BELFAST: A week of racism-fuelled disorder in Northern Ireland, sparked by unrest in English towns and cities, is proving harder to end, with fears that sectarian divisions in the UK region are fueling the violence.
“They burned every single thing, there was nothing left inside, just ashes,” said Bashir, whose supermarket in Belfast was torched during attacks on foreign shops and businesses.
A mosque in a town near Belfast was targeted on Friday night.
“We are scared of what can happen next, there is a lot of hostility against the Muslim community,” said the 28-year-old from Dubai, who did not want to give his full name, citing security reasons.
Northern Ireland saw overnight unrest, mainly in pro-UK loyalist neighborhoods, which began after an anti-immigration protest in Belfast on August 3.
The violence reflected the unrest in England, fueled by misinformation spread on social media about the alleged 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 unrest.
“At a fundamental 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 also interacts 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 pro-Irish Catholic nationalists.
Outside Bashir's smoke-scarred storefront in the staunchly loyal Sandy Row downtown neighborhood, British Union Jack flags fly from lampposts and murals proclaim fierce loyalty to the United Kingdom.
“Within Loyalists, there is a sense that has prevailed through the Northern Ireland peace process that their community is in retreat, that their community and British identity is under attack,” McLoughlin explained.
Many loyalists feel they “need to oppose outsiders coming into those areas, who are seen as taking supposedly Protestant jobs and homes and invading a community that was once dominant,” he added.
After last Saturday's anti-immigration protest, rioters took to 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 were never any problems before,” he said, sitting at the Sahara Shisha Cafe, one of several Middle Eastern and Turkish-owned businesses near Sandy Row that were hit.
The Muslim Council of Northern Ireland said in a statement that “the vast majority of violence has been provoked and fueled by misinformation and deliberate misinformation on social media”.
“False and dangerous narratives” about Muslims who “make up a small minority in Northern Ireland” led to the attacks, it added.
Northern Ireland has low immigration rates 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 describing their ethnicity as white.
The disturbance was “extremely shocking to the wider community”, said Fiona Doran, president of the group 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, to 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 placards 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 armored police vehicles, more than 1,000 counter-protesters chanted “get out!”
Bashir told AFP on Saturday that he was unsure whether he would reopen his supermarket.
“My question is: are we able to do this? If we do, it will be because of all the people who came to show us support,” he said following the show of solidarity.