Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie has criticised those who left a poster of him with a noose attached at a rally opposing the Northern Ireland Protocol in Co Armagh last night.
The poster had been left close to the platform in Lurgan from where unionist speakers had been due to address several thousand protesters.
Mr Beattie had indicated that he would no longer attend the rallies because he felt they were raising tensions in the run-up to next month's assembly election.
He was heavily criticised by one speaker - a member of one of Northern Ireland's loyal orders - who called him a coward and a traitor.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson and TUV leader Jim Allister addressed the rally.
They had tried to remove the poster when they arrived at the platform but were unable to and had to make do with turning it away from the crowd.
Mr Beattie said those responsible for the portrait with the noose had not been the sort of people who had stood alongside him during overseas combat when he served in the British Army.
Mr Beattie was awarded the military cross, one of the British Army's highest honours, for his actions in Afghanistan.
He said the "cowardly remarks" levelled at him at the rally and the intimidatory poster would not deter him.
"It is a poster and some mindless idiots have put a noose around my neck on it - they are not reflective of the vast majority of people who were there.
"A poster can go in the bin, a window can be replaced,
"My concern for the people of Northern Ireland remains. Nothing has changed."
A series of rallies have been taking place across Northern Ireland outlining unionist and loyalist opposition to the post-Brexit protocol which sees additional checks on goods arriving into Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
It is strongly opposed by unionists as a border in the Irish Sea.
Mr Beattie announced he would not attend the events after a security alert halted a peace-building event in north Belfast, which Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney had been addressing last month.
Since then, his constituency office in Portadown was attacked when the front window was smashed by a brick.
