Paramilitary groups are likely to be thrive on the “political instability” surrounding the Northern Ireland Protocol and the impasse at Stormont after the Democratic Unionist Party refused to join the governing executive, MPs have been told.
The DUP has refused to take up positions in the Northern Ireland Executive in protest at the post-Brexit trade deal which effectively placed a border in the Irish Sea.
Duncan Morrow, a politics professor and director of community engagement at Ulster University, told Parliament’s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on May 18 the “ongoing political controversy” had created a “climate of legitimacy” for paramilitary groups.
‘Clarion Call to Violence’ on Social Media
The chairman of the committee, Conservative MP Simon Hoare, asked the academic experts who were giving evidence whether social media networks were doing enough to prevent incitement to violence in Northern Ireland.He read out a message that had been posted on Facebook, which he described as a “clarion call to violence and illegality.”
Quoting from the message, Hoare read: “Loyalist paramilitaries should now be thinking of joining as one army. Forget all the jealousy and feuds and backstabbing. The people of our country are calling for unity. I believe this should start in the ranks of men who are prepared to stand, fight and win, which there is no doubt they will. United Ireland is a pipe dream and Sinn Fein know it. If England won’t stand with us we will stand alone. We’ve done it before and we will do it again. Politicians are not to be trusted.”
Colm Walsh, a research fellow in social sciences at Queen’s University, said he was “not surprised” by the incitement in the Facebook post and he said there was “no easy answer” about whether social media companies were doing enough to prevent it.
Morrow said young people were facing “amplification” of coercion on social media and he said it should be a “wake-up call.”
Walsh said he had conducted research in 2019 that found young people were still being exposed to violence at the hands of paramilitary groups.
He said, “The ways that young people experienced violence had shifted slightly but actually the rates of exposure and the prevalence of exposure to violence in various forms, from low-level to higher harm organised crime and paramilitary violence was still very much present … and it affected their thoughts of their own personal safety.”