The hypocrisy from Irish republicans when it comes to hate crime is repugnant

It just happens again and again and again.

Sinn Fein, the party with an inextricable political link to the long IRA campaign of sectarian murder and mayhem, lectures this society for sectarianism.

At the Stormont election, sanctimonious SF politicians denounced sectarianism from their victory platform.

But SF is not in fact lecturing society as a whole. It is lecturing unionists, and implying that Northern Ireland is a unionist statelet in which only unionists are sectarian.

It is a lie, but worse, it is grotesque hypocrisy.

Now they are at it again, after video footage of men by an Orange banner mocking the murder of Michaela McAreavey.

It was a shameful incident, taunting the memory of one of the most upsetting murders of a Northern Irish person in recent years — a terrible, wicked killing of a young woman at what should have been the happiest time of her life, on honeymoon in a dream Mauritius resort.

The last people, however, who should get on their high horse about that vile conduct are those republicans who celebrate terrorist murder.

Michelle O’Neill says “laws to tackle hate crimes and sectarianism must be strengthened so those responsible can be properly held to account under the law. Sinn Fein will ensure that legislation on hate crime being proposed by the justice minister will be strong enough to deal with the type of incitement to sectarian hate exposed over the weekend”.

It is repugnant to hear such talk from a leader in a party that celebrates haters such as the sectarian IRA mass murderers belatedly stopped by the SAS at Loughgall in 1987, after which the incidence of border killings of Protestants fell.

Let us not forget the saga in which an elderly pastor, James McConnell, was put in the dock for alleged Islamophobia. Martin McGuinness accused the late Pastor McConnell of “hate mongering”. Such from a man who was never made to account for being his own role in some of the most grievous hate crimes in western Europe since World War II.

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