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(I wondered how in the hell that Irish Catholics, the victims of racism,
could end up as racists themselves. Once you get past the headline, you
discover that the Protestants are responsible for the bulk of the
attacks on immigrants.)
NY Times, Nov. 29 2014
In Northern Ireland, a Wave of Immigrants Is Met With Fists
By DOUGLAS DALBY
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — More than 16 years after the Good Friday
peace deal brought real hope that Protestants and Roman Catholics could
live together in relative harmony, Northern Ireland is being racked by
another wave of violence.
But this time it is not driven by the sectarian divide, but by animosity
toward a fast-growing population of immigrants — adding one more
challenge as Europe struggles to cope with the combination of intense
economic strain and rapid demographic change.
“This is a society that always prides itself on being very friendly, but
it is becoming less and less welcoming, particularly to certain types of
people,” said Jayne Olorunda, 36, whose father was Nigerian, and though
she grew up in Northern Ireland said her color has always marked her as
an outsider.
The expanding problem appears to be partly racial and partly directed at
immigrants of all backgrounds at a time when open borders in the
European Union have led more legal migrants to Britain and Ireland in
search of work. At the same time, war and economic deprivation have
driven waves of legal and illegal migrants toward Europe from Asia, the
Middle East and Africa. The more recent immigrants from Eastern Europe
and parts of Africa tell stories similar to those of people from China,
India and Pakistan who have lived here for decades.
Mohammed Khattack, a 24-year-old Pakistani who arrived in Belfast last
year hoping to study humanities after three years in London, got a first
warning one night in June when an empty wine bottle shattered the front
window of his rented house in north Belfast. When he and his housemate,
who is also from Pakistan, began cleaning up the next morning, small
groups of neighbors had formed. But they had not come to help — they had
come to gloat.
Then one of them began raining blows down on Mr. Khattack amid a tirade
of racist slurs.
“He was a big guy and he approached me, and at this point I called the
police to report trespass as he was inside the gate,” Mr. Khattack said.
“But he grabbed me in a headlock and began punching me and jumping on my
legs. I managed to get into the house, but he followed me through the
door until I got to the bathroom and there he continued to beat me.”
Mr. Khattack was treated for severe bruising and spent months on
crutches. He still walks with a limp.
The police arrested a 57-year-old man, who was later released on bail.
The police told Mr. Khattack that the man had since fled the area.
The official figures and anecdotal evidence indicate that the severity
and frequency of attacks in Northern Ireland have increased in recent years.
On average, almost three racial hate crimes a day are reported to the
police. Between 2013 and 2014 there was a 43 percent increase in
racially motivated offenses, 70 percent of them in Belfast. Immigrant
groups assert — and the police concede — that the real figure is much
higher, with many attacks going unrecorded because of fear of reprisals
or a lack of faith in the justice system.
According to a recent report by the Northern Ireland Commission for
Ethnic Minorities, just 12 of 14,000 race-related crimes reported over
the past five years ended in a successful prosecution.
The police say paramilitary groups are cynically manipulating xenophobia
to gain support in their communities by targeting migrants. In April, a
senior police officer, Assistant Chief Constable Will Kerr, said the
rise in the number and severity of racial hate crimes in Protestant
loyalist areas left “the unpleasant taste of a bit of ethnic cleansing.”
But Patrick Yu, the executive director of the Northern Ireland
Commission for Ethnic Minorities, said it is simplistic to brand certain
communities intrinsically racist.
“Most of the available housing stock for private rental just happens to
be in loyalist areas where there is already a wariness of outsiders and
a feeling of being left behind by Catholics who they believe have
benefited disproportionately from the Good Friday Agreement,” he said.
“There is still huge deprivation in these areas, and I believe
sectarianism and racism are two sides of the same coin — both need to be
tackled.”
Although less prevalent, attacks have also taken place in Catholic west
Belfast. In June, hundreds of people marched in the area in support of a
Nigerian man who was hospitalized after a racist assault. His attackers
had also threatened to run over his 2-year-old daughter and burn down
his home.
There is also concern that casual racism and willful ignorance are
pervasive, evident in the flying of a Ku Klux Klan flag in loyalist east
Belfast in July. Also that month, the Ulster Rugby team apologized for a
picture in which three of its players were wearing black makeup and one
had chains around his neck as if he were a slave.
Anna Lo, the only ethnic minority representative in the Northern Ireland
Assembly, recalls the night she heard the province’s first minister,
Peter Robinson, speak in support of Mr. McConnell, saying “there wasn’t
an ounce of hatred in his bones.”
“I was screaming at the television,” she said in an interview. “I
couldn’t believe these views.”
Mr. Robinson’s remarks prompted Ms. Lo to make an emotional appearance
on a popular talk show in which she said she was considering leaving the
country. Ms. Lo, who was born in Hong Kong, has lived in Northern
Ireland since 1984. “What kind of place are we now living in?” she said.
“I feel vulnerable that when I walk on the street I might be attacked.”
Both men eventually apologized for their remarks.
In Britain, immigrants make up roughly 12.4 percent of the population,
compared with 1.8 percent in Northern Ireland. Still, the rate here is
higher than the 0.8 percent in 2001, with the bulk of the immigrants
coming from Poland after it joined the European Union in 2004.
Many immigrants say the abuse is tolerated for economic reasons: Workers
here can expect to earn far more than in their home countries.
Others cannot go back even if they wanted to. “I acknowledge that it is
somewhat ironic that I seem to have swapped fear in my own country for
another kind here,” said Suleiman Abdulahi, who fled Somalia after the
outbreak of civil war there in 1991.
The new wave of immigrants has certainly not brought safety in numbers.
“It’s my home, but I don’t feel like a very welcome resident,” said Ms.
Olorunda, whose broad accent is pure Northern Ireland.
“When more people began to arrive I was excited at first,” she said,
“but then the attacks began to move from verbal to physical and I began
to think this isn’t a good thing, after all.”
Ms. Olorunda said she has endured a lifetime of racism and stays in
Northern Ireland mainly to look after her mother, who she said never
recovered from the loss of her husband. He died in 1980 when an Irish
Republican Army bomb exploded on a train.
In a twist that shows just how small this society can be, Ms. Olorunda’s
mother, a nurse, met the badly disfigured man responsible for her
husband’s death in a hospital some years later. She accepted his
apology, even though she had been left alone to bring up three young
daughters.
Although born and raised here, Ms. Olorunda said she and her sister were
thinking of joining their other sibling in London.
“I love the people, the humor, the sense of space,” she said. “But my
sister and I have always said we wouldn’t end up as two old ladies in
Northern Ireland.”
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