As widespread violence broke out in Belfast, a list of addresses began circulating on social media. Spread geographically wide, on dozens of streets across the city, the addresses were reportedly houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) where immigrants live.
Joseph and Solomon, who are both from Eritrea, and came to Belfast as refugees, now have leave to remain and work full-time. They live on the same street as one of the properties on the list, but Joseph thought it was theirs that was meant to be on it. “It’s obviously for us,” he said.
“I don’t know how to feel,” he said. “When something is too much, you don’t feel anything.”
Until now, Joseph, who works as an interpreter, has felt safe in Belfast. “The majority of the people out there are good,” he said. But now he is planning to leave. “I don’t know where, somewhere safe. I’m planning my escape.”
Solomon, who works for a manufacturing company, said: “I couldn’t go to my work for my shift; I feel it’s not safe.” He is also planning to leave Belfast. “I don’t know where,” he said. “I have to decide tomorrow maybe, a place with security.”
As the Guardian finished talking to the men, a white woman came out of her house nearby to check we were not there because of the list. She asked: “Are you reporters or something?”
“I’m petrified,” she said. “It’s really upsetting and I want to cry. I just wanted to check you weren’t giving them any bother, because they’re lovely.”
Paul Doherty runs a community solidarity hub in south Belfast. On Wednesday night, he was in the centre, when a car pulled up outside. “It was a mother and she was just in hysterics crying,” he said.
“I looked in the back of her car and there was three kids and they were crying in the car and she said that their house had been listed on a social media post.”
Her children had seen the post. “She didn’t want to go home. The kids didn’t want to go home.”
In response to the post, he said, community members have quietly stepped up, looking out for their neighbours. “There were people actually looking out,” he said, adding: “Someone had probably already been at her door when she was out, just driving around, circling.”
The list has stoked a culture of fear that is permeating Belfast’s small minority ethnic communities. As have the violent attacks over the past two nights.
On Wednesday night a mob tried to attack a hotel housing asylum seekers, but when they could not reach it, as the way had been blocked by police, clashes broke out with officers in a nearby residential street. The night before, minority ethnic families were forced out of their homes, businesses looted and burned, and vehicles set on fire.
Mohammed fled Syria during the war in 2015; he lifts up his trouser leg to show an injury to his shin from a bomb blast. His children were all born here and speak with Belfast accents. But he is now planning to leave this summer, perhaps to move back to Syria or Egypt. “We are not like this guy [the knife attack suspect],” he said. “We are looking just only for a new life.”
The supermarket that he manages in a majority-loyalist area of Belfast was set on fire on Tuesday; his entire stock was destroyed. “At home it’s very bad. My kids are crying. We don’t sleep, actually. This morning, four o’clock in the morning, my wee boy told me: ‘I don’t want to go school. I don’t want to go to school.’ I sleep beside him. Another boy sleeps with his mum.”
The business is owned by another family from Syria. Sultan, the son of the owner, watched on the news as the shop burned. “We knew it was gone,” he said. “There’s nothing more you can do. It’s wrong. It’s all happened to the innocent people. The shop’s burned. There’s a few houses burned as well.”
“It felt bad, your family business gone in front of your eyes. I just couldn’t do anything about it at the time.” Even when they called the emergency services, there was so much disorder they struggled to respond. “The police said they were doing their best,” he said. “It was a terrible night that night.”
Kfloum Tekly Kassa was evacuated from the block of flats above the parade of shops where the supermarket was set alight. He was forced to flee with his wife and their two-month-old daughter, and they went to stay with friends.
They have lived in Belfast for almost four years. He works as a picker in the food industry, and his wife was working in a restaurant until she went on maternity leave.
“It’s very hard,” he said. “My wife was very afraid. This is not humanity.” He too is afraid. “I have children. Maybe I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully, we come to a better place; hopefully, everything is good.”
This week’s violence has cast a light on racism in Northern Ireland. Last year, racist incidents were at their highest recorded level, and now outweigh sectarian incidents.
“We were expecting something,” said Kashif Akram, from the Belfast Islamic Centre. “We expect something every summer, unfortunately, since August 2024. Summer is a very tough time.”
“Last year we had somebody who tried to come into the building,” he said. “Thankfully, he was denied entry. He went around the building, smashed a window, actually two doors up from here, and threw an incendiary device.”
“It’s almost like it’s been allowed,” he added. “The dehumanisation of immigrants and Muslims has been an ongoing thing, especially you can see it on social media, there have been so-called vigilante groups that have been prowling in the streets.”
“And to me, the far-right politicians have really normalised violence,” he said. “They have legitimised the fear of immigration.”
Tim Magowan is the executive director of the 174 Trust, which works to build relationships between local and immigrant populations. It is based just around the corner from Monday’s incident, which sparked the violence.
On Tuesday, its refugee English class had to stop, and people forced out of their homes have been coming to the charity’s clothes bank.
While incidents such as this week’s, and last year’s Ballymena riots, have brought the issue to the fore, Magowan said: “What was clear was it was underneath the surface, bubbling away.”
“Most people of colour that I know have stories,” he said. “I think it’s really important that we’re aware of that and we’re working out what we can do to challenge that.”
“At the moment we’ve only 3% of people of colour living in our communities,” Magowan added. “So we’re just not anywhere near as used to being in a multi-ethnic world.
“I think that we also have a culture which is fundamentally about division. We have grown up, we are highly defended physically, most of us live in single-identity communities.
“We have been trained to have psychologically defended mindsets and we are used to constructing our identities by what we are not.”
