Sinn Fein Challenged on Facebook Site Calling for Orange Boycott
08 February 2013
Statement by TUV leader Jim Allister:
“During a debate on the abuse of social media today I challenged Republicans about a Facebook page called “Boycott all Orange-owned Businesses”. The page proudly displayed a Sinn Fein banner across the top and had been “liked” by various branches of Sinn Fein/IRA. It also carried images of the leader of Sinn Fein and a link to Sinn Fein’s official YouTube page accompanied by an exhortation for people to vote for the party.
“On Sunday the page creator had posted the following message: “Comrades, we plan to build up a comprehensive list of businesses – county by county to start with – can you private message us if you know of any Orange-owned businesses in your area?”. Yesterday they stated that they had “a lot of names of businesses in the border counties, but need more for Co Antrim and Belfast. The full list will be circulated un due course, but only to those True Republicans who can be vouched for”.
“When challenged about the issue IRA Hunger Striker Raymond McCartney suggested there might be perfectly innocent explanations about this and that it was possible for someone to set up a Facebook page without having any connection to the organisation they claim to represent! What makes the Sinn Fein link interesting is that before the debate was completed - and once the Sinn Fein support had been identified - the page had disappeared from Facebook!
“Some might think Sinn Fein/IRA may have had a greater degree of control over this page than they would like us to believe. The public can draw their own conclusions as to how within moments of the issue being raised by me in the Assembly the page disappeared? Sinn Fein/IRA is eager to complain about Loyalists using social media, but here we had a calculated republican vendetta against Protestant businesses which happily the promoters of which on Facebook have had to take down.”
