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By Kieran McDaid
THE eyes of the world’s media have focussed on the dispute in Ardoyne as protesters have tried to keep children from their primary school.
As school children stumbled over the rubble of Monday night’s rioting yesterday morning, they also had to be careful of dozens of television cables running along the Ardoyne Road.
Reporters from all over the world have descended on north Belfast to see why hundreds of riot police have been needed to allow four to 11-year-old Catholic girls to enter the Holy Cross school in the loyalist area of Glenbryn.
Tom Reid of the Washington Post has been reporting events in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday agreement but said he could not believe what he was now seeing.
“I have seen a lot of things in Northern Ireland but I was really shocked by what has happened to these kids. It is one of the worst things I have ever seen,” Mr Reid said.
“I keep reporting that things are getting better here but when you walk down the Ardoyne Road and witness the naked sectarian hatred, it would turn your stomach.
“For an American to see something like this evokes Little Rock in the 60s or Mississippi in the 50s. I really thought we were beyond things like this, but I must have been wrong,” he added.
Mr Reid said the stand-off at Holy Cross primary school was a massive story in his paper.
“My readers are totally fascinated by Northern Ireland. A lot of them are Irish so it’s a very big story for us.”
Several journalists who flew over from London to cover events in north Belfast have also been left puzzled.
“It is total lunacy to think that all this violence surrounds a piece of road only three or four hundred yards long. It does reminds me somewhat of the Garvaghy Road,” said one.
While another said she could not understand why the protest had centred on school children.
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