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Workers' Party spokesman Justin O'Hagan, has expressed concern at a number
of paramilitary attacks which have taken place in recent days. As well as the murder, of Jim Mc Donnell in Derry by the INLA,
on February 12th a 39-year-old man was attacked by up to five masked men and dragged into an alleyway in the Iris Link area
of Twinbrook on the outskirts of Belfast, where he was shot in the arm and leg.
At the end of January dissidents were
forced to abandon a 300 pound car bomb in a residential area of Castlewellan, County Down. It took the police and army 5 days
to locate the device based on phone warnings that were vague about the locality and nature of the threat.
There have
also been shows of force by so-called anti-drug vigilantes in Derry and in Belfast. In the latter case, armed and masked men
claiming to be from the IRA have called to a number of homes occupied by foreign nationals in the Beechmount / Iveagh area
of west Belfast looking for
cannabis plants. One of the women subjected to this abuse told her attackers she was here to
work not to grow drugs.
"According to the Andersonstown News, a dissident republican group called Saor Uladh is behind
this, but these attacks have nothing to do with republicanism and everything to do with the kind of narrow nationalism that
gives the BNP a run for its money", said Mr Lowry. "Meanwhile, members of the Provisional IRA may yet have to pay for bludgeoning
21-year-old Paul Quinn to death with iron bars in a barn across the border in October 2007".
"The Provos, the vigilantes,
the INLA and the so-called dissidents all need to put a stop to these violent, anti-worker, anti-republican acts", said Mr
O'Hagan.
Issued 16th February 2009
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