787154 The taking down of the flags instead of mass murder, illustrates how far we have travelled in the North.
Which is exactly what I have been saying for 5 days now.
Not quite Patrique. You began for 4 days telling me that it did not happen at all because Catholic dogs dont get run over by army vehicles
He will twist it again to suit him as he denies these things happen against the gaa even we all know it happens , for the record they where killed because they where gaa men .
The GAA members were targeted and murdered because they were GAA members, unionist paramilitaries openly stated this in their statements. This is a matter of public record as can be seen below in just some of the extracts I found.
GAA members were viewed by paramilitary organisations as legitimate targets. For instance, in 1991 the UFF stated it was targeting members because, they alleged, they were supporting the 'republican war machine'. One member of the GAA was shot dead by the LVF in May 1997, outside the GAA club where he was chairman.
The belief that the Gaelic culture, personified by and encapsulated within the GAA so perfectly, is offensive to the Protestant and unionist community is nothing new. Donaldson's comments of the late 1990s have been often repeated in the annals of Northern Irish, indeed all Irish history. The level of offence caused by, and the political connotations connected with, the exclusiveness of the GAA has been so great that it has led the GAA directly into the paramilitary violence of the modern troubles. In October 1991 the Ulster Defence Association (a Protestant paramilitary group) added the GAA to its lists of legitimate targets because of its 'continual sectarianism and support for the republican movement'. (Independent, 9/10/93) This was reinforced by a later press release which declared that targets are 'those associated with the republican war machine... and identified at least a dozen members of the Gaelic Athletic Association as being involved'. (Guardian, 16/11/91) The reality of this threat has resulted in the deaths of individuals associated with or present at GAA-owned premises, and attacks on GAA clubhouses. In 1992 a man was shot dead while at the Sean Martin GAA club in east Belfast, and the landmark 3,000th victim of the troubles was killed while outside the Lámh Dhearg GAA club in Hannahstown West Belfast. In 1997 Sean Brown was murdered by Loyalist paramilitaries as he locked up the premises of the Bellaghy GAA club. In response to his death Seamus Heaney summed up the sense of loss that the tight GAA community felt when he wrote,
Tom1916 is quite right to state that loyalists carried out many murders simply because the victims were GAA members. However, two of the cases he highlights in his latest post are misleading as they were actually the result of internal republican feuds. The shooting at the Lamh Dearg club in west Belfast in August, 1992, was part of a dispute within the IPLO, while the killing at the Sean Martin's club in east Belfast two months later was down to the IRA. There have also been a number of occasions when republicans have either robbed or bombed GAA property, and several of the Disappeared were from strong GAA backgrounds. The vast majority of attacks on GAA members and facilities were the work of loyalists, but other groups have targeted the association as well over the years.