The following list of sectarian and other hate-driven incidents and attacks is from 1 through 31 December 2002. The criteria we use for inclusion is based on the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) criteria; if a person/organisation feels that the motivation for an attack against them was sectarian (or racist or homophobic), then it should be counted as such. We rely on a number of sources for our information, but this is by no means comprehensive. If you find incidents that have been left off the list please contact us.
December 1, Sunday. Loyalists pipe bombed a Catholic home in Islandmagee, Co. Antrim. (BT, CW, BBC)
December 2, Monday. The Andersonstown News reported that the UDA in the loyalist Village area of south Belfast had blamed Catholic residents of nearby St James for a petrol bomb attack on a house in Tavanagh Street in the Village. Catholic residents claimed the UDA were trying to justify attacks on Catholics and cited an attempted kidnapping on Broadway. (AN)
The same edition reported a new spate of racist and sectarian graffiti on property in the Donegall Road area, which it blamed on UDA elements aligned to the British neo-nazi Combat 18. The PFC has previously reported a joint UDA-Ku Klux Klan mural in the Village area, which depicted a nazi swastika. (AN)
December 3, Tuesday. Derry Magistrate Barry McElholme told two young men from the mainly loyalist Kilfennan estate on Derry's Waterside, that they had lied about being assaulted by two young Catholic men from Ballykelly. The two Ballykelly youths had, in fact, been subjected to sectarian taunts by a large gang of youths, which included the two Kilfennan youths. (DN) -
The UDA was blamed for an arson attack on a coffee house on the Stewartstown Road in north Belfast, which destroyed the premises. CCTV footage showed five attackers escaping into the Blacks Road estate. (NBN, CW)
December 4, Wednesday. In north Belfast, relatives of the 15 civilians killed in a loyalist bomb attack on McGurks Bar on 4 December 1971 commemorated the massacre by laying a wreath at the site of the atrocity. Security forces and Unionist politicians at the time claimed that the bomb had been an IRA "own goal", laying the blame on some of the victims. In the late 1970s, Robert Campbell, a loyalist arrested for another sectarian murder, confessed his part in the killings and was given 15 life sentences. In spite of this he has never told, nor has there ever been an investigation into who his accomplices were. It is widely believed that the security forces were involved in the attack, which is generally accepted as having been too sophisticated for the UVF to have carried out alone at that time. (NBN, CW, PFC)
December 5, Thursday. Warren McCauley, a 54-year-old gay man, originally from Portadown, died as a result of head injuries sustained during an assault in the Cornmarket area of Belfast city centre on the night of Tuesday 3 December. It is thought that the motive for the attack was homophobic. It would later emerge that the RUC/PSNI had logged almost 100 incidents of physical or verbal abuse against people because of their perceived membership of the gay community in two years. PA MagLochlainn of the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association said he believed this figure grossly underestimated the real number of attacks. (IN, BBC, PSNI, CW)
Loyalists in Ballynafeigh, south Belfast, demanded that the cross-community Rosario Youth Club change its name, because Rosario sounded too Catholic. The demand was rejected by the management committee.(SBN)
December 6, Friday. Two Catholics, a man and a woman, were injured in two separate sectarian assaults that were carried out by the same man in the Irish Street/Knockwellan area on Derry's Waterside. (DJ, PSNI)
December 7, Saturday. Community workers from the mainly Catholic Newington, New Lodge, and Ligoniel areas in north Belfast announced a challenge to a decision by Belfast City Council to cut the three areas from community funding which had been allocated to north Belfast. The decision to cut the funding to the three areas followed an objection from DUP councillor Nelson McCausland. Local sources claimed the move was "nakedly sectarian." (NBN)
In Derry, riots broke out between drunken Celtic fans and the PSNI, after Rangers beat their Scottish Premier League soccer rivals Celtic in Glasgow on the same day as the Apprentice Boys "Shutting of the Gates" march through Derry city centre. There had earlier been reports of sectarian taunts from Rangers fans and loyalist bandsmen, and of bottles flying between them and drunken Celtic fans. A crowd of drunken Celtic fans attacked property and vehicles after police ignored pleas for restraint and charged crowds, injuring innocent bystanders. The DUP's Willie Hay praised the Derry Celtic supporters club, whose members, he said, were not the ones responsible for the trouble. PSNI Chief Superintendent Peter Sheridan said that officers guilty of misconduct should face the full force of the law. A number of civilians were later charged in relation to the disturbances. (IN, DN, DJ, LS, CW, PSNI)
December 8, Sunday. Loyalists attacked a young Catholic man and beat him unconscious as he walked to his home in the Short Strand in east Belfast in the early hours of the morning. The PSNI said they had no report of the incident. (IN, CW)
