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The Belfast County Grand Orange Lodge and Belfast Orange
District No 9 issued the following joint statement:
"Following today's brutal and heavy-handed police action
against Orangemen and members of the wider unionist family
in Belfast, it is perhaps not surprising that Chief Constable
Sir Hugh Orde is giving media interviews seeking to excuse
the actions of his officers.
While the Orange Order has noted the Chief Constable's intemperate,
inflammatory and inaccurate remarks, we have decided to take
a more responsible line and will not be drawn into a similar
knee-jerk reaction. Accordingly the Order will be giving no
media interviews until it has had time to evaluate the evidence
of what happened on the streets of Belfast today. At this
stage, all we would say is that if what we saw today was policing,
it was policing at its worst. "
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