NI riots: Police release images of four individuals after disorder
The Police Service of Northern Ireland has released photos of four suspects they want the public to help identify after four nights of unrest in Northern Ireland.The disorder started on Monday after a peaceful protest over an alleged sexual assault in the County Antrim town but has spread to other areas.Police said 63 of their officers have been injured over four nights of violence after coming under "sustained attack with heavy masonry and fireworks".ACC Ryan Henderson said: "It is in all of our interests and in the interests of justice that those responsible are dealt with."
The first protest was organised hours after two teenage boys appeared before Coleraine Magistrates' Court.They spoke through an interpreter in Romanian to confirm their names and ages. Their solicitor said they would be denying the charges."In releasing these images, I am asking the wider community to step forward and help us to identify these people," ACC Henderson told a press conference on Friday.Police have made a total of 17 arrested following disorder in various parts of Northern Ireland.His message to those involved was: "We're actively taking steps to find you and we will bring you to justice.""Our public order inquiry team has been working night and day to identify those involved," he added.He also said police are investigating "those posting hate on social media".
The worst of the disorder was in Ballymena, but unrest also spread to other towns.In Portadown, County Armagh, on Thursday a crowd pulled bricks and masonry from a derelict building which they threw at police.ACC Henderson said: "police came under significant and sustained attack from rioters. It was clear that those involved were intent on destroying homes and businesses within the town and on attacking police.""The police lines came under attack from heavy masonry, fireworks, petrol bombs and beer kegs," he added. In Larne, masked youths attacked a leisure centre and set it on fire on Wednesday. The centre had been providing emergency shelter for families following the clashes earlier this week.The home of a family with three children was set on fire in Coleraine on Thursday night, in what ACC Henderson called: "an awful, hate-motivated attack".The constable appealed for "calm" over the coming weekend and said there will be a large police presence across Northern Ireland."For those thinking about causing disorder or coming to watch it, stay away, there will be consequences."
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
The Ballymena violence has nothing to do with ‘protecting women'. It is racism, pure and simple
In 1972, loyalist paramilitaries fired bullets into the home of a Catholic woman, Sarah McClenaghan. That night she was at home with her lodger, a Protestant, and her disabled teenage son, David. After forcing her son to get his mother's rosary beads, proving that she was Catholic, a loyalist paramilitary raped Sarah. David was tortured. The gang then shot them both, David dying of his wounds. I thought about David and Sarah as I watched rolling news of the pogroms in Ballymena. I thought about them in light of the lie that violence against women and girls has been imported to Northern Ireland via migrants or asylum seekers. It's always been here. The rioters say they are acting to drive out foreigners who pose a threat to women and girls. The irony isn't lost on anybody with knowledge of the local area. Modern-day loyalist paramilitaries are reportedly involved with the violence. In the Belfast Telegraph this week, journalist Allison Morris reported that members of the South East Antrim Ulster Defence Association are among the rioters. 'The organisation,' she writes, 'has been regularly named by our sister paper, the Sunday Life, as protecting sex offenders.' Morris regularly faces death threats for her brave reporting. The riots in Ballymena are about racism and nothing more. Hatred smothers every brick and petrol bomb thrown. Nobody causing trouble cares about women or children. There are no legitimate concerns at the heart of this. Local Facebook groups with links to the far right are asking for addresses to hit – Roma people are the main target of their ire. Flyers posted around towns and cities call for people to take a stand to protect 'our women' and 'our Christian values'. The trigger for the violence in Ballymena was the trauma and pain of a local family. Earlier in the week, two 14-year-old boys were arrested and charged with the attempted rape of a young girl. Romanian interpreters were required at court. After the arrests, the alleged victim's family asked for support and solidarity from their local community. Hundreds did so, peacefully protesting to show the family that they weren't alone. Then came the violence. The chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said the victim of the alleged assault has been 'further traumatised' by the rioting. Her family have publicly called for the violence to stop. Women have never been safe in Northern Ireland. Generations bore the weight of the Troubles, running households and raising children with absent husbands. Hundreds were murdered in the conflict. During the peace talks that led to the Good Friday agreement, the Women's Coalition, a political party, described the 30-year conflict as an 'armed patriarchy'. Northern Ireland isn't a place where women and girls are cherished. The PSNI recorded 4,090 sexual offences in