Tourists soaking up Belfast’s bloody past
BELFAST: Bullet-scarred walls and murals to honour the dead serve as a reminder of Northern Ireland’s bloody conflict, a story now recounted to tourists by former fighters 20 years after their guns fell silent.
Republican Peadar Whelan is one such guide, having spent 16 years behind bars for trying to kill a British policeman in the late 1970s.
The 60-year-old now earns a living recalling “The Troubles”.
The conflict broke out in 1969 and only ended with the Good Friday Agreement signed 20 years ago today but the wounds are far from healed and there are fears now that looming Brexit could upset the peace.
“It was a war here,” said Whelan as he began his tour outside a former school on Falls Road, a majority Catholic street separated from the Protestant community by a “peace wall” – one of dozens of separation barriers in the province.
The brick walls of the now-abandoned building still bear the bullet holes of the Loyalist snipers.
Falls Road was the scene of numerous clashes between Catholic Republicans and Protestant Loyalists and the British army had a surveillance post at the top of the nearby Divis Tower.
“Through the tour we’ll hopefully give you a real sense of the way in which the whole kind of military, colonial, occupying objective of the British army ... becomes clear,” Whelan said.
Arriving at a memorial garden for Republican activists and Irish Republican Army (IRA) fighters, Whelan recalled the “volunteers” who fell during the violence, but whom the other side describes as terrorists.
The group of around 10 tourists is then taken to the west of Falls Road, to a large fresco depicting a smiling Bobby Sands, the militant nationalist who died in his cell in 1981 after a 66-day hunger strike.
Whelan described the solidarity among Republican prisoners then.
“I was 19 years of age, hadn’t a clue,” he explained.
“After three days of torture and abuse my door opened and this man (Sands) has given me a bag with biscuits and books and newspapers and some fruit,” he added.
“Somebody just saying ‘you’re not on your own here’.”
The next stop takes in the peace wall that has separated the Catholics of Falls Road from the Protestants of Shankill Road since 1969.
One major concern is Brexit, with the future of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland a key sticking point that some fear could reignite tensions.
“Brexit is the elephant in the room,” said Whelan.
“We don’t know what the implications are. No-one wants the return of a hard border.” — AFP