Assertion of some rights fuels division

It is tragic that so many people in the North, from both communities, seem so ready, so determined to mark events or celebrate loyalties in ways that almost inevitably provoke another round of the danse macabre that ensures that age-old divisions — if not hatreds — are perpetuated.

Yesterday, republicans easily defined in the most corrupt sense of that high ideal, gathered in Castlederg to commemorate IRA men and women killed during the Troubles. The assembly’s objective was to honour, among others, two terrorists who died when a bomb they had intended to use to kill innocent people in a Tyrone town exploded before they could plant it.

That this event went ahead just days before the 15th anniversary of one of the very worst atrocities of the Troubles — the Omagh town centre bombing on Aug 15, 1998 — shows a deeply insensitive and blinkered view of the world that does not bode well for the prospect of communal harmony in the North.