Belfast and The Furious
President Trump just signed a bill into law that “gives his immigration and deportation agenda a nearly $70 billion boost for the rest of his time in the White House … His signature ended a nearly six-month fight over Department of Homeland Security funding that began with the shooting deaths of deaths of two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.” Keeping outsiders out is a subject that is hardly limited to the White House, or even the United States. In Northern Ireland, the issue spilled out onto the streets after the violent stabbing of a man by a Sudanese asylum seeker went viral on social media. The “footage was posted by Tommy Robinson and other far-right figures, prompting demands for protests in response … X owner Elon Musk shared a post from Robinson announcing locations of protests, and another from the far-right Restore Britain party that read: ‘Do not make peace with evil. Destroy it.'” And destruction followed. “Masked men set houses, vehicles and a city bus ablaze in Belfast on Tuesday night, torching neighborhoods across the city … Ignoring pleas for calm from politicians and clergy, rioters rampaged through heavily immigrant neighborhoods in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, in some cases going door-to-door and causing some families to flee under police protection.
Men in balaclavas and hoods shouted ‘foreigners out.'” WaPo (Gift Article): A new wave of anti-immigrant violence hits U.K. as riots convulse Belfast.
+ Northern Ireland is hardly a hotbed of immigration. It “is the least ethnically diverse part of the United Kingdom, with just about 3.4 percent of residents from minority ethnic backgrounds.” That hasn’t stopped it from being swept up in this globalized version of the Troubles. “In some communities people feel left behind, struggling against a lack of jobs and opportunity. That helped create the conditions for anti-immigrant and far-right sentiment to grow and be picked up by fringe groups. ‘People being burned out of their homes is not new to Belfast,’ said Carl Whyte, a local councilor who grew up in the north part of the city, alluding to the sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. ‘And last night, we saw that being used toward immigrant families.'” NYT (Gift Article): Police Step Up Security in Northern Ireland After Night of Violence.
+ “On a residential street draped in loyalist flags near Belfast’s Shankill Road, the masked men approached a house with a boarded-up window and a security camera stationed outside. As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down. With the air thick with smoke from fireworks, they attacked the downstairs windows with bricks. As they stormed the property, some claimed to be ‘liberating’ it. Graffiti nearby demanded ‘local homes for local people.’ A woman in the crowd said to her friend: ‘There’s wee girls inside.'”
+ The family of Stephen Ogilvy, the victim who was seriously injured in the original crime, issued a statement: “We want to make it absolutely clear that overnight unrest is not welcome, and peaceful protest is the only way forward. We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector and we depend on them to make our country work … [We don’t want this] terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility.” I wonder if Elon Musk will amplify that message as well. Here’s the latest from BBC and BelfastLive.
