New riots and clashes between riot police and demonstrators shook Belfast for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, as the anger is far from over following the brutal knife attack carried out by the Sudanese national Hadi Alodid (30) against Stephen Ogilvy in the Northern Irish capital on Monday evening.
Fires and explosions continued in Belfast as around 800 demonstrators converged on a hotel housing asylum seekers, where police found themselves compelled to deploy water cannons against protesters throwing bricks, bottles and building materials, reports GB News.
The authorities are, naturally, condemning the riots, but apparently to little effect.
In addition to Belfast, police stated that disturbances had broken out in Londonderry and Portadown.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stated that people have been attacked because of their background. Not without reason, as gangs of rioters have planned and carried out targeted actions involving arson attacks at and against private homes inhabited by foreign nationals.
Roma people, Ukrainians and Africans alike have been forced to flee, reports The Times, which uses the word pogroms to describe what is taking place. According to the authorities, 27 people have been made homeless as a result of these actions.
People in one of the affected areas describe the phenomenon, which is not new, in a rather matter-of-fact and unsentimental manner:
Neighbours on Ainsworth Drive said it was the third time the residents – whom they described as members of the Roma community – had been “driven out”.
The previous attack, only two months earlier, was so recent that a window was still boarded up when masked men once again stormed the property.
One resident helped the family escape while fireworks and bricks rained down on their home. By morning, the remaining windows had been smashed, a car in the driveway had been burned out, and the front door had melted.
“They’ve been causing trouble in the area ever since they moved in,” said a woman who lives directly opposite, referring to the residents. “Last night was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
She complained that monthly rents in the area had risen to more than £900. “People can’t afford it,” she said. “And then they’re housing these foreigners who are coming in.”
“Local homes for local people” proclaims a slogan that The Times observed on a wall in Belfast.
One target of the rioters’ actions appears to be houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), that is, properties occupied by multiple households, for which one is theoretically required to obtain permission from the authorities, something that in practice often does not occur. Many immigrants live in such homes.
Posts are circulating online identifying locations where houses with multiple tenants (HMOs) are suspected to exist. One post shared by “Irish Patriot” names a street 90 kilometres north-west of Belfast and adds: “17 HMO properties. 67 people. One small area.” The person who posted it urged: “Join us tonight at 7pm as local people make their voices heard. Come. Stand together. Be heard.”
The Times has met both a Ukrainian family and two African female care workers who fled their homes. One of the latter is considering returning to Uganda.
At the same time, police are attempting both to identify individuals who are pointing out targets for attack and to protect those targets.
People are reacting somewhat as they would in a war zone:
A 20-minute drive away in East Belfast, a man surveyed the destruction in his street, where charred cars stood beside houses with boarded-up windows. Asked who had lived in the houses attacked by the mob, he shrugged. “Romanians, maybe? Last night, it didn’t really matter where you came from.”
In a leading article, The Times writes:
The mass violence in Northern Ireland is appalling, but Sir Keir Starmer must realise that a weak immigration policy threatens the stability of the country.
The unrest in Northern Ireland has therefore acquired an ethnic dimension that affects innocent people and shatters illusions of multicultural harmony.