Northern Ireland protesters block Orange Order march in Portadown | News

Crowds gathered on Garvaghy Road on Sunday to protest a court ruling allowing the march.

Thousands of demonstrators blocked a road leading to the Catholic district of a Northern Ireland town where a Protestant organization was due to march.

Northern Ireland’s High Court on Sunday allowed the Protestant organization the Orange Order to march in a predominantly Catholic area of ​​the town of Portadown for the first time in 28 years, reigniting one of the region’s most contentious marching disputes.

The court rejected a final attempt by residents to stop the parade passing through Garvaghy Road, after the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal overturned a temporary injunction granted on Saturday.

Thousands of people, including Northern Ireland Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill of the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party and party leader Mary Lou McDonald, gathered on the road to protest the decision.

“It’s crazy,” McDonald told reporters shortly after 8 a.m. (0700 GMT), the time the march was scheduled to begin. “This is, in fact, primitive treatment of any community in 2026. It is intolerable and will not be tolerated.

“This is a dignified and united community, and they are absolutely determined that they and we will not be dragged into the past.”

McDonald and O’Neill urged the British government and police to intervene to stop the parade. O’Neill said she had spoken to the British minister for the region and the Irish government.

Police vans parked nearby had earlier broadcast a warning that anyone taking part in the protest was committing a criminal offence.

A small group of Orange Order members wearing traditional orange silk scarves and black bowler hats gathered in another part of the city, a photo posted on X by Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) lawmaker Carla Lockhart showed.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham called for calm, saying “great progress has been made in Northern Ireland and we don’t want to see things go backwards.”

Jon Boutcher, Northern Ireland’s police chief, called on “those with influence to encourage people to obey the law”, referring to the protest blocking Garvaghy Road. According to him, there were no signs of violence or disorder.

“The police are engaging and working with all parties and will continue to do so. It is up to all of us to come together at times like this to do all we can to preserve a peaceful Northern Ireland.”

Deputy Prime Minister Emma Little-Pengelly of the DUP, who supports Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, said on Sunday that threats of violence were unacceptable. “No one in Northern Ireland wants violence or disorder,” she added.

The Irish government said it was “very concerned” about the situation and that its priority was to avoid “a return to the divisions of the past”.

The Orange Order is a Protestant organization closely associated with unionism, the political tradition which favors the retention of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom.

The Parades Commission, the independent body that rules on contested marches in Northern Ireland, approved Sunday’s procession with a limit of 35 people, banned groups and accompanying supporters, and demanded the march end at 9:30 a.m. (0830 GMT).

The dispute over the Drumcree and Garvaghy Road parade became one of the bitterest confrontations of the “Troubles”, the decades-long conflict over Northern Ireland’s political status that largely ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Repeated attempts by the Orange Order to return from Drumcree Parish Church, along Garvaghy Road, sparked protests, violence and major security operations during the 1990s.