UK’s ‘appalling attack on international law’: Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald

Mrs McDonald said threats to breach the post-Brexit international treaty by the British government must be condemned by the global community.

She said: “If the British government follows through on these threats to unilaterally denounce and disapply the protocol, this would terminate the Withdrawal Agreement between the British government and the EU.

“The British government says that it wants to act responsibly and respect the Good Friday Agreement, yet their objectives are incompatible with the Good Friday Agreement. Unilateral action will deepen political instability and uncertainty. It amounts to an anti-Good Friday Agreement agenda dangerously wrapped up in pro-Good Friday Agreement rhetoric.”

The Sinn Fein leader added: “This strategy is actively supported by the DUP, who refuse to enter government in the north, despite the fact that the political institutions are not a party to the Withdrawal Agreement. It is denying democracy and punishing the public and this reckless boycott must end.”

The TUV last night said Sinn Fein’s new-found interest in international law was “sickening” and “ironic” given the IRA’s record of human rights abuses over the last five decades.

TUV South Antrim spokesperson Mel Lucas said: “I suppose it wouldn’t matter what day of the week Mary Lou McDonald chose to issue a statement commenting on people allegedly breaching international law, there would be some diabolical example of the republican movement’s disregard for the same.”

Mr Lucas continued: “It is, however, particularly telling that she should seek to lecture the UK about supposed ‘threats to breach the international rule of law’ on the anniversary of the murder of Douglas Deering, a 52-year-old man gunned down in his shop in Rosslea 45 years ago today.

“Tellingly, Mr Deering was the last Protestant business owner left in the village – a stark reminder of the Provisionals’ campaign of ethnic cleansing in the border areas of Northern Ireland.”