Belfast mob 'threatened to kill Romanian children'
Twenty families forced into emergency accommodation after vicious attacks
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Independent Minds
AFP
Families were forced to flee their homes following days of violent racist attacks in Belfast and spend the night sheltering in a church hall
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More than 100 Romanians evacuated from their homes in Belfast following a sustained campaign of racist intimidation and violence were last night in emergency accommodation in the city.
Some of the men and women of the 20 families affected were injured in incidents which included bricks being thrown through windows, while one man said intruders had threatened to cut a child's throat.
The surge of intimidation was said by locals to be the work of "a small group of racist thugs" who had terrified the Romanian families living in two south Belfast streets. Politicians and community leaders yesterday condemned the attacks, which this week reached a peak following increased tension in the area. One councillor suggested police had been slow to react at first.
Families were given refuge first in a local church hall and later bussed to a leisure centre in another part of the city.
One man, who gave his name as Deaglaz, showed a stitched wound on his abdomen which he said had been caused by broken glass after the windows were smashed in his house.
"Ten persons, they drink, they no good, they broke in the house," he said in broken English.
Another man, Couaccusil Filuis, said the intruders had even threatened to kill children: "They made signs like they wanted to cut my brother's baby's throat," he said. "They said they wanted to kill us."
A woman in the leisure centre, who gave her name as Maria, said: "We are OK, we are safe now. But we want to go home because right now we are not safe here. I want to go home because I have two kids and I want my kids to be safe." One of the children in the centre was just five weeks old.
The incidents are the latest in a series of eruptions of racist activity which over the last decade have been directed at Poles, Africans, Portuguese, Lithuanians, Latvians, Filipinos and many other nationalities.
The attacks took place in Wellesley Avenue and Belgravia Avenue, which are high-density, low-rent streets housing many students and others on short-term lets. Close by is the loyalist Sandy Row area, with the attackers likely to be young, disaffected Protestants, although the police and locals do not believe they are members of paramilitary groups or organised gangs.
Fewer than 1,000 Romanians live in Northern Ireland, but many of them tend to be highly visible as they sell newspapers at traffic junctions, offer The Big Issue and play musical instruments such as the accordion.
The number of racist incidents has risen, last year reaching almost 1,000, but this has not halted a steady flow of immigrants.
Their arrival has given Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland a more cosmopolitan and international aspect, to the point that foreign accents are now routine rather than unusual.
The Romanians, in particular, have suffered from events following an international soccer match in March, when Northern Ireland played Poland at Windsor Park.
The game was followed by widespread disturbances involving Northern Ireland supporters and fans who had travelled from Poland. A number of people, including 11 police officers, were injured in the violence. In the days that followed the homes of both Poles and Romanians came under attack, starting the sequence which culminated in recent events.
Last Thursday the first of a series of incidents was reported. On Monday a rally held in support of the Romanians was abused and attacked by a small number of youths who threw bottles and made Nazi salutes. On Tuesday night, Romanian families gathered at one house, saying they no longer felt safe in their homes.
Malcolm Morgan, pastor at the church which housed them overnight, said he was happy to help. He added: "It's a sad indictment of our society, but hopefully we can show them a different side to Northern Ireland and a caring side of Northern Ireland." Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, who visited the leisure centre, said it was a "totally shameful episode". He added: "We need a collective effort to face down these criminals in society who are quite clearly intent on preying on vulnerable women and children."
First Minister Peter Robinson described the events as deplorable, and health minister Michael McGimpsey said: "It appears to be a group of young thugs, young tearaways."
Police Superintendent Chris Noble said: "There is no authorisation by any other groups. It's a number of individuals who have taken some form of umbrage for whatever reason to people living in the community." Belfast Lord Mayor Naomi Long said: "These kinds of ugly scenes are totally unacceptable. Belfast is growing rich in diversity with people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds making this city their home. We cannot allow a small minority of people to drive people from their homes."
The authorities have arranged for the Romanians to stay in student accommodation, not far from their former homes, as a temporary measure for a week.
While the authorities say they hope they can persuade the Romanians to stay in Northern Ireland, the general sense yesterday among those affected was that they wished to leave the country.
Northern Ireland in numbers
27,000 number of immigrants to Northern Ireland between 1991 and 2007
8,000 estimated number of immigrants to Northern Ireland since EU expansion in 2007
4,900 immigrants from Poland
1,365 immigrants from Czech Republic
1,000 immigrants from Lithuania
1,000 estimated number of immigrants from Romania
900 immigrants from Slovakia
230 immigrants from Latvia
1,759,000 population of Northern Ireland
2.1 million estimated immigration to England 1991-2007
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Comments
Dutkowski, Radup and Romanianuk, if you think the racists make a difference because you are "Latin" then good luck to you!
From 2011 Romanians will be allowed to settle here in Germany as well, I expect a major shit-storm and similar incidents taking place.
For the record I am against racism, and all for a free movement of people, but it needs to be organized in such a way that it also protects the rights and sensibilities of local communities. If the government doesn't take this into consideration, the mob will take action.
