BELFAST GROUPS SHOOT DISSIDENTS

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) One recent night in Catholic west Belfast, a
few hundred angry people marched to the front doors of two neighbors. Their
message was simple: Get out or else.

"They weren't beaten up, just confronted with taped evidence of their
drug-dealing," says Tommy Holland, an organizer behind a new Irish
Republican Army-supported initiative to mobilize neighborhoods against
"anti-social elements" the Belfast euphemism for common criminals.

Like hundreds of others, the members of the two households targeted that
evening fled for good, fearing the traditional alternative an IRA
"kneecapping," which entails the deliberate shooting or clubbing of limbs
as punishment.

Northern Ireland's year-old peace accord, buoyed by longer cease-fires from
the IRA and outlawed pro-British paramilitary groups, is offering a new way
for Protestants and Catholics to govern their country together.

But it also is turning law vs. order particularly how paramilitary outlaws
long have brutalized people within their own communities into a divisive
issue in this era of supposed peace.

In the year since Northern Ireland's peace accord was struck, the IRA and
the Ulster Volunteer Force, which operates in poor Protestant areas, have
meted out more than 100 "punishment" attacks.

In the worst IRA case, a man accused of beating a senior IRA figure was
left to bleed to death in a stairwell.

The most gruesome UVF attack left the victim with both legs amputated below
the thigh. His crime was showing disloyalty by blabbing about an affair a
UVF man's wife was having.

The IRA's allies in the Sinn Fein party and the UVF's Progressive Unionist
Party both want to defuse the political liability of punishment attacks.
But both are unwilling to rely on traditional law enforcement: the
predominantly Protestant police, courts and prisons the very system that
attempts to put paramilitary groups out of business.

Both parties say the better approach is to back new neighborhood-based
programs designed to reduce, not eliminate, punishment attacks.

These programs, operating under the label "community restorative justice,"
involve mediation between victims and accused offenders, working in tandem
with panels that pass probation-style sentences.

On the Sinn Fein side, the formula allows for more aggressive action, such
as protesting outside the homes of uncooperative individuals and banning
them from neighborhood shops and businesses.

To their many critics, these programs seem designed to ensure that IRA and
UVF supporters remain the real power-brokers in areas where police still
use armored cars for protection.

"The community restorative justice agenda can't be driven by one group or
one section of opinion. It has to be accountable and democratic. Otherwise,
it can be abused as a new tool of oppression," says Alex Attwood of the
Social Democratic and Labor Party, a moderate Catholic party.

A pressure group that campaigns to stop punishment attacks, Families
Against Intimidation and Terror, accuses the IRA and UVF of posing as
anti-drug crusaders when they really profit from drug-trafficking a claim
vociferously denied by both groups, but backed by the police.

"The IRA and UVF are among the biggest criminal racketeers in this
society," says Vincent McKenna, the group's spokesman, who was once an IRA
member.

"They accuse other people of anti-social behavior, when together they have
murdered thousands of people and blown up half of Belfast. The idea that
they or their supporters are in any position to judge others would be
laughable if it weren't so perverse."

Though Holland, the neighborhood organizer, hasn't done prison time for IRA
offenses, others in his office have.

He says about 15 locals have received training to mediate between victims
and victimizers to arrive at a suitable "restorative" punishment. This
usually involves "a formal contract, with the hood say a wee lad who
wrecked a man's garden agreeing to fix up his garden again."

If neither side wants to enter into mediation, the case is turned over to a
three-member panel of what Holland calls "King Solomons," which passes a
community-service sentence.

If the accused refuses to accept that sentence, Holland says, "we call a
mass community meeting and explain the background to the case and say we've
thrown our hands up."

A half-mile away, beyond the 30-foot-high walls that separate Catholics
from Protestants in west Belfast, the UVF-supported Greater Shankill
Alternatives is the neighborhood justice project.

"It would be great if everybody went to the police and they solved
everything. But we're better placed to tackle some problems," says Tom
Winstone, who spent 17 years in prison for killing two Catholic men as part
of the UVF's now-suspended terrorism campaign.

"If we were just to say 'Go to the police,' the hood in question might end
up in prison for three months, which isn't good enough," he says. "Our way
stands a better chance of people seeing the error of their ways."

The dozen or so Protestant youths referred to the project all have been
counseled about what they did wrong, and most signed a contract offering to
correct their behavior, Winstone says. Some were assigned an adult mentor
and talked things through with the people they admitted harming.

"All these lads would have had their legs broke under the old setup,"
Winstone says.

Senior police officials, sensing the issue won't go away, are starting to
voice qualified support for the community concept but only if they're
centrally involved.

"Restorative justice is a legitimate approach," says Chief Inspector
Stephen White, who oversees police efforts to improve community relations.
"But these restorative justice systems must be part of the formal criminal
justice system. Anyone or any group who believes they can deal with
offenses and exclude the police ... is committing an offense themselves."