Statement by Jim Allister:
“Today, on Orange Victims Day, we recall those from within the ranks of Orangeism who paid the supreme sacrifice. It is fitting that we should remember them on the anniversary of the Tullyvallen Massacre when five Orangemen were murdered for the crime of being Orangemen and Protestants. It is a particularly stark reminder of the blatantly sectarian nature of much of the PIRA campaign – something the people of Northern Ireland were reminded of again when guns used in Tullyvallen were employed in the murder of ten Protestant workmen at Kingsmill a few months later.
“It is right and proper that such barbarism is recalled, even if it is in a somewhat scaled back fashion this year because of the pandemic. It is also right to remember that many IRA guns remain in circulation, fifteen years after they were supposedly all decommissioned. The supposed putting of the IRA arsenal beyond use was a major reason for the DUP abandoning their longstanding position that terrorists should not hold ministerial office in Northern Ireland. Yet we learn from the recent MI5 bugging operation of dissident Republicans that the Provisionals retain weapons including AK47s, machine guns and Semtex explosives.
“Twenty six years on from the 1994 IRA ceasefire – the anniversary of which was yesterday – not only do Sinn Fein thumb their noses at the victims created by the Republican movement by delaying their pension through the position the process gifted them in government but the IRA holds on to the type of weaponry which caused such misery at Tullyvallen and in countless other incidents during their campaign of terror.
“It is right to remember Tullyvallen and all innocent victims of Republican violence – not least because the IRA retains the capacity to visit murder upon homes again should they judge that doing so would further their objectives. That is part and parcel of the perverse process”.