Peace charity boss calls for scrapping of expression ‘paramilitary’
THE chief executive of the Co-operation Ireland peace building charity has said the expression “paramilitary” should be scrapped.
Peter Sheridan said use of the term runs the risk of legitimising so-called paramilitaries’ influence on communities when they were simply organised criminals with no connection to the conflict.
Police have said thousands of small businesses are being extorted by gangs here.
Mr Sheridan said: “It is about turf wars, it is about internal feuding, it is about ordinary criminality — it is nothing to do with the conflict that they are involved in. Yet we continue to separate out these two things as if they are somehow different.
“We have to get to a stage that paramilitary beatings are assaults like any other assault that happens out in society.
“I don’t know what they are doing that is helping or assisting their communities — most of it is about lining their own pockets.”
Mr Sheridan, a former senior police officer, pointed out that although it was 20 years since the ceasefire, these organisations are still on the ground, with their activities apparent through socalled punishment attacks, drug dealing, racketeering and extortion.
He said a paramilitary murder was a murder the same as in other parts of the UK, and a paramilitary assault is the same as any assault anywhere.
“Somehow when we treat them differently we run the risk of legitimising it in some people’s eyes.”
An Organised Crime Task Force report published on Tuesday has highlighted the problem of extortion.
Under-threat traders, often in working-class loyalist or republican areas, are the least able to pay illegal taxes imposed by paramilitary thugs, Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Detective Superintendent Bobby Singleton said.
Many do not report the intimidation, which is supporting lavish crime lord lifestyles.