Thousands gather in Belfast to protest against violence and sectarianism

Thousands of people took to the streets of Belfast yesterday to protest against recent killings and sectarianism.

They gathered at Belfast City Hall to hear from the Sinn Fein lord mayor, Alex Maskey, and Protestant and Catholic leaders denouncing the attacks.

The Sinn Fein MPs Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Pat Doherty were among an audience that included business figures and a strong trade union presence. Ulster Unionists attended, but Democratic Unionists stayed away in protest against the presence of a Sinn Fein mayor.

Mr Maskey said: "In the wake of yet more killings, further attacks and even more families being displaced from their homes, it was incumbent on me to play my part with the City Council and others to come together to repudiate sectarianism."

The Unionist Culture Minister, Michael McGimpsey, said: "It's vital we keep reiterating this message that we won't tolerate this violence. This generation must not repeat the mistakes of my generation."

Numbers were down by comparison with attendance at a gathering in January protesting against the loyalist killing of a Catholic man.

But even as the rally took place, the ruins of a Protestant church, destroyed in an arson attack assumed to be the work of nationalist youths, were still smouldering in the city's north. Whitehouse Presbyterian Church is the latest example of dozens of churches and church-linked properties in the area set alight each summer.

The Reverend Liz Hughes said: "It was a dreadful shock to get this news in the early hours of the morning and to come down and see the church and the state it is in. This is a church where the people all work together, they all care for one other and they all care for their church building."

A local Catholic priest, Father Dan Whyte, whose church was destroyed by arson last year, said Catholic churches in the area would hold a collection to benefit the Presbyterian church "as a gesture of our sympathy and concern to this awful act of desecration".

John Reid, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said: "Sectarianism in any form is ugly, but to attack churches which play such a central role in the lives of so many families in the local community is particularly disgusting."

At the rally a minute's silence was observed for three recent victims of violence – two in Belfast, one in Londonderry.

Police investigating the death of a workman, David Caldwell, at a Territorial Army camp in Londonderry on Thursday arrested two people yesterday. Two men and a woman were already in custody for questioning about the incident, in which Mr Caldwell picked up a lunchbox containing a bomb left by the Real IRA.