Adams Apologises For Using 'N-Word' In Tweet

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has publicly apologised for using the N-word in a tweet posted just days before an election in Northern Ireland.

He used the controversial term in a message about the film Django Unchained, where he compared the fight against slavery in the US to the plight of Irish nationalists.

The Hollywood movie, directed by Quentin Tarantino, is centred on slavery in America’s Deep South in the late 1850s.

Mr Adams' post compared a former slave's struggle in the film with the treatment of Irish nationalists in Ballymurphy, a republican area of Belfast.

The offending tweet: "Watching Django Unchained - A Ballymurphy N*****!", as well as a second that read "Django - an uppity Fenian!", were both deleted shortly after being posted.

But by then they had already been widely shared and criticised.

On social media, one Twitter user called the tweet "disgraceful", while Labour Party councillor in Ireland Peter O'Brien asked: "So this is acceptable is it?".

Speaking to reporters in west Belfast, Mr Adams admitted his use of the N-word was "inappropriate" and "I apologise for that".

But he said he stood by the "context and substance of the point I was making".

He spoke of the parallels "between the plight of people here in Ireland and the struggle of people from African American extraction".

Mr Adams added: "There is ample evidence historically of those parallels from the penal laws, the partition of the island, and in our own time, like African Americans, people here were denied the vote, were discriminated against, were denied jobs, and so on."

In an earlier statement, the republican defended using the N-word and said attempts to suggest he was a racist were "without credibility".

He said the tweets about the Oscar-winning film, starring Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz, and the use of the N-word were ironic and not intended to cause any offence whatsoever.

And he claimed he had either been misunderstood by those who had taken offence at his use of the term, or they were misrepresenting the post.

He also suggested nationalists in Northern Ireland, including those from Ballymurphy, "were treated in much the same way as African Americans until we stood up for ourselves".

Eleven civilians were killed by British soldiers in Ballymurphy in 1971 during the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, three decades of largely sectarian violence in which more than 3,500 people died.

Opinion polls indicate Sinn Fein is likely to win about a quarter of the votes in Thursday's election for the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Since 2007, the republican party has been in a power-sharing agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party.