Third Day of UK Anti-Migrant Rape Riots Sees Migrant Relocation Shelter Burnt Getty Images

Unrest following the alleged attempted rape of a teenage girl entered its third night on Wednesday with continued clashes with police, and residents hanging British flags and signs on their homes to identify themselves as locals.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said they had made six arrests overnight on Wednesday, the third night of rioting in the Ulster town of Ballymena that followed an alleged sex assault of a 14-year-old girl. Three of those arrested were charged with rioting, and one of those with criminal damage as well. Some others arrested in previous nights have been released on bail.

Protests started on Monday after two teenagers appeared in court accused of the attempted rape and had to be afforded a Romanian-language interpreter, leading to claims the sex assault had been a case of an attack by migrants on a local. Clashes with police escalated into full riots, with police pelted with bricks and petrol bombs, as earlier reported.

While the overall pace of clashes with police on Wednesday night in the town of Ballymena is said to have slowed from the previous two nights, disorder has also spread to other towns. In one case, a temporary shelter established in a community leisure in Larne for migrants who had been relocated out of Ballymena was attacked.

The shelter, which was 20 miles away from the initial unrest, was set alight and suffered “extensive damage”. No injuries were reported at the scene and the migrant residents have been moved on again.

Critics have called on Northern Ireland’s communities minister Gordon Lyons to resign, because the location of those relocated migrants in Larne had been made public. Instead, it is asserted the location of migrants should be kept secret from the public so they can’t be targeted. Lyons has rejected the notion he should resign, stating the location of the temporary shelter had been public knowledge.

Broadcaster Sky News has noted the cameras of the media being welcomed by Ballymena locals as, it is reported, feel the police are being excessively heavy-handed, and having national media present will mean this will be recorded and seen by the rest of the country. Sky stated in their report: “A sizeable chunk of people born in Ballymena are angry. They do not like the talk from police and politicians that taking to the streets following an alleged sex attack on a teenage girl equates to them being ‘racist thugs’.”

It stated police fired baton rounds and loosed water cannon after being pelted with bricks and even Molotov cocktail-type firebombs. Sky reports rioters in some cases were cheered on by crowds of locals observing but not otherwise participating in the violence.

Other broadcasters have been less lucky on the ground. Ireland’s The Journal complained on Wednesday that locals refused to talk to the left-leaning publication, saying they only trusted the broadcaster GB News. GB News, for its part, has reported on the riots not as a simple outpouring of racist sentiment, but a symptom of social and economic issues caused by a sudden and considerable inflow of migrants to the area.

The broadcaster’s Dougie Beattie said on Wednesday: “the alleged attack on a 14 year old girl, now that isn’t what is at the very heart of this problem.

“There are other problems in social housing in Northern Ireland… the Mears group has bought up contracts with all the private landlords and what that has done is reduced the housing stock, but it has also done is set up the price of rent much, much higher. Because of course the Mears group pays much, much more than an ordinary person going to hire a house”.

In a separate dispatch Beattie related: “What has happened is that the private landlords make up about 25 per cent of our social housing. Now there’s a group called Mears, I’m sure you have groups exactly the same, that look after migrant costs and housing. And what has happened is that Mears has offered all the private landlords twice the rent in order to keep these migrants because, of course, the government is giving them big money to get them out of the hotels.

“So what’s happened is the people of Ballymena that lived here, born here, actually can’t get housed here and that too is causing friction in this area.”

As homes inhabited by migrants have been targeted, with properties burnt out and windows smashed, Ballymena residents have taken to festooning their houses with British flags and even placing “locals live here” signs on their doors to clearly identify the residents as natives of Ulster.

In other cases migrant families have adopted the British flag as a signal to others that, as The Guardian sardonically reported, “they are the good foreigners, the foreigners who cause no trouble, and deserve to be spared”. In a curious impact of the unrest, The Guardian also reports Protestant, loyalist areas of Ballymena have welcomed Catholics supporting the anti-migrant sex assault protests. A local told the paper: “They wouldn’t normally be in a loyalist area like this but they came down. It’s a very good thing.”

The Northern Ireland government and police have condemned the riots. Naomi Long, the Stormont justice minister called the riots a “three-day festival of hate” and said those protesting “should be afraid” of the law catching up with them. The PSNI meanwhile said the disorder was “completely unacceptable”, and the attack on the leisure centre housing relocated migrants in particular being “shameful”.

 

 

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