The Sunday Tribune revealed that the PSNI is using its discretion to block applications by Catholic victims of petrol and pipe bomb attacks to apply for the SPED emergency re-housing scheme. While some applicants, including elderly ladies, have been denied approval for the scheme outright, others have to prove that the attacks were intended for them, rather than their property. In a number of cases residents were subjected to five or more attacks before they were given approval for the scheme. "It only took one pipe bomb to kill Elizabeth O'Neill in Portadown. It only took one petrol bomb to kill the Quinn children in Ballymoney," said the paper. (ST)
December 10, Tuesday. Catholic former member of the Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) Patrick Murphy, told a Fair Employment Tribunal that fellow soldiers had left bullets and sectarian notes in his locker and made abusive phone calls to his wife. He also told the tribunal that when solicitor Rosemary Nelson was assassinated in a loyalist car bomb explosion that his RIR colleagues had sung "I go to pieces". He also claimed that he was threatened and openly abused by Corporal William Thompson, who was later jailed for storing weapons for British fascist group Combat 18 and loyalist paramilitaries. Thompson had been arrested by detectives working on the Nelson murder investigation. Counsel for the Ministry of defence dismissed Mr Murphy as "unreliable". (IN, ST)
December 12, Thursday. At the high court in Belfast, Lord Justice Campbell denied bail to Raymond McMaster, 31, accused of driving a petrol-soaked car loaded with a firebomb to the Auld Lammas fair in Ballycastle, Co Antrim. A crown lawyer said the bomb could have killed up to 500 people. McMaster had initially admitted driving the car into place, but denied he had known it contained a UVF bomb. He later withdrew his admission. His lawyer said that at the time he had made his admission he was addicted to a body-building drug. (IN)
December 14, Saturday. A pipe bomb was found outside a nightclub in Belfast city centre. (PSNI)
December 16, Monday. Families from Derry's Waterside commemorated the five men, four Catholics and one Protestant, killed in a UDA gun attack on Annie's Bar, Top of the Hill on December 20, 1972. The five killed in what has been called the 'forgotten massacre' were Charles Moore, Frank McCarron, Michael McGinley, Bernard Kelly and Charles McCafferty. No one has ever been arrested for the massacre, said to have been carried out in revenge for the murder on the same day of UDR man George Hamilton. (DJ, LS, CW)
December 17, Tuesday. The Derry Journal reported that the LVF had threatened to shoot the drivers of cars with southern Irish registration plates. (DJ)
December 18, Wednesday. Loyalist paramilitaries were blamed for an "elaborate hoax" device left at St Patrick's Catholic Primary school in Rasharkin, Co Antrim. (IN, CW)
Loyalists pipe bombed the home of a Catholic family in Oldpark, north Belfast. The device exploded, causing extensive damage to the house, and severe trauma to a 24-year-old mother and her six-year-old twin boys, one of whom suffers from cerebral palsy. (NBN, CW)
December 19, Thursday. The Irish News revealed that the Police Ombudsman was investigating claims by Father Dan Whyte, the parish priest of St Bernard's Chapel, Glengormley, near Belfast, which was burned down by loyalists on June 11 last year. Father Whyte claimed that the PSNI had failed to fully investigate the attack. (IN)
December 22, Sunday. David Cupples, a 25-year-old Protestant from east Belfast who worked as a kitchen porter at Girdwood British Army Barracks, suffered severe injuries when he was "savagely beaten" by loyalists in Cliftonpark Avenue, north Belfast. His attackers had mistaken him for a Catholic. (IN, BBC, PSNI, CW)
December 25, Wednesday. David Cupples, the Protestant man injured in a sectarian attack in north Belfast on December 22, died from the head injuries he sustained in the assault. His attackers had mistaken him for a Catholic. Two 20-year-old men from west Belfast were later charged with his murder. They were also charged in relation to attempts by Johnny Adair's faction of the UDA to murder "mainstream" UDA Brigadier John Gregg. Gregg, once a friend of Adair's, was one of the men responsible for the assassination attempt on Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams in 1984. (BBC, IN, PSNI, CW)
December 29, Sunday. Around 100 loyalists gathered in Portadown at an LVF ceremony to mark the anniversary of the death of Billy Wright. During the ceremony the LVF issued a statement opposing the Good Friday Agreement, dubbing it the "Irish peace process."
Sources:
AN: Andersonstown News
BT: Belfast Telegraph
BBC: BBC radio and television news, BBC online, Radio Foyle
CW: Local community workers
DJ: Derry Journal
DN: Derry News
IN: Irish News
IT: Irish Times
ITN: Independent Television News
LS: Londonderry Sentinel
NBN: North Belfast News
NL: Newsletter
OB: Observer
PFC: Pat Finucane Centre
RM: RM Distribution
RUC/PSNI: Police Service of Northern Ireland (RUC) press office.
SBP: Sunday Business Post
SBN: South Belfast News
SI: Sunday Independent
ST: Sunday Tribune
UTV: Ulster Television