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Joe O'Connor
murder splits republican community By: Anne Cadwallader BALLYMURPHY TURNED its back on the grieving O'Connor and Notorantonio families on Wednesday. Fewer than 300 people attended the funeral of Joe O'Connor. The rest voted with their feet and stayed at home, only curiously peeking through windows to see the cortege as it passed. On that evening's television news, there was a filmed report of the paramilitary colour party following orders shouted in Irish, and of the first volley of gunshots publicly fired at a republican funeral in many years. But few local people witnessed it at first hand. An estimated 25% of the adult male population in Ballymurphy has been jailed for republican activity. When people heard that Marion Price, in her graveside oration, had referred to the IRA as the "armed militia of the British state" they were deeply offended. Joe O'Connor's funeral had been turned into an occasion for propaganda and used to send a very political message to mainstream republicans throughout Ireland from the group to which he belonged, the so-called "real IRA". There were no fewer than four firing parties over O'Connor's coffin - two on Monday night, one on Tuesday night and one as the remains left for Corpus Christi Church on Wednesday. A little girl was seen scooping up the used bullet casings. The guns used included a handgun, a semi-automatic rifle and two new Czech-made MP50 assault rifles. The displays were clearly intended to impress, but the ostentatious show of firepower had the opposite effect. On Thursday night, groups of over 30 people picketed the homes of two former republican prisoners who had penned an article in the Irish News blaming the IRA for the murder. The pickets, mostly the wives and neighbours of those being named publicly as responsible for the killing, carried placards reading: "Speculation costs lives." At least one family has left home temporarily, for fear of arrest or retribution for a murder they say they had nothing to do with. On Tuesday, members of the Upper Springfield Community Forum had held their regular meeting. Many were incensed at the article carried in that morning's Irish News, written by the two former prisoners, now prominent critics of the Sinn Fein strategy. They were angry that the authors, Tommy Gorman and Anthony McIntyre, claimed to have made an exhaustive survey in the area, yet had not contacted them to seek their views on who was truly responsible for the killing of O'Connor. In the article, Gorman and McIntyre said they had been asked to "to begin the unenviable task of interviewing people who had knowledge of" O'Connor's murder. They said they felt "compelled to probe, press and challenge, declining to accept anything that was speculative". "There is no room for doubt. We state publicly that it is our unshakeable belief that the Provisional IRA carried out this assassination." When asked who they had interviewed, Gorman said: "Local people." These local people had, he says, witnessed the killers tearing off their hoods in broad daylight "at the top of the street" just a few short yards from the scene of the killing. They had no other evidence. Of the two men accused as gunmen, one lives 150 yards from the scene of the murder. Would he really have been reckless enough to "tear off" his hood immediately after the shooting on his own doorstep? The second man has a cast-iron alibi. Six others, being named as "scouts" and accessories to the murder, are understood to have been in the area on their way back home from shopping or buying newspapers. As a result of the picketing, Gorman, genuinely and deeply hurt by the reaction to his article, said he was "now aware of the distress caused" and that his purpose had not been to cause distress and "certainly not to endanger anyone". He admitted that "unfortunately" it had "resulted in many people in the Ballymurphy and Springhill areas feeling vulnerable. This we deeply regret. Our only concern was to prevent further bloodshed". Whether the "real IRA" will take revenge on those it believes were involved is extremely unlikely. They know the mainstream IRA will be hard on them if they do. Discretion, in this case, may prove to be the better part of valour. Some of the dead man's associates certainly want retaliation. One person is openly demanding "widows in Springhill" (a republican stronghold within the greater Ballymurphy area). One group in the area has within it, members of the IRA, CIRA, RIRA and OIRA. They and their associates are involved in selling smuggled liquor and cigarettes and then laundering the proceeds by buying up houses in Ballymurphy. One member is closely linked to the CIRA. About seven months ago, he was visited by members of the mainstream IRA. Some accounts say he was beaten, stripped, tied up and questioned. Others that his shirt and shoes were taken off and he was questioned "in depth". Whatever the details of this incident, it is clear he was assaulted and left in no doubt as to the IRA's intentions, should he ignore their warnings. O'Connor did not take kindly to the attack on the man and, armed, kicked in the doors of at least two men he believed were involved. The names of these two people are the ones being bandied about as responsible for O'Connor's death, although why they would attack him in Ballymurphy and not at his home in Springhill, in the intervening seven months or so, is far from clear. Although the family say local people saw the killers pulling off their hoods, other people in the area say they saw them speeding out of the estate in a car, later found burned out, wearing baseball caps and sunglasses. Evidently the persons who did kill O'Connor were aware he was visiting his mother, Margaret, at Whitecliff Crescent. The CIRA member assaulted by the IRA seven months ago was in very close vicinity at the time of the shooting yet, inexplicably, no attempt was made to injure him. It may be that members of the IRA, unlikely at it seems, with or without sanction, chose this precise and sensitive moment in the peace process to kill a member of a smaller, rival republican grouping. The other possibility is that O'Connor was murdered for far more complex reasons than that, and the truth has yet to come out. http://www.irelandonsunday.com/current/news/article.tmpl$showpage?ps=31811396745 3225 To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
