MORE than half of all paramilitary shootings over the last year took place in Derry and Strabane.
Figures have been revealed as a television campaign has been relaunched to highlight the blight of paramilitary shootings in communities across the North of Ireland by the Department of Justice.
Statistics show that in the 12 months up to June 2019, ten of the 17 people – 59 per cent – injured in paramilitary-style shootings in the North were shot in Derry and Strabane.
Last November, two men aged 24 and 32 and believed to be from the Brandywell area of the city, were shot within minutes of each other in Ballymagroarty.
The double shooting was blamed on the INLA and one local politician said the men were told to attend “by appointment”.
And in February this year, a man was shot in Creggan’s Central Drive by dissident republican gunmen.
This week the Department relaunched its ‘Ending the Harm’ campaign aimed at highlighting the devastating impact of ‘paramilitary style attacks’.
It believes the radio, TV, social media and outdoor campaign – first launched in October 2018 – has helped shift some of the dangerously ambivalent attitudes to shootings reported in previous surveys.
Anthony Harbinson, from the Tackling Paramilitarism, Criminality and Organised Crime Programme Board, said: “Before we launched this campaign, research showed that 35% of people living in those areas most impacted by paramilitary activity thought so-called ‘paramilitary style attacks’ were justified in certain circumstances.
Police at the scene of shooting of a man in Ballymagroarty
“They don’t offer protection and they are only interested in exerting control and exploiting people for their own gain, using violence as a means to do so.
“Recent research carried out to assess the impact of the campaign, and get a snapshot of current attitudes towards so-called ‘paramilitary style attacks’ in those areas, now shows that 19% of people believe they are justified; that’s a 46 per cent decrease, which is encouraging.”
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