People Before Profit Cllr Shaun Harkin said,
“Two more people have been sent to Altnagelvin following another barbaric shooting in Creggan. People Before Profit repeat what we have said many times before – these are futile acts that only serve to further traumatise those directly impacted and a community facing many hardships – and brings burden to an already overwhelmed health service.
As always, the nationalist and unionist political establishment have been first on the scene to rush out their expectedly shallow words of condemnation. But the last week has underscored the scale of their hypocrisy.
In East Belfast the PSNI appeared to give escort to a masked UVF mob intent on violence instead of interfering. The same police force then decided to run rampage at a small memorial of family members and victims of the Sean Graham’s atrocity.
The DUP and Jim Allister have spent the last week attempting to rile-up the spectre of loyalist violence against a sea border their Tory allies created. The threats against port workers were very well choreographed with DUP’s hypocrital threats of rebellion.
If only the DUP would display the same anger and calls for action when it comes to poverty and deprivation that a growing number of their constituents face. They rail about food missing on shelves but what about the growing numbers of their constituents going to food banks?
DUP MP Gregory Campbell’s Trump-inspired remarks about too many Black people and not enough white people on the BBC’s Songs of Praise is the type of racist verbal incitement emboldening people who burn down multicultural centres and attack people of colour.
The PSNI and entire Stormont Executive’s discriminatory crackdown on the Black Lives Matter protests still stands out as one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy, and there have been many, throughout the pandemic. All throughout the pandemic it’s been very clear there is one law for some – and another set of laws for those signing-off on them.
Executive parties repeatedly say they’re concerned about the impact of barbaric shootings on communities – but these are the same parties who have inflicted welfare reform and poverty wages on these same communities while ramming through damaging Tory cuts to mental health services and housing over many years.
The DUP, Sinn Féin and the SDLP are central to an Executive whose policies in response to the pandemic have caused health, economic and social mayhem. Many people are unnecessarily dead because of the policies the Executive has pursued. They have ratcheted up the crisis in the health service and destroyed many people financially.
All through this they’ve attempted to blame ‘the public’ and ‘individuals’ for the mayhem their policies has created. At every turn they’ve attempted to put profits first by pandering to elites and corporations. They’ve suspended Red Flag cancer surgery but won’t contemplate suspending healthcare profiteering.
The Executive parties are doing their best to blame each other for the crisis and find any means of deflecting from its own responsibility for the rising covid death toll and the economic and social carnage accompanying it.
The last thing the Executive wants is to be held collectively responsible. They are fine with intra-community tension and with communities turning in on themselves. This is what the nationalist and unionist establishment thrive on, constantly flames and needs.
Despite all the attempted deflection, anger and discontent with the Stormont Executive’s hypocrisy is growing. The Executive has failed a majority of people here. They’ve delivered none of the commitments in New Decade New Approach.
People Before Profit will be focusing on exposing the self-serving political hypocrisy and empowering communities to take on the policies of Executive.”