Six Injured As RUC Open Fire With Plastic Bullets
The RUC-PSNI opened fire with plastic bullets last night (Wednesday) during rioting in a unionist housing estate. Six people were reportedly injured by the baton rounds when trouble erupted in the Kilcooley estate in Bangor, County Down. The RUC-PSNI claimed they fired the rounds in response to several shots being directed at them.
The Crown Forces in the Six Counties have hundreds of thousands of newly purchased ‘crowd control’ baton rounds in their possession and the British government has rejected all appeals by human rights organisations to have them banned.
17 Irish people, including nine children, have been killed by rubber and plastic bullets fired by the RUC and British Army. Hundreds more have been seriously injured and maimed for life.
Among the victims were:
11-year-old Francis Rowntree, who was killed by a rubber bullet fired by the British Army on April 24 1972.
12-year-old Belfast girl Carol Ann Kelly was murdered by a plastic-bullet-firing British soldier in May 1981.
Seamus Duffy, a fifteen-year-old from the New Lodge area of north Belfast, was shot dead by the RUC on the anniversary of the introduction of Internment (August 9) in 1989.
Éirígí spokesperson Daithí Mac An Mháistír called for the weapons to be withdrawn from use immediately.
“It is indicative of the mindset of the RUC-PSNI that they continue to fire such a lethal weapon in the vicinity of large numbers of civilians. Plastic bullets should not be used by any organisation, least of all organisations like the Crown Forces, who have such abominable human rights records.
“We now have two political parties sitting on the Six County Policing Board who have consistently stated their opposition to the use of plastic bullets. It will be interesting to see how these parties are able to hold the RUC-PSNI to account for last night’s human rights breach.
Daithí continued:
“It is ironic that on the day it was being proclaimed that ‘normality’ had returned to the Six Counties with the ending of the British Army’s ‘Operation Banner’ that one of the most brutal tools of the British occupation was being deployed in county Down.
“Clearly, the normality that is being planned for the Six Counties is one tailored to suit the needs of the British government in its continuing interference in Ireland.”