Years ago when I was in middle school, I spent a summer in the UK with my family. One stop that jolted me was visiting Londonderry or Derry (depending which side you were on.) That was in 1984 and it was during The Troubles, the time when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was trying to bring attention to the inequalities of life for Catholics and kick the United Kingdom out of Ireland. Londonderry was a war zone, with barbed wire on rooftops, where the streets were eerily silent. This was a prominent life experience for me and probably one of the ones that sparked my interest to want to travel in conflict zones to see them with my own eyes. Mostly what I remember taking away was the darkness of war, but always having a really hard time with the roots of the conflict, since in my world Protestants and Catholics live side by side with no friction. Like so many long standing conflicts I’ve learned this is about access to capital and power more than religion, but that was hard to fully understand with a young outsiders mind. After the trip I continued to follow the conflict and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, that finally created a road to a more connected future. But I never traveled back to Northern Ireland to see the differences till now.
So beyond urban planning curiosity, outlined in other posts, here are some pictures of Belfast today and how its citizens are telling their history. I was sort of surprised that there are still “Peace Walls” that separate Loyalist from Republican neighborhoods with locked gates each night from 8pm to 6:30am to prevent violence and also to see wired barriers to protect houses on the Republican side from things being thrown over the walls and fences. This is the kind of horrible stuff I’ve seen in the West Bank, but didn’t expect it in Northern Ireland today. 28 years after the peace accord, they said the walls just keep getting higher. Neighborhoods were marked by big murals, which I think of as martyr posters, memorializing the names and faces of those that have been killed in conflict or specific dates and incidents that keep the memories alive.
We took a fascinating walking tour of West Belfast with a guide on each side that had participated in the conflict and now shared their stories. Mark, our guide on the Loyalist (UK/Protestant) side was still seething with rage and showed us that the conflict is not over. He took us to a memorial garden with names of people killed more recently, reminding us that this conflict was still raw. Anne Marie on the Republican (IRA/Catholic) side told us about times she was tortured and stories of the conflict and growing up there, but seemed much more hopeful of the future, saying her daughter’s could have hope for their future when she had had none at the same age. (If others go to Belfast, I highly recommend a tour like this to get a real telling of very recent history.)
Other neighborhoods, still segregated, have murals and flags and plenty of reminders of whose side they are on, but seem to be a bit more open to coexistence. I, of course, hope this is their future, but was reminded how deep the scars of conflict lie and got the sense it does not take much to stir up anger. There are groups on both sides working hard to lower tensions when they spark.
These days in the center of Belfast it would take a locals eyes to notice the remains of the conflict through all the development and new things that keep popping up in this recovering city, but in the poorer neighborhoods the conflict continues to visibly smolder.
Here’s one example of a separation that I, as an outsider, couldn’t see without a locals eye was… I went to a pub and there was live music. The Irish colleague I was with pointed out that it was a Republican place. I asked how he knew. He said it was because of the music they were playing. Then when we left he noticed a t-shirt in Gaelic, the Irish language. Clearly if you are a local little signs are everywhere to remind you whose side people are on.
I left the country feeling pretty hopeful that overtime the divisions will fade. There is a good amount of economic development going on and the veterans who suffered from The Troubles are aging and hopefully their kids don’t feel quite as much fervor, though from what I read and heard, schooling is still fairly separated, so the rifts are taught over and over again. Another interesting thing I learned is when thinking about Irish unification is there never really was a unified Ireland. These two countries and peoples on the same island have always thought differently. But still I hope that a unified Irish island is achievable in the not too distant future.
No comments:
Post a Comment