Post date: Jan 13, 2013 6:19:40 PM
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams calls for cross community talks after riots over the removal of a British flag from Belfast city hall.
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 13, 2013) (ITN) - Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said on Sunday (January 13) he condemned the riots over the removal of a British flag from Belfast county hall.
"Let's be very, very, very clear. In any society, even one like this which is in transition, a democratic decision by a duly elected representative group of Belfast city councillors, that decision has to be upheld," he told reporters in Belfast.At least 29 police officers were injured when pro-British and Irish nationalist youths clashed in the Northern Irish capital on Saturday (January 12) following another protest against the removal of the British flag from Belfast City Hall.
Adams called for cross-community talks about the rioting.
"What is needed is for Peter (D. Robinson) and Martin (McGuinness), whose roles as First and Deputy First Ministers, as a matter of great urgency to call together all the political leaders and all other representatives of our community and to show a positive, progressive leadership. It's the grace of God that nobody's been killed. Would this be tolerated in Dublin?" he said.
Rioting started as the mainly Protestant protesters passed a Catholic area on their way home from a rally in central Belfast against the flag's removal. Police scrambled to separate crowds of youths who pelted each other with bricks and bottles.
Protestant loyalists determined to remain part of the United Kingdom have held nightly protests since councillors voted last month to end a century-old tradition of flying the British union flag every day over the city hall.
The protesters have complained that the removal of the flag was a step too far in the ebbing of loyalist dominance in the province, saying too many concessions had been given to Irish nationalists in a power-sharing government.
Loyalist politicians have joined their rivals, Catholic Irish nationalists seeking union withIreland, in condemning the violence, but they have been unable to prevent groups of young men draped in British flags from clashing with police.
About a thousand people, including many families with young children, attended a peace rally at Belfast City Hall on Sunday.
An elderly man said he was attending the rally because it was the only way to show opposition to the recent violence in Belfast. "It's the only way you can show that you don't agree with the violence, I mean, you know, there are other ways, there are other ways," he said.
A mother at the rally said Belfast should not be spoiled by a revival of sectarian violence.
"There is a new generation, it's about supporting them and not going backwards, it's about going forward," she said.
A man who attended the rally with his young family condemned the rioters.
"We do not feel that the people who are out rioting represent us in any way. We are normal people, just normal families who want to get on with their lives. What you have seen on TV these last weeks has nothing to do with what we want for this country and for our children," he said.
The unrest over the past five weeks has been some of the most sustained in the British-ruled province since a 1998 peace deal ended 30 years of conflict between nationalists and loyalists.