A ‘Belfast Newsletter’ article today (11/7/21) carried the following headline.
Yvonne Dunlop murder: Justice Minister Naomi Long blasts ‘heavily edited’ story of IRA hunger striker Thomas McElwee
Justice Minister Naomi Long has accused Sinn Fein of launching a ‘heavily edited’ film about a hunger striker which omitted that he was jailed for a firebomb which burned a young mother-of-three to death.
The Justice Minster was correct in condemning Sinn Fein’s film on the hunger-striker who committed suicide as part of the Sinn Fein/IRA ‘blanket’ protest some 40 years ago.
The film content would have been made with Sinn Fein’s own bloodthirsty and sadistic supporters in mind. Glorifying McElwee as a ‘Hero of Ireland’, a ‘Martyr for the cause of Irish freedom’ and one who killed ‘Brits’ would be what they wanted to hear.
They would not be interested in the fact that he murdered a mother of three children, Mrs Yvonne Dunlop, when she was burned to death by a firebomb, in her father’s shop in Ballymena, for which McElwee was jailed. She was a Protestant and a British citizen, therefore Sinn Fein supporters would have neither concern or compassion for her or her family.
The republican film makers stuck to the ‘script’ they knew would make their supporters happy – therefore they ennobled killer McElwee and boasted of his homicidal exploits!
McElwee is described in the film as ‘Tom, a typical young Co Derry man, kind and good natured, full of life . . .’
In truth McElwee was sentenced to 20 years for possession of explosives and the murder of Yvonne Dunlop, a 26-year-old mum burnt alive when one of the firebombs he planted destroyed her clothes shop.
But another question comes to mind. WHY DOES THE JUSTICE MINISTER, Alliance Party leader, Naomi Long MLA, support Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill as Deputy First Minister and and thereby, along with the DUP and the Ulster Unionists and a few other independents, keep Sinn Fein, with its murderous past and continuing support for terrorism, in a position of power in Northern Ireland????
It counts for little to miscall McElwee while keeping McElwee’s political party in power!
Such is the situation here in our Province. Day and daily we have the ‘kettle calling the pot black’ in the ‘pantomime of pretence’ that is Stormont!