Massacre

Two boards are added to either end of the many panels of the portraits of victims and the plastic bullet board (State Sponsored Killings) in Beechmount Ave/Ascaıll Ard Na bhFeá.

“At 8:47 pm on Saturday 4th December 1971, a no-warning bomb, planted by British terrorists, exploded on the doorstep of family-run McGurk’s Bar. Fifteen innocent men, women and children perished. Those who were not crushed or slowly asphyxiated by masonry where horrifically burned to death when shattered gas mains burst into flames beneath the rubble. Nearly the same again were dragged from the debris alive. In the aftermath of the atrocity, the British and Unionist Governments, RUC police force and British military disseminated disinformation that the bomb was in-transit and that the civilians guilty by association, if not complicit in this act of terrorism. This is despite a mountain of forensic evidence including a witness statement that saw the bomb being planted and lit before the British terrorists escaped into the night. From the moment the bomb exploded and for 40 years since, the families and friends of those murdered have campaigned constitutionally and with great dignity to clear the names of their lived ones. It is a Campaign for Truth that continues to this day. Join us at themcgurksbarmassacre.com” “

“Springhill–Westrock Massacre. Belfast’s Bloody Sunday. Time for truth! On the 9th July 1972 a team of British Army snipers took up firing positions in Corry’s timber yard overlooking the nationalist Springhill/Westrock estates. Within less than an hour five civilians lay dead and two critically wounded. Among the dead were three teenagers, a father of six and a priest on his way to administer the last rites to the dead and injured. There has never been a proper police investigation, and not one solider has spent a single day in prison in connection with their deaths. The families deserve, and demand the comprehensive facts be told by the British establishment. The truth costs nothing.”

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Copyright © 2012 Peter Moloney
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Clonoe Martyrs

East Tyrone remembers IRA volunteers Patrick Vincent, Sean O’Farrell, Peter Clancy, and Barry O’Donnell, who were killed by the SAS after attacking Coalisland RUC station with a machine gun mounted on the back of a lorry on February 16th, 1992 as they were switching from the attack vehicles to getaway cars in Clonoe (WP). With republican graffiti: “End strip searches in Maghaberry jail on republican POWs”.

Lisnahull Road, Newell Road, Donaghmore Road, Dungannon

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Copyright © 2012 Peter Moloney
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Óglach Mickey Devine

“In proud and loving memory of Óglach Mickey Devine died 20th August 1981 in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, after 60 days on hunger-strike. Mickey was waked and buried from this house, the family home of his sister Margaret, also died 30th March 2005.”

Rathkeele Way, Derry

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Copyright © 2012 Peter Moloney
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Support The Maghaberry “Dirty Protest”

The 1981 hunger strikes – as the culmination of the blanket protest and no-wash or “dirty” protest – are put in parallel with the dirty protest against forced strip searches in Maghaberry prison, involving throwing urine and excrement onto prison landings, as well as not washing or shaving (BBC).

Beechmount Avenue, Belfast

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Copyright © 2012 Peter Moloney
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Frederick Douglass

Abolitionist mural with quotes from Douglass (“It is easier build strong children than to repair broken adults.”), Abraham Lincoln (“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”, Angela Davis (“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.”), Muhammad Ali (“Why should I drop bombs on brown people in Vietnam while so-called negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs …”), Steven Biko (“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”), MLK (“I have a dream … black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.””), Bob Marley (“Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race.”), Nelson Mandela (“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”), Paul Robeson “The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I made made [sic] my choice. I had no alternative”, and (without attribution) James Connolly (“The worker is the slave capitalist society, the woman [female worker] is the slave of that slave.”) Also portrayed are Harriett Tubman, Barack Obama, Betty Sinclair, Mary Ann McCracken, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Haitian Revolution, Chief Joseph, El Salvador, CoMadres.

Northumberland Street, Belfast

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Copyright © 2012 Peter Moloney
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Forget The Past

“HET” is the “Historical Enquiries Team”, and has been investigating unsolved killings from the Troubles since 2005 (WP). The graffiti in these images from Mount Vernon (Shore Road), are perhaps specifically in connection with the investigation into the UVF unit in the area (BelTel) and the murder of Jim Harbinson (BelTel). “HET go home”.

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Copyright © 2012 Peter Moloney
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The Boy Soldiers

Here are images from the four panels that comprise the WWI memorial in Mount Vernon, showing men attacking (Thiepval?) wood, the battlefields around Messines, a soldier approaching a church with a spire, and back-to-back memorials to John Condon, the Waterford [city] “boy soldier”, who died aged 14 in a gas attack – “his memory is kept alive as a symbol of the futility of war” – and William McFadzean, who won a VC for throwing himself on a dislodged box of hand grenades.

At this time (2012) the boards on the outside wall had been taken down. They would later be restored – see X06017, which also has the reverse of one the panels.

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Copyright © 2012 Peter Moloney
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