Northern Ireland in 2023-24. Twenty-five women have been killed in five years, mostly by white men from Northern Ireland. I knew one of them: Natalie McNally. We used to be mates. She last contacted me to ask about the home-buying process (I used to be a conveyancing solicitor). Natalie was buying her first house and the process was dragging on. She was killed in that same house in December 2022, her 15-week-old son in her belly. I was holding my own four-week-old son when I learned that she was dead. The trial is due to take place in November, with the accused previously indicating that he is pleading not guilty. Well, some say, if we have lots of homegrown criminals, we don't need more. This is, again, another racist argument, an age-old trope that non-white men are sexual deviants. The problem is men, full stop. In every country in the world, in every community and every faith, people hate women. Misogyny doesn't respect borders. Fascists want to talk about foreign men to distract from their own disgusting behaviour. Immigration concerns have featured heavily in the news. Because of the Troubles, Northern Ireland always had low levels of migration. That has changed in recent years. Net migration reached its highest levels in 15 years in 2024. No doubt this has changed certain areas and proved alienating for local people and migrants alike. However, according to a Northern Ireland assembly report, Northern Ireland is still the least diverse region of the UK. Only 3.4% of people are from a minority ethnic group, compared to 18.3% in England. Before migrant numbers rose, Northern Ireland's public services were on their knees. The health service has all but collapsed. The housing system is under considerable strain, we don't have enough housing to meet demand and rents have risen to unaffordable levels. People have migrated into this mess. It would be churlish to deny that higher numbers have put pressure on the system. But it's a flat-out lie to blame migrants and refugees for this country's ills. Migrants didn't decimate the NHS. Refugees didn't underfund social housing and homeless services. Local and national politicians did that. They are doing very little to fix the systems that broke under their watch. It's easier to blame people working as Deliveroo drivers. Northern Ireland needs to tackle its fondness for racism and xenophobia. Racially motivated hate crime is at its highest level since records began. It affects every community, Catholic and Protestant. You can't 'legitimate concern' your way through a pogrom and doing so only validates hatred. If women in Northern Ireland rioted every time one of us was attacked, the country would lie in ashes. Sarah Creighton is a lawyer, writer and political commentator from Northern Ireland
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
Yobs hurl petrol bombs, fireworks and bottles at cops in FIFTH night of riots as chaos spreads to new town
MASKED yobs hurled petrol bombs and fireworks at cops for a fifth night in Northern Ireland, in what has been dubbed a "week of shame" for the region. Cops battled another night of violence as thugs continued to cause widespread devastation. 3 3 3 After serious public disorder erupted in Ballymena on Monday, the focus of the violence and unrest has since shifted to Portadown. One officer was directly in the impact of a petrol bomb that landed behind a line of police vehicles during a sustained standoff with those participating in the unrest yesterday. Fireworks, masonry, and bottles were among other items thrown at riot police deployed in the town. Shortly before midnight, the PSNI used a water cannon on the crowd in an effort to disperse those gathered on West Street into other areas. The force used the water cannon again at around 12.30am on Saturday. Elsewhere on Friday, there were reports of disruption and damage to public property as riot police responded to another protest in the Tullyally area of Londonderry. It came after a senior officer said there would be a "scaled-up" policing presence across Northern Ireland in anticipation of further disorder over the weekend. Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson said the mobilisation, which would include officers sent over from Scotland, was "to reassure our communities and protect our streets". Violence originally erupted on Monday, stemming from an initially peaceful gathering to support a girl and her family after an alleged sexual assault. Two 14-year-old boys appeared in court charged with attempted rape on Monday. A third man, 28, was also arrested over the alleged sexual assault. The boys confirmed their names - which cannot be reported - and their ages through a Romanian interpreter at Coleraine Magistrates' Court. But within hours of their court appearance, disorder broke out in Co Antrim. Families in the town of Ballymena have been forced to flee their homes as the riots continue. Crowds set fire to piles of furniture in the middle of the streets, homes were set alight, and multiple cars went up in flames. Harrowing photos from the last two nights show the charred remains of residents' property. Footage showed masked and hooded rioters lobbing petrol bombs, fireworks and bricks at cops trying to calm the unrest on Tuesday. Officers fired baton rounds and water cannon in a desperate bid to keep the mobs at bay.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Where are the foreigners': does a facile explanation lie behind Ballymena's outbreak of hate?
