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100 signatures reached
To: The Northern Ireland Executive
OPEN LETTER: Put Paramilitaries out of our Politics
We call on you to work together to remove the influence of paramilitaries from our politics for good.
Why is this important?
This year - 2024 - marked 26 years since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement - which ended the conflict in Northern Ireland which took over 3720 lives, and injured 47,541 people. Most of the deaths were of civilian people.
Despite people here voting overwhelmingly for peace, illegal loyalist paramilitary groups remain present and active in many communities, causing misery and harm to people and preying on those impacted by economic hardship. It is widely acknowledged that elements of loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the racist riots that swept Belfast in August this year.
This can no longer stand. We call on the NI Executive to do all in it's power to ensure that the commitment set out in New Decade, New Approach to ending the harm done by paramilitarism is acted on with urgency.
We reject the suggestion made by Gordon Lyons that those seeking to call the DUP to account for their meetings with the Loyalist Communities Council are displaying 'faux outrage'. We are not the problem. Seeking to normalise paramilitary groups having influence over our elected politicians is.
Despite people here voting overwhelmingly for peace, illegal loyalist paramilitary groups remain present and active in many communities, causing misery and harm to people and preying on those impacted by economic hardship. It is widely acknowledged that elements of loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the racist riots that swept Belfast in August this year.
This can no longer stand. We call on the NI Executive to do all in it's power to ensure that the commitment set out in New Decade, New Approach to ending the harm done by paramilitarism is acted on with urgency.
We reject the suggestion made by Gordon Lyons that those seeking to call the DUP to account for their meetings with the Loyalist Communities Council are displaying 'faux outrage'. We are not the problem. Seeking to normalise paramilitary groups having influence over our elected politicians is.