On Good Friday 1998, an agreement was supposed to bring peace between the feuding Unionists and Irish Republicans. Thousands of people died in the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland.
25 years after the end of the decades-long civil war in Northern Ireland, people from the once hostile camps have remembered the historic moment together. In Belfast, citizens formed a human chain on Good Friday – part from a street populated mostly by Protestant supporters of a close union with Britain, and part from a street populated mostly by Republicans wanting reunification Northern Ireland live with Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement ended a bloody civil war between the two camps. About 3,700 people lost their lives in the conflict. Approximately 47,500 were injured. The deadline is April 10, but since the agreement is closely linked to the Good Friday holiday, there were several official commemorations on that day.
Relative complains of political paralysis
For example, a commemorative meeting was held in the Stormont regional parliament in Northern Ireland. More than 3,600 names of the victims of the so-called “Troubles” were read out in Dublin. Several of those affected and their families gathered on a beach on the coast of Northern Ireland to watch the sunrise together and pause to commemorate the events.
Northern Ireland’s Alan McBride, whose wife and father-in-law were killed in a Belfast bombing in 1993, described the agreement as a “turning point” for Northern Ireland in an interview with the British news agency PA. However, he was also frustrated by the current political paralysis: “25 years later, I would have thought that we were already a little further on the way to a society that we voted for in 1998.”
In protest against post-Brexit rules for Northern Ireland, the unionist DUP party is blocking the formation of a regional government with the Republican party Sinn Fein, which emerged as the strongest party in the province for the first time in last year’s elections.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
