Belfast - A City Sundered

This weekend, my classmates and I traveled up to Northern Ireland. The first place we stopped was Belfast - the center of turmoil between the Catholics and Protestants, the location of the "Peace" Wall, and the home of the IRA.

What?!? The IRA?!?! Heather get out of there!

Before I left for Ireland, I had quite a few family members warn me to watch out for the IRA, but despite Americans strong influence in the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland - I don't think my family members understood the situation there. I know I didn't.

I can't remember every detail given by our tour guide, and I'm sure there will be slight inaccuracies in the following story, but I think it's important (especially if you're going to be traveling to Ireland) to understand its recent bloody history.

The fighting in Northern Ireland, and between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is all based on the idea of "Home Rule". The Republic of Ireland is fighting for a united Ireland - where the British no longer hold rule over Northern Ireland and the entire island becomes one nation. Within Northern Ireland, the Catholics want a united Ireland and Home Rule as well, whereas the Protestants want to stay with England.

The fighting began with the Catholics protesting the inequality of Catholics and Protestants in the workforce - where Protestants gained all the management positions and Catholics made up the majority of the hard labor force. They began to march up and down the streets, followed closely by the media. But Britain made no attempt to make changes, and soon the media lost interest in the uprising.

This is where the IRA came in. In order to get attention back onto the plight of the Catholics, the IRA began to start small riots during the marches, which had to quickly be put down by the police force. But the entire police force in the North of Ireland were Protestants, and soon Catholics started looking out their window and seeing the Protestant police force beating down the Catholic protesters.

And that's how it started.

In the city of Belfast, the Catholics and Protestants lived on the opposite side of the same street. As a Catholic who watched one of their family members get taken down in a riot, it was a little too tempting to cross the street and get vengeance - a life of one of theirs for the life they took from you. Soon, both sides had this mentality and fatalities were occurring every day.

The Separation Wall, at 4.5 miles longer in its entirety than the Berlin Wall in its individual parts (each section that's maintained by different countries), was put up to separate the two sides of the streets in hopes of maintaining some form of peace between the Catholics of the Protestants.
From this, it became dubbed the "Peace" Wall.

In the 1960's-1970's, Ted Kennedy along with some other powerful political leaders traveled to Ireland to push for peace negotiations in Northern Ireland. After years of fighting, peace, if an uneasy one, was finally found.

During these peace negotiations, the IRA - the Irish Republican Army - agreed to turn away from terrorism and their terrorist ties to find peace through talk negotiations. Yes, they once had ties with the PLA (Palestine Liberation Army), because for the longest time they claimed that both terrorist groups were "fighting a holy war", but because of their affinity to America for the difference it has made in the negotations, the IRA has dropped these ties.

Today, they maintain and edit a wall of murals known as the International Wall, which represents descrimination and wrongdoings across the globe. The tour guides that take American tourists to see the wall actually work with the IRA to maintain murals that are not upsetting or offensive to Americans in any way because they respect the American opinion.

Houses on the Catholic side of the peace wall still have cages covering them to protect from molotov cocktails thrown over the wall when it was at its shortest height (it was added to over the years). Memorial sights litter the Catholic side of the wall from when that entire street - over 180 houses - were burned to the ground in one single night. And there are grounds on the Protestant side that are still leveled - having not been restored before the recession hit.





But now, with help from foreign influences, Northern Ireland and the Republic are on the road to recovery. Murals cover the city, cries of hope for the future, and the new generations and being taught that they can live side by side without violence.

It's inspiring to see in a world filled with so much war and violence and bloodshed.

And it's refreshing as an American whose country is steeped in a pointless, seemingly endless war. We can make a difference in the lives of others and we have to remember that at a time when it's easy to forget.
(This mural depicts Protestant children drawing pictures on the Peace Wall of what they want to be when they grow up and chatting with Catholic children who are greeting them from on top of and around the wall. On the right hand side, you'll notice two spires, which represent the Catholic church you can see if you turn your back to this mural. This mural represents the hope that wall will be breachable by the coming generation.)