Police warned on Friday that armed dissident groups were planning violent attacks over the long weekend.
Peter Olphert was 14 when IRA gunmen killed his father. Forty years later, he says it’s time to set aside the past.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland Assistant Chief Constable Bobby Singleton said police had received intelligence about planned violence around a parade in Londonderry on Easter Monday commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland. Peter Olphert, whose father, John, was shot dead by the IRA in 1983, at home in Limavady, Northern Ireland.In some ways, Olphert decided to move on years ago. He said it would have been “very easy” for him, as a grieving teenager, to join one of the pro-British loyalist militias waging war against Irish republican militants in a neighbour-on-neighbour conflict that also drew in the British military.
Victims and survivors of the Troubles gather in Killough, Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland to watch the sun rise to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement on Friday.“To say that we draw a line under that means that we don’t learn the lessons of it,” Thompson said. “The lesson of any society emerging from conflict is you can’t sweep it under the carpet because ... it really reinvigorates some of the grievances that lead to further conflict.
The peace accord succeeded far better than many expected, despite occasional attacks by dissident armed groups.During the Troubles, downtown Belfast was a ghost town at night, surrounded by a security ring of steel. Now busy pubs, hip cafes and microbreweries dot the Victorian streets. A gleaming new campus for Ulster University is helping revive the scarred city centre.
“We never properly dealt with the causes of the situation in which violence is still glorified in some communities,” Hayward said.
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