An Irish republican dissident march banned from Belfast city centre has dispersed peacefully. Approximately 2,000 people were blocked from entering central Belfast by riot squad officers and up to 30 armoured land rovers at the bottom of the Falls Road.
The Anti Internment League held a parade on Sunday to mark the 45th anniversary of the introduction of internment without trial by the Stormont administration, with the support of the UK government, during the height of the Troubles in August 1971. The controversial policy of detaining terrorist suspects without trial ended four years later.
Organisers claimed internment was still being used against republicans opposed to the peace process and power sharing in Northern Ireland through the use of lengthy remand periods before trials.
Speaking at police lines on the spot where the march was not allowed to go any further, the league’s spokesman Gerard Fitzpatrick said the ban proved it was a myth that Belfast “was a shared city for all”.
The Parades Commission, the body which adjudicates on contentious marches in Northern Ireland, ruled last month that the march should not be allowed into Belfast’s central shopping district.
Last year three men and a woman were arrested during a riot after the same march was barred from the city centre.
The Anti Internment League said it planned to take a civil legal action against the commission’s decision.
