SLAUGHTER IN THE SUNSHINE ROCKS TOWN HAUNTED BY TRAGIC MEMORIES
Slaughter in the sunshine rocks town haunted by tragic memories
Malachi O'Doherty
The 'Tyrone countryside seemed almost to be smiling in the spring sunshine yesterday. It was the sort of day on which it is hard to conceive of the skulking malice that would put a bomb under a young man's car.
In Omagh the card shops and few others were open.
They were providing for those who had forgotten Mother's Day.
In the small estates around the town, some young families were piling into the car to go off and visit granny with her flowers and present. There was no visible sign, in the life and shape of the town, that would explain a dirty murder.
Though there is the memorial to the bigger bomb of the summer of 1998.
It glints and shimmers in the breeze, and new arrivals like the eastern Europeans would get no sense from it, unless they went closer and read the inscription, that this is a town famous for slaughter on sunny days.
'It is all politics," says a man from Hungary.
"I don't understand."
He seems almost frightened by the question, as if there is a trap in it for him.
He seems to be trying to reassure me that he doesn't even want to know.
A young Polish man I meet up near the theatre has a similar wariness. Perhaps migrants when they come here are warned that we have occasional inconceivable rages and are advised not to talk to us about politics or religion.
"Maybe you will stay here and register to vote."
"Vote?" he doesn't know the word; when I explain he says he hadn't heard that there is an election coming.
Perhaps he isn't even curious about the posters on the lamp posts. Certainly the candidates look like jovial and greying men, no threat to anyone.
Two teenagers sitting on a bench in Market Street say they don't remember the last bomb, which went off just yards from where they are sitting and killed dozens of people.
But one of them heard the bomb that killed Ronan Kerr.
Aaron Quinn says: "I heard a big bang and looked out my window and I saw a cloud of smoke going up in the air, over some old warehouses," he says.
A new experience for him if not for the generation above him. Was he surprised?
He can be only 15 but he affects to be streetwise and says: "I was waiting for it sometime to happen, like."
His friend Conor Haughey says: "It's kinda scary going into town now in case it happens again."
Further down the street, a woman called Maureen says she cried when she heard about the death of the young policeman.
She grew up in Omagh though she was away at the time of the other bomb, the one that is always remembered now as the Omagh bomb, the town being more famous for that now than for anything else.
She says: "This is a good town because it was a garrison town.
"The soldiers married the local girls and everyone got on.
"There was never anti-anything in this town.
"Maybe that is why we are being targeted, because it is a good town."
She can't conceive of the violence that took Ronan Kerr's life, having grown out of the town itself, being indigenous to Omagh.
Another man I spoke to says: "I'm a republican myself. I condemn it like any other citizen, but 1 don't know who done it."
In his view, "these things are to be expected".
"There's enough people about now that think that's the way forward," he said.
"The overall majority wouldn't be for it I don't agree with it," he adds.
He agrees that he had once thought it was all right to bomb policemen in their cars.
He says: "Well, you have to remember that when 1 was 15 or 16,1 came onto these streets with a placard in my hand and I was beaten from the courthouse down to here.
"We got forced into situations we didn't want to be in. We got caught up in a lot of things."
He says now that if a son of his own was joining the PSNI: "I would have to let him do it if he was intent on it, but I'd be awful apprehensive.
"But it is a lot different now; the police are more accountable and there is a different mindset."
He describes the dissidents as "only lads".
He says: "They were only 10 or 16 years old when the thing was settled up. Where did they get the idea they had to do this?"
But those lads will argue to him, surely, that he too once thought it was all right to kill for the republican cause?
"I know. 1 know. But what do you do? It's very hard for everybody to move on, very, very hard.
"If you've everybody on board you're grand, but there'll always be somebody that doesn't agree."
He believes that the murder of Ronan Kerr will "strengthen the hand of Sinn Fein".
Is that a good thing?
"It probably is."
Malachi O'Doherty
The 'Tyrone countryside seemed almost to be smiling in the spring sunshine yesterday. It was the sort of day on which it is hard to conceive of the skulking malice that would put a bomb under a young man's car.
In Omagh the card shops and few others were open.
They were providing for those who had forgotten Mother's Day.
In the small estates around the town, some young families were piling into the car to go off and visit granny with her flowers and present. There was no visible sign, in the life and shape of the town, that would explain a dirty murder.
Though there is the memorial to the bigger bomb of the summer of 1998.
It glints and shimmers in the breeze, and new arrivals like the eastern Europeans would get no sense from it, unless they went closer and read the inscription, that this is a town famous for slaughter on sunny days.
'It is all politics," says a man from Hungary.
"I don't understand."
He seems almost frightened by the question, as if there is a trap in it for him.
He seems to be trying to reassure me that he doesn't even want to know.
A young Polish man I meet up near the theatre has a similar wariness. Perhaps migrants when they come here are warned that we have occasional inconceivable rages and are advised not to talk to us about politics or religion.
"Maybe you will stay here and register to vote."
"Vote?" he doesn't know the word; when I explain he says he hadn't heard that there is an election coming.
Perhaps he isn't even curious about the posters on the lamp posts. Certainly the candidates look like jovial and greying men, no threat to anyone.
Two teenagers sitting on a bench in Market Street say they don't remember the last bomb, which went off just yards from where they are sitting and killed dozens of people.
But one of them heard the bomb that killed Ronan Kerr.
Aaron Quinn says: "I heard a big bang and looked out my window and I saw a cloud of smoke going up in the air, over some old warehouses," he says.
A new experience for him if not for the generation above him. Was he surprised?
He can be only 15 but he affects to be streetwise and says: "I was waiting for it sometime to happen, like."
His friend Conor Haughey says: "It's kinda scary going into town now in case it happens again."
Further down the street, a woman called Maureen says she cried when she heard about the death of the young policeman.
She grew up in Omagh though she was away at the time of the other bomb, the one that is always remembered now as the Omagh bomb, the town being more famous for that now than for anything else.
She says: "This is a good town because it was a garrison town.
"The soldiers married the local girls and everyone got on.
"There was never anti-anything in this town.
"Maybe that is why we are being targeted, because it is a good town."
She can't conceive of the violence that took Ronan Kerr's life, having grown out of the town itself, being indigenous to Omagh.
Another man I spoke to says: "I'm a republican myself. I condemn it like any other citizen, but 1 don't know who done it."
In his view, "these things are to be expected".
"There's enough people about now that think that's the way forward," he said.
"The overall majority wouldn't be for it I don't agree with it," he adds.
He agrees that he had once thought it was all right to bomb policemen in their cars.
He says: "Well, you have to remember that when 1 was 15 or 16,1 came onto these streets with a placard in my hand and I was beaten from the courthouse down to here.
"We got forced into situations we didn't want to be in. We got caught up in a lot of things."
He says now that if a son of his own was joining the PSNI: "I would have to let him do it if he was intent on it, but I'd be awful apprehensive.
"But it is a lot different now; the police are more accountable and there is a different mindset."
He describes the dissidents as "only lads".
He says: "They were only 10 or 16 years old when the thing was settled up. Where did they get the idea they had to do this?"
But those lads will argue to him, surely, that he too once thought it was all right to kill for the republican cause?
"I know. 1 know. But what do you do? It's very hard for everybody to move on, very, very hard.
"If you've everybody on board you're grand, but there'll always be somebody that doesn't agree."
He believes that the murder of Ronan Kerr will "strengthen the hand of Sinn Fein".
Is that a good thing?
"It probably is."
Further Information
Publisher: BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Ref: BT/1205
Published Date: 04-Apr-11
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