International Rights Adviser to Examine Riot Baton Round Use

From the Irish News, by Allison Morris:

An international human rights adviser has been called in to investigate the circumstances in which up to four young people were injured with police baton rounds in north Belfast last month.

The four, including a 13-year-old child, were hit with the baton rounds during riots in Ardoyne on July 13 surrounding a controversial Orange Order parade.

The Police Ombudsman is already conducting an investigation.

However, The Irish News has learned that an international adviser has been called in to compile a report which will be presented to the Policing Board examining the police treatment of young people in north Belfast.

There have been complaints by campaigners that rights under European treaties may have been breached during the disorder that lasted for three nights following the loyal order parade past Ardoyne shop fronts.

Seventeen people, eight of them children, were killed by plastic bullets in the north during the Troubles.

The old style of plastic bullet is no longer used in Northern Ireland. In March 2005 the Policing Board backed Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde’s decision to introduce a ‘less lethal’ type of baton round known as the Attenuating Energy Projectile.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has already called for the baton round to be withdrawn from use in riot control.

Last week it was revealed that the cost of one day’s policing for the Orange Order parade in Ardoyne was estimated at £422,000.

The mother of one schoolboy struck on the leg with a police plastic baton round claimed he had narrowly escaped serious injury.

Edmund Rice pupil Patrick Waring (13) was hit in the thigh shortly after loyalist bandsmen passed the interface on July 13.

“I’d brought Patrick into the house earlier that day once the trouble kicked off,” his mother Valerie said.

“I only went out to the shop round the corner for five minutes and when I got back he was gone – I suppose he was curious because he knew that something was going on up the road.

“I was just about to go looking for him when his older brother carried him into the house and said he had been hit.

“Patrick is 13 but he’s very small and looks much younger. Whoever fired at him would have been in no doubt he was only a child.

“I was just thankful that he wasn’t more seriously injured but I’m angry that plastic bullets were fired into crowds of children.

“Given the amount of mothers who have lost their children because of plastics you would think that in this day and age this sort of thing couldn’t happen, that there would be tighter controls.”

A spokeswoman for the PSNI said: “As an investigation is ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment further.”