Description

Dissident republicans are Irish republicans who do not support the Northern Ireland peace process. The peace agreements followed a 30-year conflict known as the Troubles, in which over 3,500 people were killed and 47,500 injured, and in which republican paramilitary groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army waged a campaign to bring about a united Ireland. Negotiations in the 1990s led to a Provisional IRA ceasefire in 1994 and to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Mainstream republicans, represented by Sinn Féin, supported the Agreement as a means of achieving Irish unity peacefully. Dissidents saw this as an abandonment of the goal of an independent Irish republic and acceptance of partition. They hold that the Northern Ireland Assembly and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are illegitimate and see the PSNI as a British paramilitary police force.