Northern Ireland: Parades Stir Old Feuds

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/world/europe/northern-ireland-parades-stir-old-feuds.html

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Protestant marchers in Belfast threw bricks and bottles at the police, who responded by spraying water at them as Northern Ireland’s annual parade season turned violent on Friday. Tens of thousands of members of the Orange Order paraded at more than a dozen sites across Northern Ireland to mark the 1690 victory at the Battle of the Boyne by the Protestant William of Orange over the Roman Catholic King James II of England. One police officer was injured in west Belfast and had to be dragged away by other officers, a witness said. Pro-British Protestants march every summer in the British-ruled province; Catholics, who favor unification with Ireland, see the parades as provocative. Since a peace agreement was signed in 1998, violence between Catholics and Protestants, which raged on and off for three decades, has largely ended. But much of Belfast remains divided along religious lines.