Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Boils Over: Week Concludes with Protest in Ballymena

It was a week that began with people thronging the streets of a Co Antrim town in their hundreds.

It was extraordinary given it appeared to have happened without any time for organising. It was peaceful.

By its end, many immigrants were left homeless and scores of police officers injured as festering anti-immigrant sentiment in some communities was fully revealed.

Members of the family of a young girl allegedly seriously sexually assaulted two days previously were among those marchers. By Thursday, it emerged the young girl was further traumatised by the nights of violent chaos.

Within a couple of hours of the march, a mob was rampaging through an area of Ballymena that is home to some immigrants.

Clonavon Terrace was the epicentre of the violence, with homes torched and windows smashed.

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher was blisteringly blunt following the sustained attacks on his officers over the nights and the targeting of those from a different ethnic background.

“The people who are threatening families, who are different to them - that is racism,” the chief constable said.

But he went further when asked whether everyone who took to the streets is racist, he replied: “I can see no other reason because they are focusing on families from ethnic and diverse backgrounds. It’s racist and we all know it.”

All was quiet with a relaxed air on warm and sunny early summer’s evening shortly after 7pm in Ballymena on Wednesday evening.

The police presence on the now flashpoint Clonavon Terrace was light, a single Land Rover posted at each end. People then began gathering, many on the Harryville bridge and adjoining Bridge Street.

At approximately 7.30pm. dozens of vans had been deployed and the police operation began in earnest. It became clear later the plan was to close off the terrace and many of the surrounding streets. On Monday, it was equally clear the police were caught by surprise, allowing the mob to do their dirty work.

Large numbers were now on the bridge and the street. It included one young man in a light coloured hoodie holding a near empty two litre plastic bottle dancing among the crowd, to laughter.

The crowd was pushed up Bridge Street, with multiple warnings to disperse and that violent acts will be met with force. Apart from jostling, there was no violence. The police formed a line along the street.

Hundreds of people were now gathered waiting to see what happened next, milling around and chatting. A group of no more than a dozen in black clothing and masked hid behind the wall of an end house. They were the only ones witnessed firing missiles, fireworks, masonry and one petrol bomb, over a prolonged period

It was not long before the first missile was thrown. Then they came again and again, fireworks, including many that failed to ignite, and masonry, some so heavy they landed well short of the police line.

The man in the light hoodie made a re-appearance, firing missiles, including a petrol bomb that nearly exploded before being thrown. He danced in front of the vans at times. He was hit by the water cannon and, it is believed, a police projectile.

Elsewhere, a masked individual with an impressive catapult fired into the air, apparently towards a drone hovering hundreds of metres in the air, his ambition falling far short of his, or anyone else’s, ability.

The water cannon was deployed and this stand off continued for a number of hours, with the police making no move to charge after the missile throwers, and certainly not the watching crowd.

It can never be known how many of that crowd gathered for the spectacle would be described as racist.

The march in Ballymena was directly linked to a case where two 14-year-old Romanians were charged with attempted rape.

But it is then argued there are wider issues around the claimed disproportionate number of immigrants in some areas, and the impact on housing, education and other services. It

But over in Larne, they were smashing windows of a local leisure centre and burning the foyer with people inside after it emerged it was used to temporarily accommodate some of those driven from their homes in Ballymena. Some of those involved could be heard making vile racist comments on footage posted online.

In Portadown, they were likely planning the march for the following evening, with their flyer linking “pedophiles”, scum and “foreign nationals”. Police said they came under sustained attack the following night as they prevented the march from happening.

Meanwhile, over in east Belfast bricks were thrown at two homes, with anti-immigrant graffiti appearing, both actions a regular occurrence now in parts of the north.

On Mount Street in Coleraine, a family that included three children, were evacuated from their home after it was torched in a racially-motivated hate crime.

Kevin Rous’s home came under attack on Monday night. The Philippines national was working but his wife and two young children were inside their Cullybackey home.

“I have always considered most of my neighbours as my friends. My family are part of this community. The problem is that the attackers saw us as their enemies, and suddenly our lives changed,” he said.