THERE HAS BEEN widespread condemnation after a Ku Klux Klan flag was erected by protesters in Belfast.

The flag appeared on a lamppost in east Belfast on Monday before being removed the following day after complaints were made to the PSNI about it.

One MP said that it added “an even more sinister edge” to recent race-related incidents in the city.

First Minister Peter Robinson said the flag was “grossly offensive” and said the person who put it up was an “idiot”.

The blue flag shows a silver eagle, almost identical to the heraldic eagle used in Nazi Germany, with a red KKK symbol and  the words ‘New Order Knights’ above and ‘Ku Klux Klan’ below.

The New Order Knights are a small splinter group of the KKK who claim that their mission is to “preserve the white heritage, so future generations will know and learn from their history”.

MP for East Belfast Naomi Long of the Alliance Party said she had passed on a number of complaints from constituents to the PSNI.

“Yet again we see those who wish to bully anyone different from them use flags and emblems to assert dominance and control over a community,” she said.

“To do so at all is to be condemned but to put up these flags in broad daylight shows just how brazen the culprits are”.

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