Conference tallis::celt

913.0. "An Irish border ritual lives on" by TALLIS::DARCY () Wed May 22 1991 01:00

    An Irish border ritual lives on
    
    British army destroys a roadway, then villagers repair it to keep their
    Catholic parish intact
    
    By Kevin Cullen
    GLOBE STAFF
    
    Roslea, Northern Ireland - On Friday morning, just after dawn, British
    soldiers arrived to tear up the Derryvollen road, the same road they
    had destroyed just two weeks earlier.
    
    All the while, a group of about 20 residents from the Roslea parish
    kept watch, arms crossed, silently plotting how and when they would
    reopen the road, which links this small isolated village in County
    Fermanagh with the Republic of Ireland.
    
    Over the past 20 years, it has become a ritual as constant and as
    predictable as the tides: The army destroys a border road; the locals
    repair it.
    
    The standoff in Roslea reflects the territorial and cultural divisions,
    real and imagined, on this divided island.
    
    Over the past few months, the British army has strengthened its resolve
    to close the narrow, winding roads that connect Northern Ireland with
    the Republic and force traffic to pass through a few heavily fortified
    military checkpoints.
    
    The army maintains that the road closings and the checkpoints are
    necessary inconveniences, that they deter Irish Republican gunman who
    frequently cross over into the North from the Republic to assassinate
    soldiers or police officers.  Residents say the restrictions on travel
    create hardships while having little or no impact on the IRA.
    
    Besides excavating and even blowing up roads, in recent months the army
    has put gates up at a half-dozen checkpoints in Fermanagh, imposing a
    dusk-to-dawn curfew on hundreds of residents.  Some of the gates are
    padlocked after nightfall, while at major checkpoints passage can be
    gained only by summoning a soldier from an adjoining fortification.
    
    Some residents literally are locked in at night.  Others, frightened at
    the prospect of encountering nervous armed soldiers in the dead of night,
    choose not the venture out.
    
    Kevin Maxwell, a teacher who has organized local opposition to the road
    closings and checkpoints, said the practice has created what amounts to
    an open-air prison for dozens of families, and generated animosity
    toward security forces.
    
    "Restricting access to our homes and places where we socialize and do
    business is a flagrant violation of our personal liberty," Maxwell
    said. "It has split our community."
    
    Because about 90 percent of the residents of Roslea are Roman Catholic,
    they identify their community not simply as the village, which is in
    Northern Ireland, but as the parish, which straddles the border, half
    of it in Northern Ireland, the other half in the Republic.
    
    The parish has two churches: St. Tierney's in the north, St. Mary's in
    the south.  It has schools on both sides of the border, too.  The
    pastor, Rev. Jeremiah McGrath, crosses between north and south up to 10
    times a day.  Father McGrath's collar does not spare him the nagging
    scrutiny of soldiers.
    
    "They know me at this stage, and still I have to show identification,
    open the boot of my car," Father McGrath said.  "It's awfully
    inconvenient.... All this does is get people angry.  Innocent people
    are being stripped of their dignity."
    
    It was a failed IRA operation last November that led British
    authorities to step up their campaign to close roads and put padlocks
    on some checkpoint gates at night.  A 3,500-pound bomb, the IRA's
    biggest ever, failed to detonate after being driven to the main Roslea
    checkpoint by a so-called "human bomb."  The IRA said it forced the
    driver to deliver the bomb because he had done work for the security
    forces.
    
    In a place where gasoline runs about $5 a gallon, residents now are
    forced to drive roundabout routes.  Instead of taking the 5-mile route
    to her office job in Scotstown in the Republic, Bridge Maguire now must
    drive 15 miles.
    
    Businesses are failing because people are worried about not getting
    their shopping done before nightfall.
    
    Maxwell said that over the years, the six checkpoints in and around
    Roslea have never resulted in an arrest or an arms find.  Yet, he said,
    they continue to make life difficult for residents and invite IRA
    attacks that endanger civilians.  As a result of protests by local
    residents, the army recently dismantled two checkpoints, including the
    one at Derryard.  But the army then dug up the Derryvollen road.
    
    Local residents took up a collection and bought a second-hand digger. 
    In the local version of an Amish house-raising, residents filled in the
    holes and made a makeshift detour around a concrete barrier.  The road
    stayed open until Friday, when the army returned.
    
    Within hours of the arrival of the army's diggers, locals were
    discussing their next inevitable community project.
    
    ***EOF***
        

    
    By a strange twist of fate, the rail link between Dublin and Belfast is
    rendered inoperable on a regular basis by the IRA. In this ritual,
    someone plants a bomb (and usually gives a warning). The
    army (British or Irish depending on the location) hunt for it or for
    it's friends, and if necessary the rail authorities fix the track.
    A variation is for the warning to be given without the bomb -- cheaper
    but less spectacular.
    
    During my time (5 yrs) in Dublin, these rituals were repeted several times
    a month, and caused hardship and unease to many people in both
    communities who wanted to carry on life as normal. 
    
    The maintainence of easy communication between communities is something
    that neither side seems to encourage, for whatever reasons.
    
    Let us hope that the NI talks (venue now agreed) can provide some
    really useful communications.
    
    John.                                  

It strikes me that there is an abuse of human rights there, somewhere. However,
that risks opening up a new can of worms!

- Paul