The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader, Jon Burrows, called for the “immediate removal of the offensive display”.<\/p>\n
“There can be no place for placing any place of worship on a bonfire and setting it alight. It is simply wrong,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Seeing a symbol of a place of faith placed on top of a bonfire will understandably be viewed by many as an attack on that religion, not a position on illegal immigration.<\/p>\n
“Sadly, images of this bonfire will once again travel around the world, damaging Northern Ireland’s reputation and playing into the hands of critics of unionist and loyalist culture.”<\/p>\n
Ron McDowell from the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party said he did not “condone” the mosque effigy but he also would not call for it to be removed. <\/p>\n
“I don’t support it, the bonfire makers can come on and defend the model themselves,” McDowell told the Nolan Show.<\/p>\n
“What I’m defending is the message and their right to articulate their concerns.<\/p>\n
“Bonfires have been used like this right across Europe, right across the world. We burn Guy Fawkes in the UK.”<\/p>\n
He said the mosque effigy was not aimed at all Muslims but was instead a protest against “radical Islam”.<\/p>\n
McDowell pointed to two signs on the bonfire which said “secure our borders” and “end the threat of radical Islam”.<\/p>\n
He claimed people were frustrated by government failures to tackle illegal immigration and were using the annual bonfire to make a point.<\/p>\n
“These aren’t politicians. This is a local community voicing local concerns and they’ll do it in a pretty robust manner and pretty rough manner,” McDowell said. <\/p>\n
“There is a disconnect between the people and politicians and it’s going to get wider if we continue to dismiss their concerns.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader, Jon Burrows, called for the “immediate removal of the offensive display”. “There…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-682098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}