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.
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