On Current TV | May 01, 2009 | Comment on this video (6)

Belfast is Still a City Divided

rawbird
Ten years after the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland maintains a relative calm. Despite a few isolated incidents, the fighting seems to have ended. But has this brought Protestant and Catholic groups closer together? In Belfast the two groups live in neighborhoods that are still physically separated by "peace walls."
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6 comments // Belfast is Still a City Divided // Video

  • tankcommander
  • EmmaKSpence
  • panloaf
    • 0
      panloaf  

    • I can appreciate your interest in Belfast's politics, but this video doesn't do much to further knowledge of it outside the over-simplified version of events that has been used for the past 20 years by US media. Particularly the idea of there only being two religions, and that they are distinctly aligned with 2 (of the 4 or more) political positions. Nevermind the other ethnic groups that live in the city.

      Picking and choosing small groups of the population along the "peace line" - who are often the poorest in the city - is a bit like walking into a trailer park in the mid-west of the US; there's a stereotype, and you'll be surprised if you meet a kid or random person who doesn't fit into that to some degree. To have "never met a Catholic until 2000" takes some seriously introverted (and even xenophobic) behaviour in somewhere as small as Belfast - barely 300,000 people in the city itself - even with a physical wall in one part of it.

      I would agree with your last interviewee that relationships need to be built - and that is what much of the city, and the country, have been doing. The people in peace-line areas are (like it or not) marginalised; they often maintain the most hardline politics, and not necessarily for the most logical of reasons.

      Still, thanks for the submission - I'm probably not your target audience anyway, as I'm from Northern Ireland, and I really dislike "voxpop" sound-bites :)

    • 3 years ago
  • Gambit69
    • 0
      Gambit69  

    • I found your film pretty ok although i grew up in belfast and to be honest if you live there its not that bad the fact that youve went into the violent parts thast why you have got this image,I lived in the rough parts and then moved to further out in the countryside .

      In my opinion both parties can be as bad as eachother but its not always fighting it depends on situation and area.

      Its all about passion for what you believe in wether its right or wrong its what ahs been drummed into your ehad at an early age i got taught that the british way was right in high school when i lived in belfast im not agreeing or disagreeing im merely just giving my opinion.

      I enjoyed your video have you got any more projects on belfast ?

      I was there recently and did a photography project on all the loyalist paramilatry paintings.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj2seUD0cGw&feature=channel_page
      this isnt the final peice i have to redo some parts .

    • 3 years ago
  • frankpink
    • 0
      frankpink  

    • I BELIVE THE LYRICS of the first one or both of these songs ALSO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM in question.....There's gotta be an alternative to all this walls...Mexico/US border, Palestinian/Israeli...Free Tibet by the way!!

    • 3 years ago
  • frankpink
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