Kneecap effigies, Palestinian, and Irish flags on loyalist bonfires

The National

12-07-2025

It comes the night after effigies of migrants in a boat were burned on top of a bonfire in Moygashel in County Tyrone despite widespread condemnation and concern.
In Belfast, a contentious loyalist bonfire off the Donegall Road – on a site that contains asbestos and is close to an electricity sub-station which powers two major hospitals – was set alight despite appeals from Environment Minister Andrew Muir.
The Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) said late on Thursday that suspected asbestos had been found at five locations on the bonfire site and 20kg of material was removed.
Elsewhere, posters depicting the Irish rap group Kneecap, Irish flags, and Palestinian flags appeared on other bonfires on Friday evening.
Signage on a loyalist bonfire said to 'kill your local Kneecap' in the Irish language (Image: PA) Effigies of the band members appeared on a bonfire at Roden Street in south Belfast, as well as a sign written in the Irish language saying 'Kill Your Local Kneecap', seemingly in response to a clip that emerged from a gig in 2023, which appeared to show a member saying: 'The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.'
A bonfire in Eastvale Avenue in Dungannon, County Tyrone, featured the same.
Hundreds of bonfires were lit on Friday night ahead of the main date in the marching calendar of Protestant loyal orders, July 12.
Dr Alan Stout, chairman of the British Medical Association Northern Ireland Council, had urged people to stay away from the site in Belfast where asbestos was found.
'If there's asbestos there, just don't go there,' he told the BBC.
'Any other circumstance, any other environment, be it a school, be it a hospital, be it a leisure centre, if there is asbestos there, you rope it off, you secure it and you remove it in a safe manner and you do not expose your general population to it.'
The Grand Secretary of the Orange Order Rev Mervyn Gibson said people should 'go and enjoy themselves' at the bonfire.
READ MORE: 'Skewed': BBC slated for pushing small boat crossings as top Scottish story
He told the BBC that a council committee vote to remove the bonfire was a 'political decision'.
He said: 'I believe the council voted a couple of weeks ago for the bonfire to go ahead.
'A few days before it, then Sinn Fein and Alliance and the SDLP decide to vote against it.'
Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan accused the DUP of political cowardice.
He also urged people to stay away from the bonfire site, on account of what he described as a health and safety issue.
'It's clear that this site is completely contaminated with asbestos, it beggars belief,' he said.
'This is not an attack on Orange culture, this is clearly a health and safety issue.
'We're living in some sort of crazy parallel universe where an illegal bonfire [is] going to be lit, a fire which could cause criminal damage on a site contaminated with asbestos and right beside a power substation which provides power to the two main hospitals in Belfast.
'It is one particular party that isn't giving leadership … at the end of the day, I can't imagine anything similar happening in the constituency that I represent without every political leader here out shouting for its safe removal.
'The DUP have been absent, they are afraid to take on these people. They are political cowards when it comes to this, and it's disgraceful what they are doing.'