FOR as long as I live I will never understand the glorifying and romanticising of paramilitary groups here. To me, I would have real trouble standing over loving a group who murdered children, teenagers, tortured human beings, brought death and destruction to people, regardless of perceived justification.
In any normal and civil society, throwing your weight behind a group that peddled murder so enthusiastically – singing songs about them, painting murals celebrating them, wearing their logo next to your heart, commemorating them through music and song, marching in their honour – could, in some eyes, make you look like you were lacking in sense, compassion and humanity.
But we do it, every day, in every way in this place. We ignore it and justify it when 'our side' do it, and are outraged when the 'other side' do it.
We saw the depths of depravity we are capable here again this week when someone took it upon themselves – and I can't actually believe I'm about to type these words – to place 'UVF' in beautiful flashing Christmas lights on a fence in Derry. I've no idea what the thinking was behind that action, but many people were rightly outraged.
Equally, just as many thought it was funny – and that is the problem here. Our mindsets are skewed by our experiences and it doesn't allow us to see past them to where something like this would be considered wrong and sick and incredibly hurtful. Add also totally and utterly mind boggling.
Why anyone would want to honour a group renowned for their 'any Catholic will do' ethos is beyond me.
The UVF were well known for their drive-by shooting attacks in the 1970s, the victims of which were usually teenagers. They also targeted innocent shop workers, milk men, taxi drivers, people going to their work. They shot up bars and blew up city centres.
They shot SDLP member Denis Mullen on his doorstep and left his little daughter to sit with her murdered father as they fired at her mother as she tried to flee for her life over a field. The UVF gang the Shankill Butchers – named so because they tortured and mutilated their kidnapped victims with butcher's knives before slitting their throats and dumping their bodies in alleyways – were as brutal as the Glenanne Gang.
The UVF shot dead a woman who was in the hospital for an operation. They planted the Dublin and Monaghan bombs killing 33 people and injuring over 300. They shot teenage girls through their living room windows or as they stood with their friends on the street. Catholics were abducted, beaten to death and shot dead for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
People are quick to forget as the past is romanticised. A lot of the people glorifiying terrorists are of a similar age to those who felt their wrath in history.
One sickening attack stands out for me. Two teenage girls, Eileen Duffy (19) and Katrina Rennie (16), were serving in a mobile shop in Craigavon when two UVF gunmen came in and shot them in the head. On their way out, the gunmen saw customer Brian Frizzell (29), made him kneel and shot him in the head. Ordinary people doing ordinary stuff, whose lives were cruelly snuffed out by heartless and callous thugs who have simply no place being honoured anywhere.
I suppose if you're going to put up Christmas lights celebrating an organisation, or sing songs celebrating a group, or march in marches commemorating them, you can't then blame folks for thinking you support what they did – the killing of kids, the shooting and torturing of fellow human beings, the murdering of innocent people trying to just survive in this Godforsaken place. Because with all the will in the world, it's also impossible to separate the two.
If we want a better future, we need to let go of our blood soaked, brutal past and the actors who made it so. We need new heroes.
