A REPUBLICAN poster placed - on the eve of Remembrance Day - beside a cenotaph where 12 people were killed by an IRA bomb in the `Poppy Day massacre' has been branded "twisted".
Ten civilians - many of them elderly- and a police officer were killed and 63 people injured in Enniskillen on November 8 1987, when the bomb exploded near its war memorial during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony.
More than a dozen posters were placed around the Co Fermanagh town on Wednesday night, with pictures of the union flag beside an `equals' sign and the words, murder, occupation, inequality and collusion.
DUP assembly member Deborah Erskine posted a picture of the scene shortly after they appeared.
"“It is disgraceful that a republican poster was placed on Enniskillen war memorial last night," she said.
"For an organisation to erect these posters ahead of the acts of remembrance takes a special kind of twisted nature.
"They should front up and explain their need to be so insensitive and offensive. It was a deliberate act on the eve of Armistice Day. It was designed to offend.
"When this war memorial was unveiled in 1922, the first wreaths were laid by Protestant and Catholic orphans. It is those parents, who came from all faiths and none, that we remember, yet the people behind this poster, just endeavoured to cause hurt."
UUP Fermanagh and South Tyrone assembly member Rosemary Barton said the "vile posters" were timed to cause "maximum hurt and offence".
"(It) is nothing but a hideous attempt to stoke up tensions once again in the area and people are indeed both disgusted and outraged.
"The Enniskillen Cenotaph is a place to remember those who lost their lives in both World Wars regardless of creed or colour, and it is also where people lost their lives in the IRA’s Enniskillen Bomb in 1987.
"Cenotaphs and War Memorials should be a place of respect and contemplation. Only a seriously twisted mind would seek to erect the type of poster that was put up at Enniskillen War Memorial in advance of Armistice Day, and timed to cause the maximum hurt and offence.
“This is a hate crime which must be condemned by all political parties and as the police investigate, I am calling on them to increase their surveillance around all war memorials.”
Former First Minister Arlene Foster said those behind the posters are "beyond contempt".
"My thoughts are with the families of those murdered and maimed by the PIRA bomb 34 years ago. Their dignity and determination stands in stark contrast to the cowards who put up these posters beside the war memorial."
