Northern Ireland‘s Protestant, pro-British Orange Order was set to parade through a mainly Catholic and nationalist area on Sunday.
It’s the first time the march has been allowed to go through the area since 1997. Overnight, a court ruling allowed it to take place after a series of last-minute legal challenges that reached Belfast’s High Court.
Thirty-five members of the Orange Order are to march silently through Garvaghy Road in the town of Portadown, without any bands or other Order supporters participating.
About 2,000 people gathered on the street Sunday morning in a counterprotest to prevent the march.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham called for “calm on all sides.” In a BBC interview, he said “big gains” had been made in Northern Ireland “and we don’t want to see things go backwards.”
Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill, a member of the Irish republican Sinn Fein party, spoke against the decision to allow the march to take place.
“Our message tonight is clear. There is no going back. Not tomorrow. Not ever,” she said, also voicing her support for the local residents to protest against the march, which she labeled “unwanted” and “sectarian.”
Carla Lockhart, an MP from the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, said local residents have nothing to fear from “thirty five men walking down a road silently and with no bands and in an orderly fashion.”
History of conflict
Garvaghy Road was one of the epicenters of the conflict between the Catholic, pro-Irish republicans and the Protestant, pro-British unionists in the late 1990s.
Back then, clashes between residents and the marchers repeatedly triggered disorder, also known as the Drumcree dispute.
As part of the Good Friday Agreement, a deal signed in 1998 that largely ended three decades of conflict between the two sides known as the Troubles, an entity was established to regulate contentious processions named The Parades Commission.
The Commission repeatedly rejected the Orange Order’s requests to march through the area, with a High Court ruling quashing the rejection this year due to a procedural error. The Order then issued a fresh application, which was approved.
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Edited by: Sean Sinico
