Colum Eastwood has called for a flag urging the killing of police officers and Protestants to be taken down after it was erected beside the Creggan bonfire site in Derry. The black flag appeared as the bonfire reached around 40 feet in height, putting a sectarian message directly beside a site already under pressure during the run-up to Saturday.
The flag carried the words “kill all cops” and “kill all Huns”, and it was tied to a roadside sign across from where the bonfire was due to be lit. It also included the words “Creggan Republican Youth”, alongside an armed figure and a police Land Rover set against a tricolour.
Colum Eastwood in Creggan
The SDLP Foyle MP said those responsible do not represent Creggan or the people of Derry. “A flag calling for police officers and Protestants to be killed is sectarian hatred, nothing more, and the people behind it don’t represent Creggan or the people of Derry,” he said.
He added: “There’s nothing republican about threatening your neighbours. We’ve seen enough of this kind of nonsense around bonfires, and it does nothing but drag communities backwards.” Eastwood also said, “The vast majority of people in Derry simply want to get on with their lives, live in peace with their neighbours and see our city move forward.”
PSNI on Bligh’s Lane
A PSNI spokesman said police were aware of a flag attached to street furniture in the area of Bligh’s Lane in Creggan. The force said enquiries were ongoing into the incident and that it was being treated as a sectarian-motivated hate crime, with any removal to be handled in line with Service Instruction on a case by case basis.
The flag landed in a week of heightened tension over bonfires in Derry. On Wednesday, pallets gathered for an August 15 bonfire in the Bogside were removed in a dawn operation from a storage area beneath the Lecky Road flyover, and disorder followed later that day when a mattress and pallets were set alight, a motorbike was seen burning, and a petrol bomb was thrown at officers on Bishop Street.
Bonfires in Derry
Bonfires in Derry have drawn condemnation in previous years for burning flags, poppy wreaths and placards bearing the names of individuals. This one adds a more explicit line: the challenge is no longer just the bonfire itself, but the sectarian message being attached to it.
Eastwood’s call leaves the immediate issue with the people who put the flag up and anyone who can take it down. The force is treating it as a hate crime, and the message on the sign has already moved the dispute from local symbolism to a public test of whether intimidation is allowed to stand in Creggan.
