A letter from Doug and Elaine Baker in Northern Ireland
March 18, 2009
Reflections on the violence of the last few days
Kate Carroll walks behind her husband Stephen’s coffin.
Saturday and Monday of this week brought terrible local news. Two young soldiers murdered on Saturday night by dissident Republican gunmen when they stepped outside their barracks in Antrim to collect a pizza delivery. Two others and the two pizza delivery men wounded. They were killed simply for being in the British Army. In fact, their regiment was due to fly out to Afghanistan for engineering duty within hours of the shooting. On Monday night a policeman was shot dead by a different dissident faction as he responded to a call where a house was being stoned in Craigavon. These were the first terrorist killings of police or Army personnel in Northern Ireland for more than 10 years. Something we had all hoped was a thing of the past.
Tuesday morning I opened the door to a man who delivers fresh fish to our house. He comes from a fishing port quite a distance from the scene of either of those shootings. Over the years from time to time he has shared bits about his family and occasionally reaction to events. This week he was so shocked by the killings that he immediately starting sharing with me what they had stirred up for him. He spoke of a bombing in another part of Northern Ireland some 15 years ago. An Army jeep in which several soldiers were patrolling on routine duty had been blown up. The jeep was carrying a soldier who was a member of his church. In a split second, he lost his life in a horrific way. The fish man recalled that event to me and also how their church members many years after the incident are continuing to support that soldier’s wife and family in their terrible loss — something he was very conscious more families would now require.
Policeman’s coffin.
That early morning encounter made me think of all those who had tragically lost loved ones over all the past years of violence in this province. It made me think of the painful memories that are stirred up when the news reports of these latest two atrocities are broadcast.
At the hairdressers later that day I referred to the local situation and was given the answer, “Well, sure that’s Ireland and it’s history! Better to not think about it and concentrate on your own life!” Such a contrast to the conversation earlier in the day. Sadly that’s the way many people do respond to the latest violence.
On the local radio chat program a wife of a policeman had phoned in to share her family’s fear stirred up by the latest killing. She described how her 12-year-old son heard the news at school and later that night was very afraid for his dad, who is a policeman, going out to work the next morning. The wife described giving her husband an extra long hug before he left for work and discussing alternative security arrangements they would take. This will be just one family of many throughout this society living once again with the added pressure of fear and anxiety as a member viewed by these dissident Republicans as a “legitimate target” goes about their work each day.
I felt just a little of the pain of that mother as on the same day our son Stephen was heading out to a jazz concert in downtown Belfast. Briefly I thought of him leaving the security of our home and going to a very public place and risk. He would not be an intended target of those who use violence for political ends here. Neither would we be. But, then, neither would the pizza delivery men have been intended targets. One was a local teenager earning a little bit of spending money. The other was a Polish immigrant with a wife and 16-month-old child simply wanting to build a new life in this place for himself and for them. Now he lies in a critical condition. In the eyes of those who turned to violence he was not an intended target, just “collateral damage.”
Huge as they are in our minds and in the minds of others in Northern Ireland, the three deaths in recent days here are a minor blip on the radar in comparison to 16 deaths this week when a teenage gunman attacked students and teachers at a school and passersby in a German village or 13 deaths when a gunman went on a rampage in the United States. And neither of those incidents begins to compare to the “collateral damage” inflicted recently on communities in Gaza and Iraq.
When we face such news close to home, fear is stirred up, and we tend to hold our loved ones a bit longer and a bit tighter. But as Christians we need to do more than that. News flashes of violent deaths in Northern Ireland, Germany, the United States, Gaza, Iraq need also to stir up in us responses which address underlying causes of division and alienation, bring in tighter control on guns, push nations toward diplomacy rather than war. Whether targeted or collateral damage, the loss of loved ones through violence is not acceptable — and we can’t just “concentrate on our own lives” and not think about it. Every one of those victims and those bereaved by their deaths matters to God. They must matter to us also.
Faithfully yours,
Elaine Baker
The 2009 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 171
