a short thread about living in northern ireland by somebody from northern ireland:

(non-ni people please read and retweet this to spread awareness - please don’t ignore this) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-56664868

right now it’s really starting to look like northern ireland is on the brink of another civil war, there’s been riots for a week now, here’s a thread on what’s happening right now: https://twitter.com/lovelylouis2020/status/1380117028170833920

there’s plenty of threads about what is currently happening in northern ireland going about right now, but i want to talk about how things are NEVER truly good here.

since the good friday agreement in 1998 we’ve technically had a ceasefire from our civil war (the troubles) and although things aren’t as bad here as they were, there’s still problems.

northern ireland still has a big paramilitary presence, and paramilitaries from both sides still sell drugs and carry out violent punishments to people. although the terrorism has died down a bit, the paramilitaries are still here and still very active.

it’s 2021 but we still have a form of segregation here. there’s a peace wall in belfast that was breached during the riots, it is still there to try and stop attacks, and when it was breached they were firing petrol bombs, fireworks and stones over it and onto the streets below.

outside of the cities there are also some protestant/catholic areas where you CANNOT live if you are the wrong religion. it is common knowledge here that some places are off limits to certain religions and you’d have to have a death wish to live in them.

in addition to this, most schools are also segregated, theres some integrated schools but the majority are still segregated, even small towns and villages have both catholic and protestant schools even when the population doesn’t support them having two schools.

despite terrorism being less prevalent than it was, i’m sure everyone growing up in northern ireland has experienced some sort of terrorism such as bomb scares and that’s not to mention the things those growing up during the troubles had to witness.

there’s almost always trouble during marching season as well, with fights breaking out at parades fairly often.

although rioting is not as common here now, it does still happen and this isn’t an isolated incident, for example in 2013 there were the flag protests which lead to rioting.

northern ireland is a beautiful country and for the most part it is wonderful living here, however the threat of civil war is very real right now and i am glad people outside of northern ireland are starting to become aware of this -

i decided to make this thread to make people aware that northern ireland ALWAYS has problems, and although they may not be as extreme as they were during the troubles they are still here and they need to stop because it’s bringing the country down.