BELFAST: A week of racism-fuelled unrest in Northern Ireland, sparked by unrest in English cities, is proving harder to end amid fears that sectarian factions in the UK region are fueling violence.
“They burned every single thing, nothing was left inside but ashes,” said Bashir, whose supermarket in Belfast was torched in attacks on foreign-owned shops and businesses.
A mosque in the town near Belfast was also targeted late on Friday.
“We are afraid of what might happen next, there is a lot of hostility against the Muslim community,” said a 28-year-old man from Dubai, who did not want to give his full name for security reasons.
Northern Ireland saw overnight unrest, mainly in pro-British loyalist neighborhoods, which began after an anti-immigration protest in Belfast on 3 August.
The violence echoed the unrest across England, sparked by misinformation spread on social media about the suspected perpetrator of a knife attack in Southport on July 29 that killed three children.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said on Saturday that 31 people had been arrested during the riots.
“At a basic level, the Belfast attacks are similar in dynamics to anti-immigration protests in white working-class areas of England, the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere in Europe,” said Peter McLoughlin, a politics lecturer at Queens University Belfast.
“It is driven by racism and fear of the other, but in Northern Ireland it is also intertwined with sectarian political dynamics,” he told AFP.
Three decades of violent sectarian conflict known as the “Troubles” largely ended in 1998, but bitterness and friction remain between pro-British Protestant loyalists and Catholic nationalists for Irish unity.
Outside Bashir's smoke-scarred shop window in staunchly loyalist Sandy Row, British Union Jack flags fly on lampposts and painted murals proclaim fierce loyalty to the United Kingdom.
“Within the peace process in Northern Ireland, there was a sense of loyalty that their community was in retreat, that their community and British identity was under attack,” McLoughlin explained.
Many loyalists believe they “have to oppose foreigners coming to these areas who are seen as taking supposedly Protestant jobs and homes and encroaching on a community that was once dominant,” he added.
After an anti-immigration protest last Saturday, rioters roamed the streets looking for foreign-owned businesses to attack.
“What happened last week was crazy,” Yilmaz Batu, a 64-year-old Turkish chef who has lived in Northern Ireland for two years, told AFP.
“There's never been any trouble before,” he said, sitting in the Sahara Shisha Cafe, one of several affected establishments in the Middle East and Turkey near Sandy Row.
The Muslim Council of Northern Ireland said in a statement that “the vast majority of the violence was whipped up and fueled by deliberate disinformation and disinformation on social media”.
The attacks were driven by “false and dangerous narratives” about Muslims, who are “a small minority in Northern Ireland”, he added.
Northern Ireland has a low rate of immigration compared to the rest of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
The 2021 census showed that around six per cent of the population were born outside the UK or Ireland, with around 97 per cent reporting their ethnicity as white.
The mess was “extremely shocking to the wider community”, said Fiona Doran, chair of United Against Racism, which co-organised a solidarity rally in Belfast on Saturday.
The demonstration, which attracted several thousand people, gave people “a chance to take to the streets and show that Belfast is a welcoming city, it's a city that says no to racism and fascism,” she told AFP.
At an anti-immigration rally the previous day in Belfast, around a hundred protesters carried British flags and banners reading “respect our country or leave!”
Some chanted the name of Tommy Robinson, a notorious anti-Muslim agitator who has been accused of helping to fuel unrest in England through constant social media posts about the events.
Nearby, behind lines of armored police vehicles, more than 1,000 counter-protesters chanted “racists out!”
Bashir told AFP on Saturday that he was unsure whether he would reopen his supermarket.
“My question is: are we capable of it? If we do, it will be because of all the people who came to show us support,” he said after a show of solidarity.
