Reuters: Members of ethnic minority communities in Belfast say they are afraid to leave their homes

After watching footage of masked gangs rampaging through the streets of Belfast - some of them attacking the homes and businesses of people believed to be immigrants - members of the city's ethnic minority communities say they are afraid to leave their homes, Reuters reports today.

"The women and children are terrified and in shock. We are keeping the children at home, I haven't sent them to school since this happened," said Twasul Mohamed, who came to Northern Ireland from Sudan as a refugee in 2016.

The violence erupted on Tuesday after a knife attack, for which a Sudanese man was charged with attempted murder. That evening, masked groups moved through parts of Belfast, setting houses and cars on fire and targeting members of ethnic minorities. Minor incidents continued on Wednesday, with fears that the violence could continue in the coming days.

Britain's Northern Ireland minister has said attacks on migrants are "racist violence".

The target is people who fled the war.

For many members of migrant communities in Belfast, the riots are awakening traumas they had hoped to leave behind.

"You have to remember that we are talking about communities whose members fled war in their countries and who have experienced these things over and over again. Immigrants are not the problem, we are not the cause of the housing crisis or the problems in the health system. Each of us wants to be part of this community and help build it," Mohamed told Reuters.

Northern Ireland has endured three decades of conflict between largely Catholic Irish nationalists and predominantly Protestant unionists loyal to Britain. In recent years, some community organizers say, sectarian tensions have increasingly given way to hostility toward ethnic minorities.

"This is already a deeply divided society. This is a society that has not yet emerged from the post-conflict period and... the basest instincts of ordinary people are being appealed to from some very dark and sinister quarters," said Patricia McKeon, regional secretary of the public sector union Unison.

Union volunteers helped evacuate at least 15 families from their homes on Tuesday, and another 15 on Wednesday, after fearing they might become targets of attacks, she said.

She added that workers have reported being stopped on the streets by self-proclaimed patrols, especially near hospitals.

"We have workers stopping such patrols on the streets of Belfast, especially outside hospitals... checking their ethnicity and taking pictures of their vehicle registration plates. We have workers following them to work and back home. And last night a nurse was chased by four masked men in one of the major hospitals in the east of the city... This is hate that is endangering lives," McKeon said.

Community response

However, McEwan says that violence directed against ethnic minorities - according to the 2021 census, 97 percent of Northern Ireland's population is white - also shows the best face of the community.

Ruchira Rangaprasad, who moved to Northern Ireland from India three years ago, said she had received a large number of offers of help after announcing on social media that she would be preparing meals for families affected by the events.

She said more than 30 volunteers - mostly strangers - came forward to help distribute dozens of food packages on Wednesday.

"People are afraid to leave their homes, and food is a basic need, especially nutritious home-cooked food... so I thought of cooking and helping people," said Rangaprasad.

Kashif Akram, a member of the executive board of the Islamic Centre in Belfast, said that the response from citizens also showed a different face of the city.

"My heart breaks. At the same time, Belfast is full of really good people. The people who are spreading hate right now are a minority, very few," Akram, 44, who was born in Northern Ireland and has lived there his whole life, told Reuters.