So who in Northern Ireland is an anti-white racist?
These reprehensible attacks were based on their ethnicity, not their race.
To call it racism is to emasculate the term.
They are simply human beings, and as such should never have to endure the bullying of a handful of idiotic Irish thugs.
No, it is not merely a spurious "religious" reason to terrorise, as with the idiotic loyalist/Catholic squabbles, but rather an excuse to enjoy hurting innocent people.
The Irish have always had a major chip on their collective shoulders, and hate outsiders.
RiccardoJ
Hampshire
In any event, IF they are gypsies -or WERE gypsies in Romania, maybe they are trying to get away from the stigma given to them in their own country. Judging from some of the comments from Romanians, I would suspect that Romanians and not the Irish are responsible for the crimes against these people and these Romanians living in Ireland should be brought to justice and they are the ones who should be evicted from Ireland. As long as people are prepared to work, they should be given a chance and the colour of their skin should not be a precondition for residence anywhere.
1. Race is surely merely secondary: the real root is simply "fear of the other lot", who may, as with Muslims and Christians in the former Yugoslavia, be racially indistinguishable from their adversaries.
"Fear of the other" runs deep, for good pre-historical reasons. Outside the Welsh town where I was in university, on several hilltops there were the remains of Bronze Age villages. The inhabitants built their villages on hilltops because they could see the tribe next door when it came raiding, and they surrounded them with a double rampart with fencing on top and spiked posts between the double wall to stop the invaders getting in! As a child in Cheshire, I learned the ancient rhyme: "Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief; Taffy came to my house, and stole a herd of beef" - memories of cattle raids long ago. I believe that in border towns there was an ancient law which entitled a citizen to kill, without penalty, any Welshman found within the walls at night.
"Fear of the other" doesn't arise from sheer mindless prejudice, but has concrete and reasonable historical roots, for every race. It's irrational in our current situation, but communities don't easily move away from primordial instincts which once were useful tools for survival and safety. I suspect that in the situation in north-east Ireland, where community division, fear and suspicion has carried down to the present time, this may be the more true, and that the instinct to stick with your own and drive out the other will run peculiarly deep.
2. "Anti-racism" has become a creed for intellectual elites (shorthand term, no connotation of approval or disapproval!) who recogize the irrationality, in current circumstances, of "fear of the other". And it IS irrational. In the ancient sense, large numbers of "others" of whatever sort pose no threat to the rest of us. They aren't going to invade our towns (at least in the ancient sense!), steal our sheep and cattle, rape our women, steal our relatives as slaves and burn our crops. And, indeed, the underlying message behind anti-racism certainly isn't preculiar to elites; "fear of the other", and violence towards him, goes against the fundamental tenets of most of our religions, which teach the oneness of humanity and the importance of kindness to the stranger. But, just as Roma faces often indicate their Indian origins, so "fear of the other" lurks in our human psyche, grounded in centuries of community esperience, and, given an opening, boils over in to conflict and violence.
3. Let's not mislead with language.
a) Whence this idea that Romanians are Latin people? Certainly their language is a Romance tongue, but that's largely by chance - they're no less a mixture of all the settlers and invaders of three millennia as their neighbours. The idea of racial purity is utter myth - far too many population movements and settlements for it to have meaning.
b) There's no link whatever between "slave" and "tsigani", as suggested above. The English word "slave" comes from old Latin "Sclavi", the Slavs, and arose because the Romans enslaved so many of them in border wars that the tribal name replaced the earlier word, and came into English. "Tsigani" is an Bulgarian form of the Greek name the Byzantines called the Roma, which referred to their apparent interest in magic and fortune-telling.
Out of all minorities and ethnical groups, the gypsies are the most resistant group to social integration. It's a paradox to say that we should respect their culture because it is their very culture that impedes them to integrate: marriages between minors is perfectly acceptable for them (even though Romanian law forbids it), going to school is out of the question (most of them are illiterate), nomadism still a preferable lifestyle. So if they can't read and write no one will hire them => they have to steal to get money.
Oh and by the way, most of the Roma are dark skinned and dark haired and do have a different ethnicity than the average Romanian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not in somebody else's country, without the consent of the people, and at their expense they don't
Immigration and "diversity" are scams promoted by governments to try and achieve "continuous economic/population growth" regardless of their effects on their countrymen's quality of life. All western nations (at minimum) are firmly established and do not require immigrants to "build their nation", because it is the humane thing to do, or for any other excuse.
The trend of "Diversity" (people who refuse to assimilate) leads to the complete destruction of any form of national unity (especially common language), and in turn the slow demise of the country. This is how country's are destroyed from within.
Banana-fana fo-foma, Fee-fi-mo-oma...
Gypsy's are people! As citizens of the EU they have rights like the rest of us.
It is the expansion of the EU that requires more consideration. The gentleman is right, we should expect violence when immigration is not "managed." People are free to move where they like, but government needs to be conscious, intelligent, and prepared to enforce law where crime will inevitably fester as the result of national progress.