MORE THAN 160 figures from various aspects of public life have signed an open letter to the North’s First Minister and the Deputy First Minister which is sharply critical of their plans for tackling sectarianism and division in society.
The letter attacks the joint Sinn Féin-DUP policy document “Cohesion, Sharing and Integration” (CSI) which seeks to address communal division and intolerance which persists 12 years after the signing of the Belfast Agreement.
Consultation on the policy paper ended at the weekend.
The round-robin letter “dispiritingly assumes that Northern Ireland’s conventional politically driven identities will survive indefinitely – and indeed should command respect – without regard to the much more fluid multi-ethnic and multi-faith world we now inhabit”.
The signatories also express alarm that the Community Relations Council faces abolition under its terms and they call for its redrafting.
The letter is an initiative by pressure group Platform For Change which seeks “a renewal and realignment of politics in Northern Ireland”.
Platform For Change chairman Robin Wilson said: “The CSI document reflects the perspective of vested political interests who cannot conceive of a Northern Ireland that is not forever divided into sectarian camps.
“This mindset is shading into renewed paramilitary violence at the margin and is sustaining intolerance towards members of minority communities outside of the orange-and-green divide. It must be challenged.”
The Alliance Party has published its proposals, building on its criticisms of the CSI paper. North Down Assembly member Stephen Farry said: “First, there is little attempt to define key concepts such as ‘cohesion’, ‘sharing’ and ‘integration’. ‘Good Relations’ is placed in a secondary position to equality. In the absence of a clear aim to create a shared society, there is a danger that an assumption of fixed identities and communal blocks could lead to a ‘separate, but equal’ future.” He added: “Second, there is lack of detail with respect to delivery in terms of an action plan, with targets and timetables, resource allocations, benchmarking and monitoring, and the institutional structure. Without this what comes before could be empty words.”
SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie said CSI was a lowest-common denominator compromise between Sinn Féin and the DUP.
“There is no vision of a shared society, but rather of two communities indefinitely separated and living side by side in sullen peace,” she said.