BELFAST: A week of racially motivated unrest in Northern Ireland, sparked by riots in English towns and cities, is proving increasingly difficult to end, with fears that sectarian divisions in the British region are fuelling the violence.
“They burned everything, there is nothing left, just ashes,” said Bashir, whose Belfast supermarket was set ablaze in attacks on foreign-owned shops and businesses.
A mosque in a town near Belfast was also the victim of an attack late Friday.
“We are afraid of what might happen next. There is a lot of hostility towards the Muslim community,” said the 28-year-old from Dubai, who did not want to give his full name for security reasons.
In Northern Ireland, there were nightly riots, especially in pro-British neighbourhoods. These began after an anti-immigration demonstration in Belfast on August 3.
The violence reflects unrest across England and was fuelled by misinformation circulating on social media about the suspected perpetrator of a knife attack in Southport on July 29 that left three children dead.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said on Saturday that 31 people had been arrested in connection with the unrest.
“At a fundamental level, the attacks in Belfast are similar in dynamic to anti-immigration protests in white working-class areas in England, the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere in Europe,” said Peter McLoughlin, a politics lecturer at Queen's University Belfast.
“The causes are racism and fear of the other, but in Northern Ireland this is also linked to 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-filled shop front in the inner-city Sandy Row district, which is home to loyalist supporters of British colonial rule, British Union Jack flags fly from lampposts and murals proclaim staunch loyalty to the United Kingdom.
“There was a feeling within loyalists throughout the peace process in Northern Ireland that their community was in retreat, that their community and their British identity were under attack,” McLoughlin explained.
Many loyalists feel they have to fight back against “outsiders coming into these areas and supposedly taking jobs and homes away from Protestants and invading a community that was once so dominant,” he added.
Following last Saturday's anti-immigration protests, 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 were never any problems before,” he said as he sat inside the Sahara Shisha Cafe, one of several Middle Eastern and Turkish-owned businesses near Sandy Row that were hit.
The Northern Ireland Muslim Council said in a statement that “the vast majority of the violence has been fuelled and fomented by targeted misinformation and disinformation on social media”.
“False and dangerous portrayals” of Muslims, who “represent a small minority in Northern Ireland,” led to the attacks, it said.
Compared to the rest of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland has a low immigration rate.
The 2021 census found that about six percent of the population were born outside the United Kingdom or Ireland and about 97 percent described their ethnicity as white.
The unrest was “extremely shocking to the general public,” said Fiona Doran, chair of the group United Against Racism, which co-organized a solidarity rally in Belfast on Saturday.
The demonstration, which was attended by several thousand people, gave people “the opportunity to take to the streets and show that Belfast is a welcoming city, a city that says no to racism and fascism,” she told AFP.
At an anti-immigration rally in Belfast the day before, around a hundred demonstrators carried British flags and signs reading “Respect our country or leave!”
Some chanted the name of Tommy Robinson, a notorious anti-Islam agitator who is accused of contributing to the unrest in England through constant social media posts about the events.
Nearby, behind rows of armored police vehicles, more than 1,000 counter-protesters chanted “Racists out!”
Bashir told AFP on Saturday he was not sure whether he would reopen his supermarket.
“My question is: Can we do it? If so, then only thanks to all the people who have come to support us,” he said after the solidarity rally.
