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About Untold Stories
Untold Stories features dispatches from Pulitzer Center-sponsored journalists reporting from around the world, as well as posts from special guest authors. Click links on the right to view dispatches from specific projects.
I've come to the end of my stay in Belfast and I would like to think that I've gained some understanding of the complexities in overcoming a long history of sectarian violence.
My final impression of Belfast came last night, as I walked down Shankill Road I saw two young boys, maybe 12 or 14 years of age, throwing rocks against a short wall in an empty lot next to the main road. It wasn't a riot, it was just kids being immature. But the wall was so short, it wouldn't have taken much for a rock to go sailing into the busy street. When I saw them I grabbed my camera and got a quick shot. The reason this stands out is that a random man walking down the street got quite angry at me and said, "Those are minors, you better not show their faces!" This man, who was walking with his own children in the path of the flying rocks, cared more about me filming the act of vandalism, than he did about the kids committing the act of vandalism.
Scott P. Harris, for the Pulitzer Center It seems important to me to say that I believe there is more than one Belfast. The City Centre looks and feels like any other British city. It’s clean, there is nice shopping, and teenagers meet up after school to hang out in the park. The kids in the park have one or two stories about the occasional sectarian dust up, but on the whole they talk about how they’ve moved on. They have friends of both religions, and they don’t seem to be effected by the Troubles in the slightest, or if they are effected, it is only by how fed up they are with their parent’s generation. The Belfast of The Falls and Shankill is a different animal altogether.
I spoke to a youth worker on Monday who asked me how long I planned to stay in Belfast. About two weeks I said, but I would stay as long as I needed in order to gain an understanding of the situation here. He said if that was the case I’d never leave, as “the longer you spend trying to understand it, the more complicated it will become.” I’m starting to see what he means.
Jake shows his Loyalist POW tattoo - Photo by Matthais Thoelen
Today I met with a former UVF prisoner named Jake Kane. Jake joined the UVF (a Loyalist Paramilitary group) as a teenager in the 1970’s. In 1976, at the age of 17, he was given a twelve year sentence for attempted murder (of which he served six years.) He insists that he was not a terrorist. He was an anti-terrorist who opened fire on a group of Catholics. Today, Jake works with other ex-prisoners in Shankill as a community organizer. Among other things, they try to use their experiences to help today’s teens avoid the path that they took. They also do what they can to promote tourism to the working class neighborhood.
To understand what life is like for teenagers growing up in modern day Belfast, you have to start with the images they pass everyday. Belfast is famous for it’s murals, intricate artwork painted on the sides of buildings all over town, the vast majority of which commemorate the different paramilitary groups that fought in the Troubles, both Republican and Loyalist.
BELFAST - I could be wrong, but there seems to be a sentiment in news that something bad has to happen for it to be "newsworthy." In the twenty month preceding last month's murders here, there had been a reported 20 attacks on members of the Police and British military, and while seven people were injured, no one died, so it wasn't "newsworthy" back in America. And so far, my impression of people here is that the threat of violence is something they are simply used to, perhaps because it doesn't compare to what they endured in the 70's and 80's.
Scott Harris is in Belfast for Good Friday. For the next two weeks he will investigate the legacy of the sectarian war and find out what life is like for teenagers in Northern Ireland today without memory of the conflict but still living in its shadow. This is Scott introducing his project.
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