No security-related deaths in 2023, but young people despair at failure to stop paramilitary-style attacks

There were no security-related deaths in Northern Ireland last year for the first time since records began in 1969, despite an increase in paramilitary activity.

According to the latest PSNI figures there were 33 shooting incidents during 2023, compared with 29 in the previous 12 months, eight bombing incidents, up from five in 2022, and there were 21 people charged with terrorism offences.

The statistics include the shooting of senior PSNI detective John Caldwell by dissident republicans in Co Tyrone in February 2023.

Megan Phair of the Stop the Attacks Forum said that while a zero fatalities year must be welcomed, the lack of deaths was down to good fortune rather than a lack of paramilitary criminality.

"I am a ceasefire baby, born in 1993 – I was promised peace and that isn’t what I’m seeing,” she said.

"We call paramilitary-style assaults ‘human rights abuses’ because that is what they are. There needs to be a collective, civic courage to stand up against these groups.”

Ms Phair added: "Our communities are being terrorised by these groups… children are getting manipulated and coerced, radicalised and exploited. Another generation that was promised peace, but what did they get? I work with 16-year-olds who are not filled with hope".

The PSNI bulletin also revealed there were 19 casualties of paramilitary-style shootings during 2023, compared with eight in 2022.

Patrick Corrigan of Amnesty International said that although paramilitary assaults “seem to have become accepted as a fact of life here,” they are “a brutal abuse of human rights which can never be acceptable”.

He added: “What the figures don’t show is the huge number of lives ruined and communities living in fear across Northern Ireland”.