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Author: The name that fits the crime | Date: July 2009
‘‘Does the peace process only extend to two of the communities living here?’’ asks Patrick Yu. It’s Wednesday morning in Belfast and sandwiched between stories on the continued fallout from the Iranian election result and President Obama swatting a fly live on television, ethnic cleansing is revisiting Belfast.
Yu is the Executive Director of NICEM, the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities. The night before, 20 families had fled three houses in south Belfast, no longer feeling safe in their homes on Wellesley Avenue. One hundred and fifteen Romanians identified by the media as Roma, almost half under the age of 16, spent the previous night in a local church, too terrified to return home after a sustained campaign to drive them out.
The Northern Ireland media were claiming that Combat 18 was behind a series of attacks on the pro-perties which included, allegedly, passages from Hitler’s Mein Kaxmpf being posted through letterboxes and leaflets with hate symbols downloaded from the internet.
On the Monday night, a protest outside the houses in solidarity with the families was confronted by drinkers from the Lisburn Road who made Nazi salutes and threw bottles and bricks at the antiracist vigil.
Yu believes that the initial attacks were carried out by people under the influence of the local paramilitaries but outside their control. Certainly, attacks and harassment of eastern Europeans have increased, if that is at all possible, since Northern Ireland football hooligans clashed with Polish fans before, during and after a World Cup qualifier in March.
There had been particular venom in the fixture for some people, because Poland’s goalkeeper, Artur Borac, received a police caution in Scotland in 2006 for crossing himself while playing for Glasgow Celtic during a game against the club’s arch protestant rivals Rangers. Yu claims that in the run-up to and after the game with Poland, loyalist (Protestant) areas in south Belfast were covered in anti-Polish graffiti aimed at Boruc in particular.
All east Europeans were then targeted in the aftermath of the violence that brought parts of Belfast to a standstill. Historical and traditional hatreds were imposed on them. “A week after the game, a Hungarian family in south Belfast had their home entered and even though they protested they were not Polish they were still ‘put out’ because they were Catholics,” says Yu.
Loyalist paramilitaries denied any involvement in the attacks on the Romanian families. People linked to both the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force to whom Searchlight spoke were adamant that their organisations had nothing to do with the intimidation. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) quickly confirmed there was no evidence of paramilitary groups either involved in or sanctioning the attacks. Searchlight believes that although this may to an extent be true, the suggestion that C18 was behind the harassment is disingenuous to say the least. The PSNI also say there is no evidence that C18 is active in Belfast.
Both the UVF and the UDA claimed to have severed links with C18 supporters some five years ago, having tired of C18’s antics and its links with splinter loyalist groups. Until that point, fascists from the mainland had paid regular visits to senior loyalist figures. The one person in the province with direct links to the C18 era of activity and cooperation has recently been released from jail and is under instruction from paramilitary godfathers not to return to Belfast.
So who was behind these attacks? And when it is quite obvious that paramilitaries are still active in the community. why did they not intervene as they have done previously when pressured?
Loyalist paramilitaries have until August to decommission their weapons and to convince the Independent Monitoring Commission that they are no longer involved in racketeering, recruitment and gangsterism. At stake is a share of a pot of money reportedly worth some £36 million to pay for community workers, re-skilling and anti-conflict programmes across the province. The bulk of this funding, rightfully, should be spent on people from the organisations that have contributed so much to Northern Ireland’s bloody history. The competition is over who should administer these programmes. Paramilitary organisations in “transition” and their representatives head the queue.
Loyalist paramilitary leaders recently visited Auschwitz as part of awareness training and conflict resolution exercises. Jackie McDonald, leader of the biggest faction of the UDA, has risen from building site racketeer to one of the most eloquent and considerable exponents of post-conflict loyalist thinking.
One UDA source, however, reacted angrily to the suggestion that people under the UDA’s influence were involved in the attacks, describing it as a “Republican smear”.
“I know what you’ll write, but I am telling you this: this is not the work of the UDA.” So why was the post-conflict UDA not shoulder to shoulder with antiracists outside the houses on Wellesley Avenue or at least intervening against the intimidation?
“We would be accused of intimidating those youths. It would reflect badly upon us. We are not the police. Anybody who knows anything about this stupid behaviour should talk to the police. The police say the UDA is not involved and it is a matter for them, not the UDA.”
Dawn Purvis MLA, leader of the UVF-aligned Progressive Unionist Party, also dismissed paramilitary involvement in the incidents. She said it would be “inappropriate” for paramilitaries to intervene and that people should work closely with the police to “catch the thugs”. Acknowledging that the influence of the PUP in south Belfast has waned, Purvis attacked Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness for “disrespectful” comments about loyalists.
“He is saying that Protestants are racist,” she insisted, though we could find no such comments by McGuinness. “Lisburn Road is not a loyalist or Protestant road.” she said. “It is one of the most diverse areas in Belfast.” Purvis also called for regulation of landlords in Northern Ireland. “We don’t know who is renting these houses out and to whom and for how much.
“There is every chance that migrant families are being exploited and if there was leadership on the ground, I would have preferred for the families to stay in the houses and the situation not to have been exasperated by calling people out onto the street.”
Of the 115 people who fled, NICEM established that 89 were living in the three houses on Wellesley Avenue. A whispering campaign had suggested that the families were living on benefits, were asylum seekers or were there illegally. Jolena Flett of NICEM, who had been working with the families since the harassment began, repudiated those lies.
“These families are here legally, they have no recourse to public funds so they have been cleaning, car washing, selling the Big Issue and so on.
“Although they have been granted freedom of movement within the EU, Romanians and Bulgarians have restrictions on their employment and recourse to public funds, similar to people not from within the European Union. There are so many restrictions that they have very little access to non cash-in-the-hand work.
“Some of these people have been here for eight months costing the taxpayer nothing, doing their best to get by.”
The harassment began a week after a larger number of family members arrived. Flett says: “The community workers are saying that it is not being coordinated by paramilitaries, but we are also getting mixed signals as to the reasons why this has happened.
“Some people are only visiting and have return tickets to Romania. Others are saying they want to go home too but do not have the funds. There are large numbers of people from the Belfast community coming forward with offers of support, saying that these people must not be forced out of Northern Ireland.
“We’re desperate to find as much statutory support as we can, particularly for the children and those who qualify for statutory assistance.”
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive agreed to provide emergency housing on the Wednesday afternoon but it was unclear for how long. Were the Northern Ireland government to offer to foot the bill for repatriating those who wished to return to Romania, Flett is conscious that it could be seen as ethnic cleansing.
“We are eager to talk to the landlord of the properties, but as yet we have not been able to make contact with them and they have not come forward,” she said.
It’s a strange one. Loyalists vehement that they are not behind organised racist attacks, disingenuous reports of an organised nazi cell, 89 Romanians cramped into three houses, 115 people fleeing in fear of their lives and, at the time of going to press, a missing landlord.
You may also wish to read NO PEACE HERE: the continuing shame of ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland Matthew Collins investigates life for an immigrant family in Belfast click here
© Searchlight Magazine 2009