Leave Catholics Alone

When I read the article “Sectarian Attacks Called Ethnic Cleansing” in the Irish Voice last week about the attacks on Catholics worsening, I almost dropped my morning coffee.

I thought that after the IRA agreed to “disarm” that attacks from both sides would have dropped significantly. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

In the article, it stated that Catholics who have lived in Ahoghill for the past 50 years are being terrorized by Loyalists. It made me wonder if the North even wants a peace if this is the way they act to the disarming of the IRA.

For a second I thought that maybe the North believes that now that the IRA has disarmed, they will have an easier time picking on defenseless Catholics. They seem to enjoy doing it now.

It just made me plain sick to see people, not people who live in Israel or the Gaza Strip, or people who live in an oppressive nation (I’m starting to reconsider that), but just peace-loving Catholics who live in Northern Ireland be harassed like this.

The story of the poor woman and her child who were almost burned alive was not only a sick and cruel act of violence, but an unforgivable one as well. This not only gives Loyalists a bad name (as if they didn’t already have one), but any Protestant living in Ahoghill.

And as for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), they have done better jobs of securing things when the IRA was bombing them rather than when they’re not. They gave citizens living in Ahoghill fire-resistant blankets and smoke alarms, as if that would stop a bomb from going off. Clearly, the PSNI cares very little for the Catholic’s living in Ahoghill, or rather yet, all of Northern Ireland.

I wonder what would happen if the Dublin police force let Protestants be firebombed and attacked. Do you think that would make headlines?

The answer is yes. Ireland would be exposed for its cruel treatment of Protestants.

Yet when Northern Ireland allows their citizens to be harassed, it sadly only makes a story in the Irish Voice where it should be on a major news station. Just think about the bias in these countries.

Brendan Muckian-Bates
Valencia, Pennsylvania

Spain’s a Pain Again

I Would like to comment on John Spain’s latest rant against Irish Republicans in last week’s issue.

If Spain had his way all Irish Republicans would be sent to Colombia and its deplorable human rights record of any country in that region, a fact acknowledged by many human rights groups and Democratic governments.

Even Spain himself admits they are corrupt with drug dealers and right-wing death squads, but send the Colombia Three back anyway just to please Peter Robinson and company — his Loyalist community, by the way, is riddled with the same problem of drugs, death squads, etc.

It is all right from a safe distance of Dublin 4 to say these things. Did one of Enda Kenny’s followers not get roughed up by the Colombian authorities just after the three Irish Republicans were arrested in 2001?

What did Spain have to say about that? Silence. But if it’s Irish Republicans who are be terrorized then its all right.

I would like to remind Spain that Irish Republican blood was spilled so people like him could live in his “free state.” He should spare his venom and go and live in Lisburn, Ahoghill or Ballymena for a while and feel what ordinary Nationalists have to endure every day from the same type of thugs that he wants to send our fellow Irishmen back to.

Brendan Soraghan
Danbury, Connecticut

Curb Immigration

Much comment is made by many of religious and political leaders about the prospects for Ireland, and that is most definitely of a multicultural nature.

I do not wish to sound alarmist, but I think the idea of a multicultural society in our native land does not appeal to the vast majority of Irish people north and south. Where does that leave us? High and dry with no wind in our sails, that’s where.

If there was immigration into Ireland on the scale of that of Britain, Ireland as we know it would cease to exist. Our cultural heritage that we have striven for generations to protect would disappear, we would be a people without a home, and the Irish nation would then be truly scattered across the globe like the proverbial wandering Jew with aspirations of the promised land that never did materialize.

What if this immigration into Ireland occurred a century earlier — where would that have left us? Perhaps Patrick Pearse would have addressed the people in Dublin from the steps of the GPO with the statement, “The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Algerian, Moroccan, Latvian, African, Chinese or whatever.”

The Irish Republic wouldn’t exist without the Irish people and their concerted efforts at home and abroad. Any reduction of our national resources is a depletion of our status as a nation.

If Ireland is to survive, and we very much hope it does so, then immigration by foreign nationals into our country must be firmly controlled and limited.

It is preposterous that a foreign national would receive more assistance from our government than one of our own, and more importantly someone whose family has given generations of service to Ireland’s struggle for national independence.

Ireland is a unique case in the framework of modern Europe. It is a country that has suffered for centuries under colonial rule and it is in our people that the spirit of a free nation would survive, and none other.

It is quite clear that nationalist Ireland would not survive without the native Irish stock, and that, after all, is what the vast majority of us aspire to.

P.J. O’Reilly
London, England

Catholics Held Fast

I would like to respond to Peadar O’Fiach’s letter “ IRA Terrorist Actions” in last week’s issue.

Mr. O’Fiach’s memory appears to be slipping. He would have us believe that “the Protestant people held fast against the vicious and protracted terror campaign of the 20th century.”

Please, Mr. O’Fiach, do a quick Google on the Protestant paramilitaries and you might be surprised by the some facts. For instance, the UVF’s 1966 shooting of four Catholics, one fatally, outside a Belfast pub. This attack was the first major act of sectarian violence since Ireland was divided, and it spurred Catholic activism, which soon turned violent.

The UVF’s 1969 bombing of a power station near Belfast. Initially attributed to the IRA, this attack also helped trigger the Troubles.

The UVF’s 1971 bombing of a Belfast pub, which killed 15 people.

A pair of UVF/SAS bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, both in the Republic of Ireland, on May 17, 1974, that killed 33 civilians, making this day the deadliest of the conflict.

The UDA’s October 1993 machine gun attack on a bar in the Northern Ireland town of Greysteel, which killed eight civilians. A fierce campaign of intimidation and abuse of Catholic schoolgirls in Belfast between June and October 2001.

The UVF targeted, tortured and murdered, their Catholic neighbors since the foundation of the Irish State.

Who were holding fast? The above list is by no means complete.

Patrick Walsh
New York, New York

Mick’s Loss

Sunderland manager Mick McCarthy, the self-styled 110% Irishman (as opposed to Corkman Roy Keane’s 100%) has lost his first two matches since reaching the English Premiership. That’s okay then.

Robert O’Sullivan,Bantry, Co. Cork
Ireland