BF2S Forums Romanians leave NI after attacks

bogo24dk wrote:

Just a notice here. These people are not Romanian they are gypsy's.

JahManRed wrote:

FatherTed wrote:

asking again, are these the rose sellers?

Some of them are. But you can't lump a whole body of people into a group like that. That's how the ppl who carry out the attacks justify them.

Last edited by coke (2009-06-17 19:41:36)

1stSFOD-Delta wrote:

Too much Guinness.

More than 90 per cent of all racist attacks over the last two years in Northern Ireland have occurred in loyalist areas, according to an Observer survey into every publicised incident between January 2005 and September 2006.
In 2005 there were 31 racial assaults reported in the media and 28 of these took place in loyalist communities ranging from south Belfast to Portadown all the way across to Portavogie on the Ards Peninsula. The remaining three attacks were in Catholic areas including Derry and Ballycastle.

So far this year there have been 33 racist attacks recorded and 30 of these were in Protestant areas. These assaults range from petrol bombings of the houses of migrant workers to the forced evictions of black women from loyalist estates. In one incident in March this year racists smeared excrement over a Catholic Church in the Upper Newtonards Road in east Belfast, which has become a place of worship for Filipino nurses working at nearby Ulster Hospital.

The latest alleged racist incident occurred last Monday at a secondary school in North Belfast. Jade Taylor, 13, was left badly shaken and bruised after she said she was assaulted by racists at Glengormley High School. Her Indian mother, Satwant Shanti Johal, has vowed not to send her child back until the school implemented a multicultural, anti-racist programme. The school has said it already runs a number of anti-racist projects.

Many of the racists' targets have been vulnerable women and children including Alison Antoine, a black nurse, who was intimidated into leaving her home on the loyalist Rathkyle estate in Antrim Town in January. Racist graffiti and swastikas were daubed on to the front of her home.

Anti-racist campaigners last night said the overall figures showed there was a serious problem within loyalist communities regarding racism.

Davy Carlin, one of the founding members Anti-Racist Network in Northern Ireland, also called on unionist leaders to do more. 'Those figures do confirm that the majority of these attacks are happening in Protestant, mainly working class areas. Racist attacks do happen in both areas across the sectarian divide but we have to say the overt assaults are coming in Protestant areas.

He claimed that the figures 'seriously underestimate' the real number of attacks against immigrants and ethnic minorities across Northern Ireland.

'They are definitely unrecorded and unreported out of fear. Those people who have just come here to make a better life for themselves and their families are least likely to report them because they are outsiders in a new community.'

The Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities said the figures confirmed all their anecdotal evidence that most racist attacks were taking place in unionist areas.

However, Patrick Yu, NICEM's director warned that racist attacks in Catholic areas has also been on the rise recently. 'NICEM heard recently of a case in Larne where the two sides, Catholics and Protestants, united together against migrant workers in the town.

'In rural parts of Northern Ireland we have also heard that racist incidents against migrants are on the rise in Catholic areas. So whilst it's true that over the last few years there have been more attacks within Protestant communities, it is a mistake to say there are no racist incidents in the other side, a dangerous mistake,' Yu said.

One of the reasons both the PSNI and anti-racist campaigners believe that attacks have been concentrated in Protestant working class areas is due to housing.

In Belfast, for instance, the majority of immigrants are being offered rental accommodation in de-populating Protestant inner city areas like the Village and Donegall Road. By contrast there are very few houses for rent in Catholic areas, where demand for homes continually outstrips supply.

In sharp contrast to the loyalist south, Belfast republicans in the west of the city have published Welcome Packs for new immigrants coming into the constituency. Sinn Fein has also distributed leaflets in Polish welcoming migrant workers from Poland.

However, the West Belfast Welcome Pack has come under criticism from Searchlight, the UK anti-fascist magazine that has been exposing neo-Nazi activity in Britain and Northern Ireland since the early Seventies.

Searchlight singled out the pack's advice to immigrants on dealing with the police. It reads that: 'The Police Force in the North of Ireland (the PSNI) is seen by most people here as an extension of the British State and has no support. You should avoid calling them into the area, unless it is a necessity.'

Searchlight said such advice offered little encouragement to immigrants to report racist attacks to the police.

Groups including the British National Party and far right groups such as Combat 18 have also tried to exploit the race issue in Northern Ireland.

And while mainstream loyalist paramilitary groups have organised campaigns to portray racism as anti-British, many of their rank and file are behind the attacks. The Progressive Unionist Party has run a very public anti-racist campaign. However, members of the PUP's military wing, the Ulster Volunteer Force, were at the forefront of racist protests against the Chinese community in the Donegall Pass area of south Belfast.

Last edited by IG-Calibre (2009-06-18 04:42:08)

Bertster7 wrote:

Northern Ireland is not a part of Britain, so how can they be British? It's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Surely the people there would/should be called Northern Irish, not British.

But that's just semantics and the point remains, they weren't "proper" Irish.

*edit*
After checking this, I've found that people from Northern Ireland can be referred to as Irish or British (both of which seem like misnomers to me), there's no such thing as Northern Irish - but I think there should be.