PSNI accused of demonising Creggan community

Derry City and Strabane District councillor, Maeve O'Neill (People Before Profit) has described claims there will be trouble in Derry this weekend as a "cynical attempt to pressurise the government for more resources".

Ms O'Neill who represents the Moor DEA said: "PSNI claims there will be trouble this weekend in Derry are incredibly provocative, and a cynical attempt to pressurise the government for more resources. 

"Deploying hundreds of police officers to Creggan, on the back of weeks of harassment of communities by the PSNI, will likely make the situation worse and more dangerous. Is this want the PSNI are aiming for?

"People want their communities to be free from violence and intimidation. The overwhelming majority of people in Creggan and elsewhere don't want to see violence, nor do they support organisations intent on dragging us backwards. 

"It is appalling that 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, the PSNI are still operating with impunity in our communities. Genuine peace and an end to paramilitarism requires political solutions."

Cllr O'Neill added that issues including deprivation and poverty must be addressed.

She added: "However, the Tories and Stormont are inflicting more cuts on that will hammer areas already struggling disproportionately with hardship. 

"The Good Friday Agreement architects promised prosperity for all. Instead, they have deepened inequality, damaged public services and continued to neglect Derry and the North West. And their only solution to the hardship crisis is more policing.

"Sectarianism needs to be systematically challenged but the DUP have spent the last year holding all of us to ransom and whipping-up sectarian tension.

"Policing itself must be addressed. Continued police cover-ups of collusion and the expansion of further abusive policing powers needs to end.

"We stand with the people of Creggan against demonisation and heavy handed policing."

Cllr O'Neill's remarks come as those in attendance at a 1916 Easter Rising commemoration in Dublin, organised by Saoradh, heard security forces in the North accused of "provoking" the Nationalist community.

At the event, which was held on Friday (April 7) at St Fintan's Cemetery in the Dublin suburb of Sutton, the PSNI, M15 and "other members of the security forces" were "warned" to stay away from the Creggan on Monday (April 10).

PSNI Chief Constable, Simon Byrne, said on Friday (April 7) it had "strong intelligence terror attacks are being planned against its officers on Easter Monday". He also said PSNI officers would be "moved to frontline duties to counter any potential threats", in a policing strategy which hadn't been used for years.

Assistant Chief Constable Bobby Singleton also stated the PSNI had received “strong community intelligence” there would be “attempts to draw police into serious public disorder and to use that then as a platform to launch terrorist attacks on police as well” during dissident republican commemorative events in Derry over the weekend.

In addition, MI5 and the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre raised the "terror threat level" in the North of Ireland from “substantial” to “severe” last month, following the shooting of PSNI DCI John Caldwell in February.

In a statement on Friday (April 7), Saoradh vice chairman, Brian Kenna, said that his movement continued to benefit from the “whole issue of Brexit being dragged out over the last four or five years”.