LONDON (AP) – Police and politicians in Northern Ireland called for calm on Monday after a third night of violence that saw young Protestants start fires and attack police with bricks and gas pumps.
The explosions come amid growing tensions over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland and worsening relations between parties in the Belfast government, which shares Catholic-Protestant power.
The Northern Ireland Police Service said police officers were attacked in Londonderry on Sunday night, and there were also disturbances in two pro-British union areas near Belfast. The police said most of those involved were teenagers.
Chief Superintendent Darrin Jones condemned “foolish and reckless criminal behavior that (does) nothing but harm the community.”
The riots followed the Friday and Saturday riots in union areas in and around Belfast and Londonderry, also known as Derry, which saw cars on fire and projectiles and petrol bombs dropped on police officers. Police said 27 policemen were injured and eight people were charged, the youngest being a 13-year-old boy.
Britain’s economic division of the European Union in late 2020 shook the delicate political balance in Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom where some people identify themselves as British and others as Irish.
A new trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the EU imposed customs and border controls on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The agreement was designed to avoid controls between Northern Ireland and Ireland, an EU member, because an open Irish border helped support the peace process built on the basis of the Good Friday 1998 agreement.
The deal ended decades of violence involving Irish Republicans, British legalists and the United Kingdom’s armed forces, in which more than 3,000 people died. But union leaders say the new checks amount to a new border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK
The Democratic Unionist Party, which jointly governs Northern Ireland with Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, has called for the Brexit deal to be canceled.
Union members are also angry at the police’s decision not to prosecute Sinn Fein politicians who attended the funeral of a former Irish Republican Army commander in June. Bobby Storey’s funeral attracted a large crowd, despite coronavirus rules that prohibit mass meetings.
The main union parties demanded the resignation of the Northern Ireland police chief because of the controversy, claiming that he lost the trust of his community.
Mark Lindsay, president of the Northern Ireland Police Federation, said the “political atmosphere” was being used as an excuse for the violence orchestrated by banned paramilitary groups.
“Older and more sinister elements use young people and children … to achieve their goals,” Lindsay told BBC radio.