Republican commemoration proved to be a celebration of mass murder and an insult to victims: TUV

​The TUV leader said the gathering at Mulllaghbawn on Sunday, addressed by Sinn Fein MP John Finucane, included a “weasel worded” attempt to equate dead terrorists with innocents killed by the IRA.

Mr Allister said: “There is no disguising the fact that today’s Sinn Fein jamboree in south Armagh was an uncouth celebration of the mass murder of their IRA.

"It was a calculated two-finger salute to every IRA victim. Finucane’s weasel worded attempt to equate dead terrorists with their innocent victims adds intended insult.

"There is no parallel or equivalence between Raymond McCreesh and his victims at Kingsmills and elsewhere. McCreesh chose to be a terrorist; he choose to murder the innocent.

"His victims, and those of all the others Sinn Fein glorified today, were given no choice or chance of life.”

In his speech, Mr Finucane referred to his own father’s murder at the hands of loyalist terrorists.

He said: “Throughout our campaign for truth and justice, I have been clear, repeatedly, that truth and justice is something which every person who has been impacted by our conflict deserves and is entitled to irrespective of whether those that inflicted the harm were loyalists, the British state or republicans.”

He added: “For just as truth and justice applies equally to everyone, so too does the right to remember and the right to commemorate”.

Meanwhile, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: “Challenging Sinn Fein’s attempts to rewrite history is not about being stuck in the past, rather it is about respecting [those] cruelly murdered by balaclava wearing IRA terrorists”.

In Coleraine on Monday, relatives of six people killed by an IRA bomb will attend a service to mark the 50th anniversary of the atrocity.