First came the shouts as the crowd worked its way through narrow terraced streets, proclaiming its mission to rid the town of 'scum'. Then came the shattered glass as rocks exploded through windows. Then the flames, licking up curtains and spreading to sofas, carpets, books and framed pictures until smoke billowed into the summer night. They might have been scenes from another century, another country, but they played out in Northern Ireland this week in the glare of rolling news and social media, which recorded a soundtrack of glee and hate. 'Where are the foreigners?' the mob shouted. The targets were families that were different – different nationality, different ethnicity, different skin tone, different language. The goal was expulsion – or immolation. 'There's someone in that room inside,' said a voice caught on video. 'Aye, but are they local?' responded a comrade. 'If they're local, they need out. If they're not local, let them stay there.' No one died in Ballymena, the County Antrim town that erupted on Monday and flared for the rest of the week, or in other towns with smaller, copycat mayhem, but families fled, dozens of police were injured and Northern Ireland faced stark questions about racism, xenophobia and intolerance. Three decades ago, the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles. Republican paramilitaries that wanted a united Ireland, and loyalist paramilitaries that wanted the region to remain in the UK, wound down the killing. Peace brought the novelty of immigration and diversity. In the 2001 census just 14,300 people, or 0.8% of the overall population, belonged to a minority ethnic group. By 2021 it was 65,600 people, or 3.4%. Compared with England (18%), or Scotland (11%), Northern Ireland remains very white. Despite this, many residents in Ballymena, a mainly working-class, Protestant town 25 miles north of Belfast, believe foreigners have 'invaded', 'infested' and 'ruined' their community. It was not only the hundreds of young men in hoods and masks who hurled missiles: older residents, during lulls in violence, endorsed the disturbances. 'We want our voices to be heard. If this is the only way, so be it,' said one woman in her 30s, who declined to be named. The Police Federation of Northern Ireland said its members, by drawing the wrath of mobs, had averted a pogrom. The spark was an alleged sexual assault on a teenage girl by two 14-year-old boys, who appeared in court with a Romanian interpreter and were charged with attempted rape. Loyalist groups in other areas took that as their cue to protest. 'It's time to take a stand and stop welcoming these illegal migrant gangs flocking into our town, paedophiles, drug pushers, human traffickers, prostitutes,' said a group in Portadown, exhorting people to march on a hostel. Such hostility has a blunt, facile explanation: some communities do not like outsiders – a broad, evolving category known occasionally in Northern Ireland as 'them 'uns'. Protestant loyalist mobs in Belfast burned Catholics from their homes at the outset of the Troubles in 1969. Ballymena earned notoriety in the 1990s and mid-2000s with sectarian attacks on Catholic schools and churches. Loyalists in nearby towns have been blamed for a sporadic campaign of paint bombs, smashed windows, graffiti and threatening posters targeting non-white residents. Last year at least eight African families – half of them including nurses – were forced to flee an estate in Antrim town. 'There is fundamental racism in some places that, to put it nicely, have a proud sense of social and cultural cohesion,' said Malachi O'Doherty, a commentator and author of How to Fix Northern Ireland. Communities that are accustomed to living on the same estate can bristle when outsiders take houses that might otherwise have gone to friends or relatives, he said. 'Whether it's Catholics or Roma, it's seen as a dilution of that community.' Just 4.9% of Ballymena's population is non-white, according to the 2021 census, and very few of the new arrivals are asylum seekers, yet there is widespread belief in proliferating 'scrounging refugees', and scepticism about official statistics. 'What we're reading is completely different from what the government is telling us,' said one resident in his 50s. The riots were welcome and overdue, although, he said, the noise was disturbing his sleep. The current strife has a seasonal aspect: summer is when loyalists – and to a lesser extent republicans – assert their identity by parading with drums and flutes and lighting bonfires, traditions that fuel tension and confrontation. Catholics have joined Protestants in anti-immigrant actions and staged their own protests in Catholic areas, but those eruptions tend to be smaller and less frequent. 'Catholics almost take a sectarian pride in not being racist. 'Oh, we're not like them,'' said O'Doherty. Despite a gritty reputation, Northern Ireland scores better for housing, unemployment and poverty than many parts of England, Wales and Scotland. However, it has some of the worst education attainment rates in the UK and the highest rate of economically inactive people, metrics that hint at the alienation and hopelessness felt in some Catholic and Protestant working-class areas. An education system that largely segregates the two main blocs also tends to silo minority ethnic pupils, said Rebecca Loader, a social science researcher at Queen's University Belfast. 'You have schools that have no diversity and schools with high levels, perhaps just separated by a few miles. Certain classes of people are never meeting. It's not conducive to meeting and learning about the other.' Also, very little in Northern Ireland's curriculum addresses racism, unlike curriculums in Britain, especially Wales, she said. Two factors, neither unique to Northern Ireland, have aggravated the tension. One is politics. Leaders from across the political spectrum have condemned the violence and appealed for calm, as they did last August during a similar flare-up. However, critics say some unionist parties – which represent loyalism – give mixed signals by defending 'legitimate protest' and amplifying immigration myths. Political unity fractured on Thursday after Gordon Lyons, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) communities minister, complained on social media that he had not been consulted about a leisure centre in Larne hosting families evacuated from Ballymena. A short time later, a mob set the centre on fire. Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, called on Lyons to reflect on his comments. Michelle O'Neill, the Sinn Féin first minister, suggested he should resign. Paul Sceeny, an interim manager at the North West Migrants Forum in Derry, said growing international antipathy to immigrants was affecting Northern Ireland. 'People are becoming emboldened to use racist tropes. It's part of a wider pattern,' he said. The other factor is social media. Protest organisers use Facebook, TikTok and other platforms to rally support and broadcast the results. In Ballymena, rioters reportedly requested likes, follows and gifts from viewers while livestreaming the destruction of a house. During the daytime calm this week, while authorities cleared debris from streets and foreign families packed up and left, youths huddled over phones and analysed clips, like actors reviewing a performance, seeking ways to improve before the next show.
