Belfast and new sectarian violence….

Can’t sleep and I’m looking at news from Belfast.  It’s not good.  Martin McGuinness, head of Sinn Fein, the political arm of what was the I.R.A., is saying that the peace process in Northern Ireland is at risk because of riots that have occurred this week in Belfast.  The Loyalists rioted and now there is chaos.  Clips online show cars overturned, people huddled in groups, and it might as well be a flash back to an incident from The Troubles.  I’m left wondering how I could have only just visited that city last month.  At the time, I felt like an explorer, but there was always an undertone of uncertainty in everything I saw.  I loved the political murals, but they gave me shivers.  I loved them because I think art has the power to memorialize and transform societies and cultures, but I had shivers because it felt strange to see such different, walled off areas as Shankill Rd. and Falls Rd. still mark off Roman Catholic and Protestant areas.

How do you break a cycle that doesn’t want to be broken?  In Derry, on a walking tour of the old city walls, the tour guide was a man with one Irish parent and one Chinese parent.  He mentioned how he believed sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, and in Derry in particular, would soon vanish with upcoming generations.  He did say he didn’t think it would happen very soon….which makes sense given this week’s upheaval in Belfast.  A city that has taken such pains to reinvent itself in terms of tourism, what with the new Titanic Experience centre and black cab tours of the Peace Walls, must feel worn down to see old angers rear their heads again.  Imagine being trapped in a historical spiral that leads back to the Battle of the Boyne in 1691.  How far back do we need to carry grudges, and how far forward are generations marked and punished for the sins of their fathers and mothers?

There is no one answer to this rhetorical and philosophical question….and it’s sad, even, that the question even needs to be posed in 2012, long after the Good Friday Agreement was signed and so many people have died unnecessarily.

peace to you all…and to Northern Ireland.

k.