Police in Northern Ireland will be giving into “mob rule” if they fail to assist with the dismantling of a loyalist bonfire that is believed to pose risks to public health and to energy supplies, Sinn Féin has said.
Loyalist paramilitaries warned of disorder if authorities took down the towering pyre on Meridi Street off Donegall Road in Belfast, which is to be lit on Friday night as part of wider loyalist commemorations.
On Wednesday a Belfast city council committee voted to send contractors to dismantle the bonfire, which is on a site that contains asbestos and is close to an electricity substation that powers two hospitals. The Police Service of Northern Ireland declared a “major incident” over the bonfire site and is considering the council’s request.
A joint statement from south Belfast paramilitary groups warned of a backlash if the pyre was removed. “PSNI have been advised of the risk of widespread disorder, with loyalists in other areas across NI staging interface riots to stretch the PSNI,” it said.
The Sinn Féin assembly member Pat Sheehan urged the police on Thursday to take “firm, immediate action” to protect public health and critical infrastructure. “We can’t allow mob rule to decide what happens to this bonfire,” he told BBC Radio Ulster.
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Effigies and the flag of the Republic of Ireland on the Moygashel bonfire. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Sheehan also urged unionist representatives to “step up” and condemn the bonfire, which is one of about 300 that will be lit on Thursday and Friday as part of the annual celebration of the victory of King William III’s Protestant forces over Catholics at the battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Meanwhile, a senior cleric added his voice to condemnation of a separate bonfire, in the County Tyrone village of Moygashel, that features an effigy of a migrant vessel with a dozen mannequins in lifejackets and placards that say “stop the boats” and “veterans before refugees”.
John McDowell, the Church of Ireland archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, called the effigy racist and threatening. “It certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity or with Protestant culture and is in fact inhuman and deeply sub-Christian. I hope that the many people from other countries, who live in that area … can be reassured that it does not in any way represent the feeling of the vast majority of their neighbours.”
An Irish national flag is also on the Moygashel pyre, which is to be lit on Thursday night.