Sir, - As African-American members of the United States Congress, we would like to register our profound objections to the appropriation of the language and symbols of the American civil rights movement by the organisers of the "Long March" in their attempts to support Orange Order marches through nationalist neighbourhoods. These marches have been symbols of intimidation and oppression for Northern Ireland's Catholic minority for over 100 years. To characterise them now as "civil rights marches" is particularly grotesque. It would be akin to the South African Bruderbond attempting to hold a "civil rights march" through Soweto.
Membership of the Orange Order has been a requirement for senior members of the unionist parties, right up to prime ministers of Northern Ireland in the old Stormont. This march is directly linked to those who have put the people of the Garvaghy Road under siege for a year. We find it extraordinary that the very people invoking the memory of Dr Martin Luther King to support their cause are the same ones who have subjugated the nationalist minority there for the past 75 years. The purpose of these triumphalist marches is not to promote human rights. Rather, they are an attempt to assert an archaic supremacy which has no place in the new, post-Good-Friday-Agreement Ireland. Sectarian intimidation is not a "civil right". - Yours, etc.,
Donald M. Payne, Albert R. Wynn, Members of Congress, Washington DC, USA.