Operation Banner Ends As Plastic Bullets Are Fired

Éirígí* have reacted angrily after the RUC-PSNI opened fire with plastic bullets last Wednesday night  during rioting in a unionist housing estate in Bangor, county Down.

Six people were reportedly injured by the baton rounds.

The Crown Forces in the Six Counties have hundreds of thousands of newly purchased ‘crowd control' baton rounds in their possession and the British government has rejected all appeals by human rights organisations to have them banned.

Éirígí spokesperson Daithí Mac An Mháistír called for the weapons to be withdrawn from use immediately.

“It is indicative of the mindset of the RUC-PSNI that they continue to fire such a lethal weapon in the vicinity of large numbers of civilians.  Plastic bullets should not be used by any organisation, least of all organisations like the Crown Forces, who have such abominable human rights records.

“We now have two political parties sitting on the Six County Policing Board who have consistently stated their opposition to the use of plastic bullets.  It will be interesting to see how these parties are able to hold the RUC-PSNI to account for last night's human rights breach.

Daithí continued:

“It is ironic that on the day it was being proclaimed that ‘normality' had returned to the Six Counties with the ending of the British Army's ‘Operation Banner' that one of the most brutal tools of the British occupation was being deployed in county Down.

“Clearly, the normality that is being planned for the Six Counties is one tailored to suit the needs of the British government in its continuing interference in Ireland.”

*Éirígí is a socialist-republican political party formed in
2006 to provide a vehicle for the political, social and economic liberation of the people of Ireland.