Published on Thursday 16 February 2012 08:32
THE pastor involved in organising a walk in memory of 10 Protestant workmen slaughtered by the IRA has received a death threat.
Pastor Barrie Halliday of Five Mile Hill Pentecostal Church in Bessbrook is helping plan the march which aims to retrace the three-and-a-half mile last journey of the men who were murdered by the IRA at Kingsmills in 1976.
Yesterday Pastor Halliday, who has the full support of the victims’ families, confirmed that police had informed him of a death threat. “The message to me from the PSNI was that if we do proceed with the march through the village of Whitecross my church will be ‘burnt to the ground’ and I will be ‘shot dead’. It is pure intimidation.”
There has been opposition – led by the SDLP and Sinn Fein – to the walk passing through the nationalist village of Whitecross, one of the last spots the men saw before they died in two hails of 161 bullets.
Last night, the Parades Commission directed that restrictions would be placed on the route. These include only the sole survivor of the attack – Alan Black – and two relatives of each of the 10 men murdered being allowed to walk through Whitecross on February 25.
However, the initial reaction was that this was not acceptable to the victims. They had requested a march with some 150 people holding enlarged photographs of their loved ones and accompanied by a replica minibus of that riddled by the IRA during the attack more than 35 years ago.
Pastor Halliday added: “Which brother and which sister of those murdered does the commission think should walk along the route in Whitecross? How should we choose? We will be reapplying for another march.”
May Quinn, whose brother Bobby Walker was one of those murdered at Kingsmills, yesterday challenged nationalist claims that the march was “a Willie Frazer ego trip”, referring to the director of victims’ group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR).
“It is the victims that are having this march, not Willie Frazer,” she said. “But only for him, we would not have a victims’ group.
“Barrie is our pastor and we are very annoyed by the threat against him. He would never do something like that to anyone else and neither would we. We just want justice for victims. We have always been far too quiet from the very start. If we had done something wrong we would be sitting in Stormont by now.”
Colin Worton, whose older brother Kenneth was murdered at Kingsmills, said he could not accept that only two members of his family would be allowed to walk the entire route.
“I am not sure how you are going to say who can and cannot go from my family,” he said. “We also wanted to carry big photographs of Kenneth but all placards and banners have been banned. None of these restrictions were ever placed on the Bloody Sunday families’ march. Where is the equality?
“There were some 20 murders by the IRA in this area and we intended that their relatives should take part in this walk. Why can they not go too?
“The Parades Commission asked us why it took 36 years for us to organise this walk. But my answer to that was ‘why not after 36 years?’ The Bloody Sunday families marched for 40 years and got an apology from the Prime Minister. What else can the Kingsmills families do now to get justice?”
Newry and Armagh UUP MLA Danny Kennedy said he was taking the threat against Pastor Halliday seriously.
“I don’t think it can be discounted,” he said. “The police will have to give Barrie the appropriate security advice.”
He said that the SDLP and Sinn Fein contribution to the situation has been to “heighten tensions”.
“So far they have failed to take account of the fact that the original proposal has been scaled down,” said Mr Kennedy. “There are no bands involved. This is not a parade.”
Commenting on the death threat against Pastor Halliday yesterday, an SDLP spokeswoman said that the party “has always rejected violence in all its forms”.
A Sinn Fein spokesperson said: “If there is such a threat, it should be withdrawn immediately.”
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