Training | 2009.06.18
More attacks on Belfast Romanians
Police move families to secret location under armed police guard, as attacks spread to east Belfast
Racist attacks against Romanians in Northern Ireland have shifted from south to east Belfast with the targeting of a family home in Upper Newtonards Road last night.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed they were treating the incident as a hate crime.
More than 100 Romanians, the majority from the Roma community, are in a secret location under armed police guard after they were driven from their homes this week. The 20 families said their houses had been repeatedly attacked by a racist gang.
The Romanian consul general will meet Northern Ireland\'s social development minister, Margaret Ritchie, today to discuss the violence. Ritchie has said the families can stay in the temporary accommodation for at least a week. A majority of the 110 Romanian men, women and children were in such fear that they said they would prefer to return home rather than to stay.
Northern Ireland\'s political establishment visited the group yesterday at a leisure centre in an effort to persuade them to stay and stand up to what the city\'s lord mayor said was a "stain of shame over Belfast". The Ozone sports arena, which is normally used as a tennis training centre for children, had been transformed into a makeshift shelter for the Romanians. They spent Tuesday night on the floor of the Belfast City church in the university district.
One of the Romanian men, Fernando, said he had been injured when rocks and stones were thrown through his windows in the early hours of Sunday morning. Fernando said he sought help from Orangefield Presbysterian church, asking for help to move his family out of the area for good.
A woman who said she was called Perca was one of the last Romanians to arrive at the Ozone centre, shortly after 11am yesterday. Speaking in broken Spanish, she said she felt afraid for herself, her husband and her two children. "I am safer back in Romania even than here," she said.
Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland\'s deputy first minister, branded the attackers "racist criminals". The Sinn Fein MP stood beside the Democratic Unionist party minister Jeffrey Donaldson at the Ozone centre to denounce the assaults.
"Jeffrey and I have come together today because we are absolutely outraged and disgusted at what has happened to these innocent people," he said. "It is a matter of great concern for us that a small, unrepresentative group would attempt to threaten and intimidate a large number of people. We have to ensure that we defeat these people."
The lord mayor, Naomi Long, who also paid a visit to the Romanian families, said the racist assaults was showing the city in a negative light across the world. She said if the 110 Romanians fled Northern Ireland, the racists would have won.
"It\'s easy for me in my position to say I want them to stay. I entirely understand that people who have been so traumatised would want to leave. I don\'t want these people to leave Belfast because of a small minority of people who have brought shame to this city by their actions," she said.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/18[...]t-romanians-moved-race-attacks
