A SENIOR member of the Grand Orange Lodge has said the recent racist attacks "are the work of closed minds and empty brains".
Dr David Hume said such attacks could "never be right", whoever they were directed against.
Speaking at the dedication of a new banner for Ballykilbeg LOL 1040, Downpatrick, he said: "The intimidation of people because of their race, colour, creed
, or political belief can never be right, whether it is directed against Protestants or members of the Orange Order, or ethnic minorities in Belfast.
"Because you do not like someone does not give you the right to remove them from the neighbourhood. We as a Protestant people are well aware of the impact of ethnic cleansing, because we suffered it in the Irish Free State in the early 1920s and it resulted in an exodus of tens of thousands of innocent people, and the murder of others."
He said this generation of Protestants have too "lived through and are in the midst of testing times", and are currently in the middle of a "cultural war and propaganda war".
"Attacks on our Orange halls are part of that wider cultural war," he said. "Republicans believe that if they can defeat the Orange Order, they will be well on their way to achieving their goals.
"We are rightly seeing media attention and civic attention focus on racist attacks this week, but sometimes it is easy to forget the Orange community has been subject to the same type of attacks over many years. We have had nearly 300 Orange Halls attacked, members intimidated, and, sadly, 335 of our brethren murdered by terrorists."
He hit out at a "blinkered" republican ethos of, "if there are people you do not like get rid of them however you do it".
"That is why we are seeing the attacks on our Orange halls," he said, "because there are those in the republican community who believe they can remove us from the map by destroying our halls."
He branded people who carry out such attacks as representing a "destructive fringe", and said: "The solution for Northern Ireland is that we must all live together and respect each other for what we are. All that we ask is to be respected and we can extend no less privilege to others."Being British, he said "is about people of many backgrounds living and working together".
"As an institution which stands for civil and religious liberty for all, there should be no doubt for us that we say no to racist mindsets and intimidation," Dr Hume said.
