Northern Ireland: 12 police hurt, 16 arrests in second night of riots
by Paul Godfrey · UPIJune 11 (UPI) -- A dozen police officers were injured and 16 people were arrested in a second night of anti-immigrant unrest in Northern Ireland sparked after a refugee allegedly attempted to murder a local man with a knife in a street attack in Belfast.
North of the city in Newtownabbey, protesters pelted police with bricks and petrol bombs and police fired back with water cannon and soft-nosed plastic bullets.
John Blair, the Alliance Party representative for the area in the Northern Ireland legislative assembly described it as "a mob on a rampage of violence and destruction."
There were also incidents of unrest in Belfast itself, where Blair said police rescued people trapped in their own homes, Derry, Northern Ireland's second largest city, and the university town of Coleraine -- but authorities said the disorder was on a smaller scale and confined to fewer areas than on Tuesday.
An 18-year-old man was expected in court in Belfast on Thursday on rioting charges in connection with an incident in Carrickfergus in which two Police Service of Northern Ireland officers were injured by petrol bombs.
Unison, a union representing public employees, and private health providers, said they were supporting overseas hires after they reported being followed to and from work, intimidated and their accommodation attacked.
In one incident earlier in the week, masked men chased a female nurse of "a different skin color," according to Unison, which said the unnamed nurse escaped by fleeing into the nearby Ulster Hospital in east Belfast.
Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn condemned the unrest as "racist thuggery."
"If you are burning someone out of their home, saying 'foreigners out', what other word would you use?"
He said "a sense of fear and terror" was growing among ethnic minorities in the self-governing province amid the arson attacks, intimidation and reports of people stopping cars to determine the nationality of the occupants.
"People are reflecting on the truly shocking scenes we saw on Tuesday night, with people being burnt out of their homes because of the color of their skin. There is no justification for that, and nothing can explain it away, and it's left a lot of people terrified."
An additional 90 officers from Scotland were expected to arrive on Thursday to help contain the unrest but NI Policing Board chair Brendan Mullan warned on BBC Radio Ulster on Thursday that PSNI was "stretched" because it was 1,200 officers short.
"The police service has currently 6,300 officers against a recognized need for 7,500 so it lacks resilience," he said.
The unrest was sparked by the stabbing of local man Steven Ogilvy on a Belfast street on Monday night, allegedly by a refugee who arrived in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, by crossing the open land border with the Irish Republic.
Hadi Alodid, 30. appeared before magistrates on Wednesday on charges of the attempted murder of Ogilvy, threatening to kill a National Health Service radiographer and possession of a knife. He was remanded in custody until his next court appearance in four weeks.
The protests are over what growing numbers of people believe is uncontrolled immigration into Britain but police said they believed the violence was being incited and coordinated online, including doxxing of immigrants, and appealed to social media companies to clamp down on it.
Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Emma Little-Pengelly of the Democratic Unionist Party said that peaceful protesters had legitimate grievances but that she strongly condemned those bent on "violence, thuggery and disorder," adding that targeting people on the basis of their color was racism.
"That is absolutely wrong. We of course have been united in calling for that to stop immediately. All they are doing is destroying their own communities, and they are destroying the very cause that they claim to be supporting," said Little-Pengelly.
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