In our document on Rosemary Nelson, we included an appendix that listed all known loyalist attacks from 1 January 1999 through 30 April 1999. Given the nature of the document the list focused on loyalist attacks. Since that time, we have continued to document attacks across the North, expanding our remit to include all attacks that might be considered sectarian (sometimes, however, the motives aren’t always clear.)
The following list of sectarian attacks is from 1 January through to the end of the month. Should any incidents have inadvertently been left off the list please contact us. The issue of inclusion/exclusion is very problematic. For instance this document does not include punishment beatings 'within' a community, attacks by the security forces on civilians or by civilians on the security forces or murders where the perpetrators are believed to be from the same community and the motive is not thought to have been sectarian. We have also not included violent incidents connected to feuding within loyalism.
We will update this list each month.
January 1. Bricks were thrown through the windows of a Nationalist house on Serpentine road in Whitewell in north Belfast. This is against a background of attacks, such as cars and houses being stoned, on Nationalists by Loyalists going back to December 1999.
January 14. Longlands in the Whitewell, N. Belfast. Bricks are thrown through the windows of a nationalist house. Petrol bombs were thrown but didn't go in.
January 19. A Belfast woman was distraught after receiving a bullet in the post along with a loyalist death threat. A schoolbus carrying nationalist pupils up the loyalist whitewell road was again attacked.
January 20. Longlands. Two nationalist houses had their windows put through with bricks. A Sinn Fein councillor in Monaghan was reported to have escaped injury after using a metal plate to shield himself from the blast which occurred when he opened a parcel sent to his family home.
January 21. N.Belfast. A nationalist mother and her family were living in fear after her daughter's window was smashed with a brick thrown by loyalists, the Irish Witness said.
January 22-23. An Orange Hall was vandalised in Lisnamulligan near Hilltown, Co. Down. The attack brought unanimous condemnation from Ulster Unionist, independent, SDLP and Sinn Fein councillors and MLAs.
January 29. The British army has found no evidence to support a Catholic Royal Irish Regiment soldier's complaints that he was subjected to sectarian abuse, a report in the Irish News said. The soldier was previously reported to have been wrapped in a William of Orange flag and beaten until he recited the Orange Order oath. He claimed other soldiers wore T-shirts bearing loyalist slogans and hung loyalist slogans on walls.