More than 100 Romanians who were subjected to repeated racist attacks in Belfast were still too afraid to return to their homes on Wednesday night.
After an episode described by the city’s lord mayor as a “stain of shame over Belfast,” up to 20 families were given emergency accommodation near Queen’s University on Wednesday following a day in a council leisure center. They spent Tuesday night on the floor of the Belfast City Church after several days of intimidation outside their homes in the south of the city.
One of the Romanians, a man who gave his name as Fernando, said he had been injured in the side when rocks and stones smashed through his windows in the early hours of Sunday.
A woman named Perca said she wanted to leave Northern Ireland as she now felt afraid for herself, her husband and her two children.
“I am safer back in Romania even than here,” she said.
Couaccu Siluis, who said he had came to Northern Ireland eight months ago but had found it impossible to find work, was also afraid to stay.
“It is not safe. They made signs like they wanted to cut my brother’s baby’s throat. They said they wanted to kill us,” Siluis said. “We are very scared. We have young children. We cannot go back. Possibly we could go back to Romania, but we have no money. We have to stay here. I don’t know what we will do now. We will stay here for a couple more days, but I don’t know after that.”
The Romanians said that trouble had flared on Friday night, followed by attacks on their houses on Saturday and Sunday evening. On Monday they joined an anti-racist protest on the Lisburn Road organized by residents, anti-fascist campaigners, trade unionists and churches.
During the demonstration a row broke out between one section of the protesters and a group of youths. At one stage, the youths ran toward steps overlooking the Lisburn Road and started pelting the demonstrators with bottles and bricks, some of them giving Nazi salutes before running off.
Police said they had obtained video footage taken during the protest, which would be examined to see if any of the youths could be identified. Chief Inspector Robert Murdie said he did not believe they were part of an organized gang.
Racially motivated crime has more than doubled over the last five years in Northern Ireland. In 2003 and 2004 the Police Service of Northern Ireland reported 453 racial incidents, but in the last 12 months more than 1,000 incidents of racial hate crime have been recorded.
Two months ago, 46 families, mainly from Poland, fled their homes in Belfast after a series of attacks by a racist gang. In November, a petrol bomb was thrown into a car outside the home of a Slovakian immigrant.
The Romanian families remain the most vulnerable of all the immigrant communities. Many of the men earn a living selling newspapers at traffic islands, while the women have been accused of begging outside local shops.
There has been a small Romanian community in Belfast for five years, which has grown over the last eight months.
The streets where the trouble flared lie between the city’s cosmopolitan, multi-racial university district and the Village/Donegall Road area, a loyalist working-class redoubt.
A poster left on a three-story house, occupied until Monday by several Romanian families, read: “Village says no to racist attacks.”
A similar poster nearby was violently torn off another hoarding by a woman on her way to work. She declined to explain her actions.
Unionists, nationalists and republicans were united in their opposition to the attacks, with the political establishment visiting the eastern Europeans yesterday in an attempt to persuade them to stay.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness branded their attackers “racist criminals.”
The Sinn Fein lawmaker stood beside Democratic Unionist junior minister Jeffrey Donaldson to jointly denounce the assaults.
“Jeffrey and I have come together today because we are absolutely outraged and disgusted at what has happened to these innocent people. It is a matter of great concern for us that a small, unrepresentative group would attempt to threaten and intimidate a large number of people. We have to ensure that we defeat these people,” McGuinness said.
Belfast Lord Mayor Naomi Long said the racist assaults were portraying the city in a negative light across the world.
“It’s easy for me in my position to say I want them to stay,” Long said. “I entirely understand that people who have been so traumatized would want to leave. I don’t want these people to leave Belfast because of a small minority of people who have brought shame to this city by their actions.”
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