Lasair Dhearg condemns Stormont leader Michelle O’Neill’s unsurprising decision today to lay a wreath to British imperialism. This shameful display not only serves to spit in the faces of the millions of victims of British imperialism in Ireland, but also the hundreds of millions who have been murdered around the world in the name of Britain’s bloody empire.
As many families continue to seek justice for their loved ones who were murdered at the hands of the British state, such a display flies in the face of Sinn Féin’s supposed Republicanism. This is especially true in the wake of the collapse of the trial of Bloody Sunday mass murderer ‘Soldier F’, to whom O’Neill lays a wreath to today.
While Sinn Féin claims that today’s ceremony is in remembrance of only those killed during the disastrous First World War, in reality, the triumphalist display of armed British occupiers in Belfast tells a very different story. Whether the wreath is made of Laurels or Poppies, it still is laid to those who have burned and pillaged their way across Ireland for centuries.
Today, more-so than ever, Lasair Dhearg stands firmly in opposition to any attempts in normalising British militarism, occupation and oppression. Today, however, begs the question for Sinn féin, which side are you on?
