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Commentary
COMMENTARY: Northern Ireland's good news at last Kathleen LaCamera, Jul 22, 2009
Kathleen LaCamera
By Kathleen LaCamera Special Contributor
Protestant-linked Loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have put their weapons “beyond use” in a major act of “decommissioning.” To say this is excellent and long-awaited news is an understatement.
Irish Methodists, who have been among those working behind the scenes helping to pave the way for this move, are delighted. I’ve been reporting from Northern Ireland for the past 17 years. I’ve witnessed adults who hurl death threats at 6-year-old Catholic girls simply for walking to school on a street bordering a Protestant neighborhood.
I’ve listened to a Protestant man recount the horror of losing his wife when a bomb exploded in a grocery store where she shopped. I’ve interviewed a former Protestant paramilitary who smashed a teenager’s skull with a brick for being a Catholic.
There have been some grim, awful times in this region during 30 plus years of “The Troubles.”
At the end of June, some of the most violent Protestant paramilitary organizations—responsible for a thousand deaths—announced that their weapons had been destroyed.
The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and their sister organization, the Red Hand Commando, have completed this process. An independent body verified their decommissioning. The Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the related Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) are following suit.
What this means to people on the street is the conflict that few believed could end in their lifetime just got a step closer to doing so.
The major Catholic-linked paramilitary group, the IRA, decommissioned its weapons in 2005. But extremist Protestant Loyalist paramilitary groups did not follow. They remained wary of a peace process they felt improved life for Catholics, while Loyalist communities lost out.
Four years on and thousands of small, unnamed acts of peacemaking later, these Loyalist groups have put their guns “beyond use.”
They chose the East Belfast Methodist Mission for their announcement because the Mission and its minister, the Rev. Gary Mason, have played an unfaltering and largely unsung role in helping Loyalist paramilitary groups find their way to the peace table. Mr. Mason persisted in reaching out to Loyalists when others, even in his own church, said it was useless and naïve to talk to terrorists.
Over the years, Mr. Mason and his team have negotiated resolutions to deadly paramilitary feuds, built alliances across traditional divides and attracted crucial investment into Protestant neighborhoods.
Through his Skainos Project (www.skainos.org/blog/) Mr. Mason has seen $45 million raised for a church-community regeneration project in poverty-ridden East Belfast, which will provide training, jobs, commerce opportunities and spaces for young people, families, older people and the homeless.
Members of the East Belfast Mission team have put themselves in the firing line, making peace faithfully, bravely, sacrificially and incrementally. They understand it is a long road between the end of an armed conflict and sustainable peace.
Small, armed Republican and Loyalist splinter paramilitary groups still operate in Northern Ireland. Old divisions die hard. But peacemakers like Gary Mason will continue to do whatever that their peace process requires.
Mr. Mason also thinks Northern Ireland’s experience has lessons to offer others. Having lived with the ravages of terrorism, he says that he understands why some wonder if it’s a good idea for President Obama to begin conversations with countries whose leaders are negative and threatening toward the U.S.
“There’s always a risk that conversations can go nowhere, but they need to be your first port of call,” he said. “They need to happen. And sometimes, miraculously, they bear fruit.”
We need to support and pray for Gary Mason and all our peace-seeking brothers and sisters in troubled parts of the world. But we also can do our own part, beginning those risky, even frightening conversations ourselves that just might make for peace.
The Rev. LaCamera is an ordained United Methodist minister working in Manchester, England. www.kathleenlacamera.com.
Kathleen LaCamera
