- Title: UNITED KINGDOM: LOYALIST LONG MARCH FOR PEACE REACHES LISBURN
- Date: 1st July 1999
- Summary: LISBURN (JULY 1, 1999) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. LAS MARCH BY MEMBERS OF THE ORANGE ORDER 0.06 2. MV/CU FLAGS AND BANNERS OF ORANGE ORDER (2 SHOTS) 0.12 3. SV/SCU ORANGE ORDER BAND MEMBERS (2 SHOTS) 0.19 4. VARIOUS BANNER OF CIVIL RIGHTS VICTIMS GROUP, GROUP WALKING THROUGH TOWN, BYSTANDERS APPLAUDING (6 SHOTS) 0.49 5. VARIOUS
- Embargoed: 16th July 1999 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LISBURN, NORTHERN IRELAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- City:
- Country: United Kingdom Northern Ireland
- Reuters ID: LVA9VV7FPWPSQ7LKZD0TMUST22WP
- Story Text: As efforts continue in Belfast to resolve the deadlock
in the peace process, a 10-day march by relatives of IRA
victims is drawing strong crowds in the Loyalist Protestant
heartlands where resistance to the Good Friday agreement is
strongest.
July is Northern Ireland is the marching season, when
members of the province's Protestant majority community parade
in traditional costumes, playing flutes and drums, to
commemmorate past events...this annual parade in Lurgan marks
the anniversary of the First World War Battle of the Somme.
But Thursday's (July 1) march was boosted by the arrival
in Lisburn of the 100-strong Long March for Civil Rights.
The march, which set out from Londonderry a week ago, is
intended to highlight what organisers say is the forgotten
victims of violence.
Although the organisers insist it is a civil rights march,
not an Orange march, its timing and its emphasis on victims of
Republican violence alone reflect a political point being made
by the march.
As the long marchers arrived in Lisburn town centre,
thousands lined the streets to cheeer them on.Local supporter
Janet Hunter, who took part in the first stage of the walk,
said relatives had been ignored too long.
Long march leader Michelle Williamson, whose parents were
killed by an IRA bomb in Belfast's Shankhill Road in 1993,
said the families of victims of terrorism found it hard to
accept that those responsible were being freed early under
the Good Friday agreement.
Also present was local MP Jeffrey Donaldson, a hardline
member of David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party, who returned
to Trimble's negotiating team after walking out in opposition
to last year's deal.He said the message from people on the
streets to him was clear, that Sinn Fein should not be allowed
into government as long as the IRA retained its arms.
The march, in an overwhelmingly Protestant town, was peaceful,
but police have rerouted Friday's section through the
mixed town of Lurgan, and its final destination on Sunday is
Drumcree, expected to be the scene of fresh tension after the
Orange Order was banned from marching through a Catholic area
of nearby Portadown.
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