Orangemen remain defiant

Hardline Orangemen were defiant last night as support for their Drumcree stand diminished.

They still insisted they would remain outside the hilltop church until they were allowed to march down Portadown's nationalist Garvaghy Road.

While tens of thousands of Orangemen attended annual parades and rallies across the province, the Portadown men had their own gathering beside the barricades blocking their route to the Garvaghy Road.

"We will be maintaining a presence on this road until such time as we are allowed to walk our traditional route," District Master Harold Gracey told the crowd.

The Government was last night maintaining contacts with the Orangemen and the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, making efforts to reconvene the proximity talks which failed to resolve the stand- off at the weekend.

Meanwhile, the brothers killed in an arson attack at the weekend, Richard Quinn, Mark, and Jason, aged 11, 10, and nine, will be buried today after a funeral service in Ballymoney.

The grandmother of the children said that the family would never return to the town after the funeral.

Mrs Irene Quinn, who fled the estate days before the tragedy, said the brothers were being buried in a Catholic church eight miles away because her daughter, Chrissie, could not bear to return to Ballymoney.

She said surviving brother Lee cried himself to sleep on Sunday night and she described how the family had been afraid they would be targeted.

"I left the estate a few days before because I just felt uneasy living there. Chrissie never wants to go back. She got no warning or nothing. Some of the neighbours got warnings but she didn't.

"I'm a Protestant, my daughter's a Catholic, we are a mixed family. We felt uneasy because circumstances on the estate wasn't the same as when we moved into it."

The RUC is investigating threatening letters containing bullets sent to five Catholic families on Saturday, less than 24 hours before the Quinn boys were murdered.

Two families moved out yesterday. One Catholic woman said she was going because of what had happened to the boys.

"There were five of us who got a letter on Saturday morning with a bullet in it. It just said UVF on it and `Get Out, Get Out'. I have been here 17 years on this estate but I am going, I am frightened."

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Orangemen paraded in Belfast and towns and villages across the province.

But in the wake of the children's deaths it was a solemn affair and crowds were down on previous years.

A minute's silence was marked at each rally in memory of the children burned to death when a petrol bomb was tossed into their terraced house.

In Belfast, the contentious parade down the nationalist Lower Ormeau Road passed off peacefully.

It was the first Orange march through the area in two years.

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