UK Features

Romanians want to "go home" after racist attacks (News Feature)

By Anna Tomforde Jun 17, 2009, 15:45 GMT

London - 'I don't feel safe here any more. I just want to go home now,' said Maria, a young Romanian mother, clutching her child in a blanket, outside Belfast City church where she had found sanctuary from racist attack. A compatriot, who gave his name as Deaglaz, revealed a stitched wound on his abdomen which he said was a cut from broken glass after windows were smashed in his house. Another, Couaccusil Filuis, said thugs had broken into his home and threatened to kill his children. They are from a group of 115 Romanians who spent the night huddled on the floor of the church hall after being driven from their homes by stone-and bottle-throwing racist thugs who gave Nazi salutes. Out of fear, so many had crammed into the house in Lisburn Road, where they hoped they would be safe. But outside, the simmering tensions came to a head when people showing their support at an anti-racism rally were attacked by racist, drunken youths. The scared and bewildered women, men and children were swiftly evacuated, owing their temporary safety to the quick thinking of Pastor Malcolm Morgan, whose team organized a coach transport and shelter while the ugly scenes were going on. 'It is a sad indictment of our a society, but hopefully we can show them a different side to Northern Ireland, and a caring side to Northern Ireland,' the pastor said. The attacks are something of an embarrassment for Northern Ireland's politicians, who like to portray the province as a place where ethnic diversity is flourishing in he wake of the economic development promoted by the peace process. 'Belfast, and indeed Northern Ireland as a whole, is changing. Each and every citizen has the right to live free from fear and intimidation,' said the city's mayor, Naomi Long. The complaints voiced against the Romanians on the streets of Belfast are common enough. The East European migrants, it can often be heard, were taking local jobs away and 'begging in the streets.' 'Whether they are begging or not, no-one has the right to attack, intimidate or hurt them,' said Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein politician and deputy government leader, vowing to hunt down the 'racist criminals.' A 2007 opinion poll on public attitudes to migrant workers in the province, which has a population of 1.7 million, showed that 52 per cent believed the government should place greater restrictions on migrant workers. About 85 per cent took the view that migrant workers were prepared to work for 'lower wages,' while 63 per cent said they were placing a 'strain on services.' The number of people who believed that migrant workers were 'good' for the economy, and those who thought they took jobs away from local people, was roughly the same at between 45 and 50 per cent. However, analysts believe that in Belfast, a city that has been dubbed the 'racism capital of Europe,' there is a different socio-historic dimension to the attacks. According to McGuinness what happened to the Romanians is no different from the sectarian street murders and 'punishment attacks' that still occur in the province. In a province still reeling from the trauma of decades of religious tension and civil strife, racism had for some 'become the new form of sectarianism,' said a BBC correspondent. Bred by a 'culture of intolerance,' the thugs who attacked the migrants were motivated by the same 'territorial instincts' that used to guide the warfare of paramilitary groups on both sides of the religious divide. According to experts, there have long been links between Protestant extremist paramilitary organizations and neo-Nazi groupings in Northern Ireland, often acting together on the fringes of the Protestant Orange order marches. In the town of Coleraine, where a Catholic man was recently killed by a Protestant mob, the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) has been in the forefront of stopping a mosque being built. 'When looking closer at the situation, a sinister connection between the fascist hate-mongers and 'official' politics comes to the surface,' said one commentator.