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8 June 2004

Church of Ireland bishop warns of new danger from paramilitaries

Cedric Pulford
London (ENI). Paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland are destroying the communities that they had purportedly been founded to protect as they turn to crime, Anglican Church of Ireland Bishop Alan Harper warned on Tuesday.

"The truth is that communities are being destroyed by the very organizations that arose to be their protectors," said the Rev. Harper, whose Connor diocese incorporates some of the worst affected former conflict areas of North Belfast. "Paramilitaries consume and destroy their host community."

Harper used his presidential address to the diocesan synod to speak out against the activities of the paramilitaries in areas like Shankill Road, Crumlin Road and Ardoyne, frontline areas in the days of violent conflict between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

Separately in Belfast on the same day, members of the Free Presbyterian church protested outside the Presbyterian General Assembly at what they see as an increasing ecumenical stance being taken by some in the Presbyterian Church and they were also unhappy at the presence of Roman Catholic Archbishop Sean Brady there, Ulster Television reported.

Although Harper focused his attack on loyalists (who want Northern Ireland to remain as part of the United Kingdom), Catholic as well as Protestant paramilitaries are strong forces in many blue collar districts in Northern Ireland, and taking an increasingly criminal rather than political role.

Harper appealed to paramilitaries to put aside "the trappings and the ethics of the gun and the baseball bat" and to cooperate with the churches, which were also rooted in the local community. "We are bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh," he said.

Last month loyalist (Protestant) paramilitaries in Northern Ireland were urged to disarm and disband by Anglican Archbishop Robin Eames of Armagh, in a speech echoing a similar plea made a week earlier in London by his Catholic opposite number, Archbishop Brady, and aimed at the (Catholic) Irish Republican Army.

"Paramilitaries are now experienced as criminal associations whose structures are tolerated and sustained through fear and the exploitation of a residual community solidarity," said Harper. "There are high levels of criminality, intimidation and racketeering, much of it perpetrated or licensed by paramilitary groups. There are high levels of substance abuse, including alcohol, illegal substances and prescription drugs, the trade in which is seen to be under paramilitary control."

Of the total population of some 1.7 million in Northern Ireland, 40 per cent are Catholics and 21 per cent Presbyterians while 15 per cent belong to the Church of Ireland, according to 2001 census figures.

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