Sinn Fein Under Fire Over "Sniper" T-Shirts
A t-shirt bearing the image of an IRA sniper brandishing an assault rifle caused uproar in British-ruled Northern Ireland on Wednesday. Protestant and Roman Catholic politicians in the divided province condemned Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army, for selling the t-shirts on its new Web site. The Ulster Unionist Party, the main political grouping of Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority, branded the move “highly offensive” and called for the Web site — which went online at www.sinnfein.ie on Wednesday — to be removed. “Victims of IRA terrorism will recoil in horror that such t-shirts even exist and the fact that a so-called political party can fill its coffers on the basis of such imagery is a further degrading slap in the face,” senior UUP member David McNarry said in a statement. He said he had lodged a formal complaint with the police on the grounds that selling such material was “seditious.” Full Story