral, attended by hundreds. 
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has deplored the killing, insisted that no
republicans were involved and urged full cooperation with the police, a
course that has mollified unionist leaders in the power-sharing government
and averted a collapse of the peace.
But many in the party's stronghold here are demanding that the leadership
go further and rein in the lawlessness and violence that are a legacy of
its "freedom fighters" and the younger generation growing up in their
wake. 
Sinn Fein leaders suggest it's more likely Quinn ran afoul of diesel fuel
smugglers than the IRA, because he often drove trucks that may have
carried illegal fuel. "There is no republican involvement whatsoever in
this man's murder, and all of us should be careful that we don't end up
playing politics with what is a dreadful, criminal action," Adams said not
long after Quinn's death.
But the young man's family has rejected that theory. "The boy didn't have
tuppence to put together," said his father, Stephen Quinn. He believes his
son was punished on the orders of local IRA commanders for getting into
fights with the sons of at least two powerful IRA members -- and
threatening a system of paramilitary law and order that for years most
people in South Armagh preferred to the police.
Now, though, the Police Service of Northern Ireland patrols the streets of
South Armagh, albeit in heavily armored vehicles.
"They were losing control. It used to be if somebody from the IRA said
something up there, that was it, it was done. They were losing that grip,
and they had to get that grip back, and the only way to get that grip back
was to make an example out of Paul Quinn," said William Frazer, who has
long been an advocate for Protestant victims of IRA violence in South
Armagh.
"It backfired, though, because a lot of people were disgusted with the
severity of the beating," he said. "If they'd have shot him, they probably
would have gotten away with it. It was the fact they gave this boy who was
an up-and-coming republican such a bad death."
Quinn was a lively and good-natured young man who wasn't averse to raising
a little hell and letting fly with his fists if someone threatened him or
his family.
After his violent altercations over the last few months, Quinn had
received two warnings to leave the area.
He ignored them at first. Then, beginning to get worried, he moved back in
with his parents in Cullyhanna.
"He wasn't afraid of them. He was really afraid of nobody," Stephen Quinn,
58, said of his son as he sat in the family's tidy living room, a portrait
of the Virgin Mary hung prominently on the wall. "He wouldn't bow down to
them."
Late one afternoon in October, the younger Quinn got a call from a friend,
apparently asking him to help clean out a cowshed just across the border,
in Ireland's County Monaghan, perhaps three miles away.
Quinn picked up another friend and headed over. They had barely gotten out
of the car when the friend spotted a masked man coming out of the large,
empty shed. "Run!" he screamed at Quinn. Too late. About 10 men in masks,
some of them also wearing plastic coveralls and rubber gloves, pulled
Quinn into the shed. The friend was taken aside and tied up with two
others who had been beaten, bound and forced to phone Quinn to lure him to
the remote farm. Inside the shed, the men proceeded to beat Quinn with
iron bars and baseball bats studded with nails.
"It's still hard to think about how he was killed. Every single bone in
his body was smashed, from his toes to his head," said Jim McAllister, a
former Sinn Fein councilman from Cullyhanna who has organized a support
group to demand accountability for Quinn's death.
"It went on for half an hour. He was pleading for his life. He was calling
for his mother, toward the end. But no response, nobody to answer. He went
silent, and the boys say they still kept beating him," McAllister said.
For many in South Armagh, something changed then. Sure, there had been
beatings before, but not like this, not so awful.
"The community is basically incensed by the way they killed him. It was so
brutal that they actually killed one of their own the way they did,"
Frazer said.
Even if it wasn't the IRA, many people are saying now, why is there such a
culture of violence that young people grow up expecting beatings? Why is a
young man beaten to death in broad daylight and no one is willing to come
forward or testify?
"It changed a lot of things," Frazer said. "You may not believe this, but
we have people coming to us giving us information on the murder who before
would never have spoken to us. There's always been this tradition up
there: You see nothing, hear nothing, tell nothing. But republicans are .
 . starting to say, 'We're not going to live like this now.' " 
The police investigation will get nowhere until Sinn Fein forces witnesses
to come forward and expose the killers, many say now.
"The only organized groups in South Armagh who were capable of
commissioning and carrying out a murder like this was the IRA, and I think
everyone knows that," Dominic Bradley, a member of the Legislative
Assembly from the Social Democratic and Labor Party, the other major
nationalist party, said in an interview.
"They may have decommissioned most of their weapons, but they haven't
decommissioned their structures," Bradley said. "Sinn Fein have got to
stop covering up. They have to face the fact that the IRA was involved in
this murder."
Conor Murphy, a Sinn Fein minister in the government and a member of the
Legislative Assembly from South Armagh, said Quinn's slaying was
unconnected to the IRA but was being used by those unhappy with Sinn
Fein's agreement to enter the government to discredit the party and
undermine the peace.
"To say that there was 'republican involvement' -- well, practically every
family in South Armagh is an associate of a current or former member of
the IRA. It's a net of about 10,000 people," he said. "Let the criminal
inquiry take its course. There will be and should be no hiding place for
those responsible."
Community leaders say that only by breaking the region's traditional code
of omerta will any arrests ever be made.
"I frankly don't expect anyone to be brought before the legal processes in
this case," said Danny Kennedy, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist
Party. "I think that justice will be administered at some stage, South
Armagh-style. And what that means is the local community will deal with
it. They will either exclude those responsible, they will banish them from
the local area, or they will take steps against them that could have a
physical manifestation."
The difference now, McAllister said, is that people are no longer willing
to accept "justice beatings" as normal. More than 200 people turned up at
a community meeting late last month called by the Quinn Support Group, he
said, and all of them made it clear they are not prepared to go back to
the way things were. 
"One person said, 'We've had 30 years of bombs and bullets, but we never
had to be afraid of our neighbors,' " McAllister said. "This has given
people courage to stand up and say, 'All right, we're not going to bow
down anymore either.' " 
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times 
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 LOL, l'idiota ha letto solo il titolo e poi postato
Tristezza.
Tb
-- 
Libertą per i comunisti siriani in carcere: Fateh Jamus, 'Isam Dimashqi,
Basel Hurani, 'Abd al-Halim Rumieh, Ratib Sha'bu, and Doha 'Ashur
al-'Askari 
http://snipurl.com/1oqtm

 inutile e mi fa perdere tempo anche solo lo skipparlo.
A volte mi fa compassione. Poche volte a dire il vero..
-- 
"Il Basileus che siede a Costantinopoli vince sempre".
Giovanni Cecaumeno. 

 Tristezza.
No, non mi suscita tristezza: giovanni mi intristice, ma sergio no. Uno che 
ha lappato le chiappe a gente come Naccarella è al di là della tristezza.


 ha lappato le chiappe a gente come Naccarella è al di là della tristezza.
Mi fa tristezza che esista gente del genere.
Penso a sua madre, che aveva in culla il piccolo somaro e non sapeva cosa 
sarebbe diventato.
Povera donna. Mi viene il groppo.
Tb
-- 
Libertà per i comunisti siriani in carcere: Fateh Jamus, 'Isam Dimashqi,


Mi viene il groppo.
Per lei sì poveraccia.


 Per lei sì poveraccia.
Magari pensa che quell'alito tremendo sia la cattiva digestione, e si affanna a 
cucinargli cose più leggere... e le chiazze sul colletto... gliele gratta con la 
spazzola e si chiede cosa sono...
Povera. La abbraccerei.


 Povera. La abbraccerei.
Eh, povera donna.
