#Northern #Irelands #unionists #parade #political #uncertainty
Northern Ireland’s unionists will demonstrate in their thousands on Tuesday to celebrate the culmination of the pro-British community’s “arching season” as the troubled province grapples with a political crisis.
The July 12 Orange Order parades, which have long been a flashpoint for sectarian tensions, are taking place in Northern Ireland in its third month without a functioning government following May’s general election.
In London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s resignation as Conservative leader has fueled further instability as candidates running to succeed him stake out positions on post-Brexit trade rules for the territory.
Across Northern Ireland, more than 250 bonfires were lit in Unionist communities late Monday to start the celebrations.
Often created by stacking palaces into towering structures, the fires have grown in size over the decades.
Builders in the port town of Larne are hoping to set a world record with a 60-metre blaze.
On Saturday, a man in his 30s was killed when he fell from another campfire more than 50ft high in Larne. The pyre was then dismantled.
The structures and parades of the Orange Order members commemorate the victory of the Protestant King William III. of Orange over the deposed Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Throughout Tuesday, 573 Orange Order parades will be held, 33 of which will pass through Catholic areas where tensions could boil over.
– tensions –
The celebrations are the busiest day of the year for police forces in Northern Ireland, which was plagued by three decades of sectarian bloodshed over British rule until a 1998 peace deal.
Around 2,500 officers will be on duty to deter violence, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said.
Authorities are treating an incident Thursday involving petrol bombs and bricks being thrown at a bonfire in north Belfast as a hate crime.
The police were heavily present on site.
The fire in the Tiger Bay area of Belfast has drawn the ire of pro-Irish nationalists living nearby, who say it is too close to their communities.
Months of loyalist demonstrations in Northern Ireland up to July 12 were marked by union opposition to the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, which will govern the province’s post-Brexit trade.
The agreement, part of Britain’s divorce deal with the EU, introduced commodity controls between Britain and Northern Ireland to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
Johnson’s proposed legislation to abolish parts of the protocol is currently making its way through the British Parliament.
The Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland has refused to return to the province’s power-sharing government until the protocol is dismantled.
In March, loyalist paramilitaries were blamed for a fake bomb attack targeting the visit of Irish Foreign Secretary Simon Coveney.
Ireland and the EU in Brussels accuse London of violating international law with the protocol legislation.
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