SINN FÉIN president Gerry Adams has accused dissident republicans of fomenting sectarian violence at a nationalist-loyalist flashpoint in Belfast.
Mr Adams acknowledged yesterday that weekend violence close to the Broadway roundabout chiefly involved nationalist youths who, he said, were spurred on by known dissident republicans.
Six PSNI officers were injured in the rioting during which police officers fired plastic bullets. According to Relatives for Justice and the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets, a 16-year-old was injured when he was struck by a plastic bullet.
Jim McCabe, whose wife Nora was killed by a police plastic bullet in July 1981, said the youth, who was from the Clonard area of west Belfast, was struck on Saturday night.
He was being treated in the Royal Victoria Hospital last night where a spokeswoman said he was in a “stable” condition. It is understood that a second youth was also admitted to hospital after a plastic bullet struck him and that he has since been discharged. Al Hutchinson, the Police Ombudsman, is to investigate the bullet’s use.
“Plastic bullets have no place in our society and the inevitable result of their use is critical injury and death,” said Mr McCabe.
Mr Adams and local SDLP councillor Tim Attwood said the PSNI should not use plastic bullets.
Mr Adams yesterday appealed for calm, restraint and common sense to ensure there was no further trouble at the sectarian interfaces in the run-up to the July 12th Orange Order parades, which mark the height and tensest part of the parading season.
Nationalist and loyalist community workers in the nationalist Donegall Road and loyalist Village area around the Broadway roundabout have been working to prevent further outbreaks of the sectarian trouble that flared over Friday and Saturday night.
Mr Adams said that on Friday some nationalists may have suspected that loyalists were seeking to create trouble with local nationalists, but that on Saturday in particular the violence involved local nationalists urged on by dissidents and some “career criminals”.
“While some of what happened on Friday night had a sectarian element to it, most of the violence over the weekend was orchestrated by anti-social and criminal elements,” he said.
“There was drink and drugs involved and a small number of people belonging to so-called dissident groups tried to encourage the violence and were involved in bringing outsiders into the area,” said Mr Adams.
Sinn Féin councillor Breige Brownlee said that on Saturday night “sinister” elements from Andersonstown, Ballymurphy and Divis in west Belfast came into the area “to simply cause trouble”, and such people were not wanted in the area.