Protest against parade
PROTESTORS took to the streets of Lurgan on Saturday - to oppose this weekend's planned homecoming parade for the RIR in Belfast.
Around 40 members and supporters of the republican socialist political organisation, irg, held the picket at Church Place.
Hundreds of leaflets urging support for the forthcoming irg demonstration in Belfast against the army's parade were handed out.
The leaflets listed cases detailing what a spokesman described as "the publicly recorded, sectarian actions of almost 100 members of both the UDR and RIR from the mid-Ulster area".
A spokesman for irg said: "Next Sunday's parade through Belfast is about normalising the history of a force which was renowned for sectarianism.
It is nothing less than a blatant attempt to whitewash over the record of sectarian murders and attempted murders which UDR and RIR members were involved in."
He continued: "The nationalist community have all too many recent and vivid memories of the actions of both the RIR and its predecessor, the UDR.
"Every time a nationalist or republican had the misfortune to encounter a UDR/RIR checkpoint or UDR/RIR foot patrol, the prospect of abuse, assault and murder constantly presented itself.
"The massacre of the Miami Show Band was just one example of what was effectively a joint UDR-UVF operation. An RIR soldier was arrested in relation to the murder of Lurgan solicitor, Rosemary Nelson."
He concluded: "On the streets and in the countryside around Lurgan, Portadown, Armagh,and Dungannon - the area at the very heartland of the notorious murder triangle wherein unionist death squads could act with both impunity and a terrible ferocity - the UDR/RIR was the face of Britain's locally recruited militia, with all the ugly bigotry and vicious sectarianism which that entailed."
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Weather for Lurgan
Sunday 05 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 5 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 4 C to 9 C
Wind Speed: 5 mph
Wind direction: North
