PSNI blocks anti-internment parade in Belfast
A major police operation has been implemented to halt a republican anti-internment parade entering Belfast city centre.
A line of riot police stood in front of lines of armoured vehicles to block a main approach road and uphold an official ruling preventing the demonstration from proceeding in from the west of the city.
The now annual event is organised to mark the introduction of internment without trial by the Stormont administration, with the support of the UK government, during the height of the Troubles in August 1971.
The controversial policy of detaining terrorist suspects without trial ended in 1975.
However, the parade organisers - the Anti-Internment League - allege it is still effectively operated by the state authorities in the present day through the use of lengthy remand periods ahead of trials.
In previous years the parade has been granted permission to proceed into the city centre.
However, the Parades Commission imposed a restriction this year prohibiting the parade reaching its proposed end point at City Hall.
In making the ruling to halt it at the junction of Divis Street and Barrack Street - around half a mile from City Hall - the commission cited the organisers’ failure to properly engage with it on their plans and their “deliberate breach” of a timing restriction last year.
The commission said the restriction was “fair, proportionate and necessary”.
Nine police officers were injured last year when sporadic trouble flared in a nationalist area of north Belfast after the parade was halted.
The 2015 demonstration was originally granted permission to pass through the city centre, but only before 1.30pm.
When that deadline passed, the parade had not even left its designated start point in the nationalist Ardoyne area, so police commanders announced that it would be halted.
As loyalist counter protests in the city centre dispersed, police rolled out a huge security operation to stop the march on the Oldpark Road around 2.5 miles away.
The parade dispersed peacefully but an hour later trouble broke out in the area when police manning the temporary road block were attacked.
In 2014 there were minor disturbances at the controversial event but in 2013 almost 60 police officers were injured when loyalist protesters rioted.
This year’s proposed parade route was significantly different from recent years, with the march starting on the Andersonstown Road in west Belfast, rather than in Ardoyne in the north of the city.