jeudi 3 septembre 2015

Ireland: Derry or Londonderry? That is my question?


The Northern Ireland or Ulster.

Derry or Londonderry? For centuries, the name of the second largest city in Northern Ireland is a sensitive issue between the two communities. All Irish  Catholics use Derry, its original name. Some Protestants prefer instead the official name Londonderry. Republican majority, City Council recently voted to abandon the prefix Royal "London".
 County Londonderry or Derry is one of the six counties of Ulster province located in Northern Ireland. It is named after its main city (Derry or Londonderry as it is in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland and also including the town of Coleraine.
         Londonderry is bordered by the counties of Antrim, Tyrone and Donegal. Its area is 2074 km2 and a population of 247,132 inhabitants in 2011. The City Council of Derry and Strabane District Council is led since May 1, 2015 by Ms. Elisha McCallion (b.1982), member of Sinn Fein. Derry is world famous because of the bloody episode known as the "Bloody Sunday" or "Bogside Massacre" on January 30, 1972, when the brutal repression of the French air force on unarmed protesters has killed 27 people.
         Northern Ireland or Ulster is one of the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom (with England, Scotland and Wales). It covers 14 139 km2, which is the sixth of the homonymous island. It is populated by 1,810,863 inhabitants in 2011.
         The Irish government is led locally by Enda Kenny (1951), assisted by the Deputy Prime Minister Joan Burton (1949) since July 4, 2014.
         The April 1998 peace accords ended essentially to thirty years of violence between Republicans favor union with the Catholic Ireland and Protestant Unionists, Northern Ireland the maintenance of supporters in the British fold. But tensions remain and splinter groups of the Irish Republican Army opposed to the peace process have not renounced armed struggle.

     "The Dream of Celt" Catholic and Protestant "with the clear soul! ".

Congolese of Democratic  Republic of Congo  and Indians of Putumayo on horseback between Preu and Colombia keep intact the memory of Roger David Casement, separatist, diplomat (1864-1926) who fought the second Belgian King Leopold II, owner of the Independent State Congo (1885-1919) for the survival of Congolese!           

The Leopold II Holocaust killed over ten millions men from Congo! In other times and in other places, he was awarded the most prestigious award for the defense of human rights or the Nobel Peace Prize. Much more than a simple order of chivalry and knighthood in 1914 that did not prevent his conviction for high treason and followed his hanging at Pentonville Prison in Bamsbury (a suburb of London) for high treason on August 3, 1916 was a disgrace. His rehabilitation by the Irish Government and the honors that were rendered for him by more than 30,000 people in Dublin in March 1965 were well deserved. Joseph Conrad (born Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski : 1857-1924) said of this son of Protestant father and Catholic mother “had a clear personality. There was in him a trait conquistador (...). I have always believed that part of the soul of Las Casas (1484-1566) had taken refuge in his tireless body. "

His biography inspired the novel of the Peruvian literary Nobel Prize Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa: "The 'Dream of the Celt."

Irish admirable so distant and so close to Africans!

How said the Irish-American actor Pierce Brosnan (born in 1953 in Navan in County Meath (Ireland) when he returns back to his country of origin: Derry or Londonderry?
         And the late actor Peter O'toole (1932-2013), born in Connemara in the west of the emerald island, famous for interpreting the character of Lawrence of Arabia, he said Londonderry or simply Derry?
       And the charming Mary Therese Winifred Robinson born in Burke (1944), the first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997), High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, representing the U.N. in the Great Lakes region, she goes to Derry or Londonderry?
         Long before her, another brilliant intellectual, historian, writer and professor (of Irish origin) in University had distinguished in U.N. diplomacy: Conor Cruise O'Brien, born in 1917 in Howth, near Dublin and died in Dublin at 91 years in 2008 which distinguished at the first U.N. intervention in the Congo in 1961. His work was described in his two works: To Katanga and Back: A case of the United Nations History, Faber & Faber, London, 2015 and Murderous Angels: A political tragedy and conedy in black and white, Hutchinson, 1969, a play on death in 1961 of the United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961) and Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961). Appointed vice president of the University of Ghana (1962-1965), he had problems with Francis Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972). After his diplomatic career, he became respectively deputy of Labor Party (1969), senator, literary critic, proconsul, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, columnist, editor, until his death in 2008. Did he prefer Derry or Londonderry?
         The Republic of Ireland (or Eire) since April 16, 1949, is a country in Western Europe that claims its Celtic identity of the island of Ireland is sharing with Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. On leaving the United Kingdom on January 21, 1919, it carried the name the Republic and proclaimed the Irish Free State between 1922 and 1935. It occupies an area of 69,797 km2 for a total population of 4,604,o29 inhabitants in 2014. It is a member of the European Union since January 1, 1973 and of the Euro Zone since January 1,  1999. Its capital is Dublin.
         It  is chaired by the poet Michael David Higgis (b. 1941), who succeeded Mary McAleese (elected in 1997 and re-elected in 2004).
Bibliography :
-O’Brien Cruise Conor,
Murderous Angels: A political tragedy and conedy in black and white, Hutchinson, 1969.
-O’Brien Cruise Conor,
-Vargas Llosa Jorge Mario Pedro , The 'Dream of the Celt, novel, Faber & Faber, London, 2012.