Second consecutive night of "racist violence" in Northern Ireland
More than 300 people set fire to immigrant residents' homes after two Romanian teenagers were accused of rape.
LondonA second consecutive night of violence in the town of Ballymena, 45 kilometers north of Belfast (Northern Ireland), has seen what police have described as "racist riots." These riots have partially spread, though not as seriously, to some areas in the north of the provincial capital and the towns of Newtownabbey and Cartown. Protesters threw Molotov cocktails, bricks, and rockets at police, who responded with rubber bullets, water cannons, and riot dogs. While eleven police officers were injured on Monday night, this time there were seventeen.
The clashes began Tuesday around eight o'clock in the evening (local time), when a group of about three hundred people set up barricades in various streets of the city, which they then set on fire. Protesters also set fire to six homes, so much so that one of the resident families, with three young children, had to take refuge in the attic until the fire brigade responded, according to Stormont Assembly MP Sian Mulholland, a witness for the Alliance Party, which does not identify as a Catholic-Protestant party in Northern Ireland. Several businesses in Ballymena have also been attacked. So far, only one person, a 29-year-old, has been arrested, charged with riotous conduct, public disorder, attempted criminal damage, and resisting arrest.
The incidents began on Monday, when two 14-year-old Romanian teenagers appeared before a court in Coleraine, 44 kilometers from Ballymena, accused of sexually assaulting an underage girl. into the fire, when he said that tensions in the area with the foreign population had existed for some time due to an "oversaturation of migrants." who also spoke of "uncontrolled immigration," have been heavily criticized by other political forces in the province. The psychosis among the foreign population is beginning to be such that some Ballymena residents have begun to mark the doors of their houses to indicate their nationality. concern. The events in Ballymena refer to the outbreaks of violence against the Muslim population which were recorded last year in several English cities, after a 19-year-old boy killed with a knife three girls aged between six and nine who were participating in a recreation in Southport, near Liverpool.
