‘Racist thuggery’ condemned after second night of disorder in Northern Ireland

Police arrested 16 people during a second night of disorder in Northern Ireland sparked by a brutal Belfast stabbing, a senior minister said Thursday, condemning rioters for “racist thuggery”. Twelve officers were also injured in Wednesday’s unrest, the UK government’s Northern Ireland minister Hilary Benn told Sky News. Dozens of masked protesters clashed with riot police late into the night, with rioters setting fire to a car and boarded-up property, AFP journalists saw.

Projectiles, including petrol bombs and bricks, were hurled as riot police used water cannon and mounted charges to push back dozens of rioters trying to reach a hotel which had been used to house asylum seekers. Benn said the scale of unrest on Wednesday evening was “a lot less than the terrible events that we witnessed on Tuesday night”. But he said it was “really important to convey the sense of fear that has been created, above all for those who were intimidated, burned out of their houses by masked thugs on the basis of the colour of their skin”.

“We’ve had reports of people being stopped in their cars to be asked what their nationality is on their way to work, and this is completely unacceptable,” he told Sky News TV. A nurse was “chased and intimidated” as she travelled to work at Ulster Hospital near Belfast on Wednesday night, the body that runs the hospital said. She “bravely insisted” on doing her shift “in stark contrast to the behaviour of the people who terrified her as she tried to do her job”, it added in a statement.

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The biggest and main mosque in Northern Ireland also had to be shut for the first time in its history on Tuesday, chairman Mohammed Arshed said. “We have been here since 1978. And we’ve never had trouble close before.”

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