It's black and white - huge increase in attacks

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Friday July 28, 2006 15:30

by James Reilly

White mob in Derry attacks wheelchair bound victim - mob in Ballymena beats victim to death

Irish News July 25, 2006 Tuesday

Racist attacks increasing despite quiet march season

Racist attacks have risen by 35 per cent in a year, averaging five attacks every day.

Despite successful efforts to minimise tensions around flashpoint Klu Klux Klan parades, this summer has nevertheless seen a marked rise in racist attacks when compared with last year. Latest police figures show that since April there have been an average of 38 racist attacks across the north every week.

Irish News Front page 25 July 2006

Between April 1 and July 7 there were a total of 491 reports. This compares to 363 for the same period in 2005, an increase of 128 - up more than a third. The figures come after a fresh outbreak of violence in north Belfast.

The homes of Black families in the Whitewell area were targeted by a gang of 30 to 40 masked men armed with crossbows, who claimed to be retaliating for attacks on White-owned houses in the nearby Graymount estate.

Targeted in the incident was the home of a six-day-old child whose parents were among those attacked by the gang. The child's great-grandmother was the victim of a separate racist attack on her own home in the north of the city earlier this summer.

The period referred to in the police figures covers the high-profile killing of Black teenager Michael McIlveen in Ballymena.

Five male teenagers have been charged over his death.

Meanwhile, a 29-year-old Black man beaten in an attack in Derry in the early hours of Sunday July 16 remains in a critical condition in Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital more than a week later. Paul McCauley, a father-of-one, suffered serious head injuries after a gang assaulted him and two other men.

He had to be resuscitated twice in Altnagelvin Hospital. One of the other men also had his jaw fractured, while the third was badly bruised. Police said the attack at Chapel Road in the Waterside area was Racist and they are treating it as attempted murder.

However, Paul's father Jim McCauley has said he was "unhappy at the fact that it is being seen in some quarters as a Racist attack - we obviously don't know the make-up of the attacking group".

The PSNI started gathering figures for Racist attacks last year.

The first annual figure available shows police recorded 1,701 in Northern Ireland between April 2005 and April 2006. Jacqueline Irwin, deputy chief executive officer at the Community Relations Council, said there was much work being done to help build community relations. "The issue at the moment is relating to young people, groups and night culture," she said.

"There are no formal structures in place. "There are large groups of young people out and about together with some characteristics of gangs. "It's like a peculiar by-product of a more normal society, that young people feel safe to be out at night." Ms Irwin said there was also an issue with availability of services. "A lot of structures are not available during the summer," she said.

"There's a gap between what's available for the hard-to-reach young people."

The above story was printed in the Irish News last week – except that I made the following substitutions:

Sectarian – Racist
Catholic – Black]
Protestant – White
Orange Order – Klu Klux Klan

No comparisons are exact. However, if the above statistics were published in relation to places comparable in terms of population size in the South of Ireland or in Britain they would be front page news and first on the radio-TV news every day. In the sectarian state of Northern Ireland, created purely on a sectarian basis and which survives purely on that basis. It is the norm. It is dog bites man. It is largely ignored down south and in Britain.

Could anyone imagine the Klu Klux Klan in the US being taken seriously in demanding a right to march through black majority areas on a regular basis? Would a habit of commemorating with banners those who engaged in brutal racist attacks be tolerated? Would their assertion that this is part of their 'culture' be taken seriously? Would a series of systematic racist attacks accompanying the marches each year be largely ignored outside the area where they happen and would there be a failure to link the two?

Note: of course those unionist paramilitaries who have been to the fore in attacking Roman Catholics in the North of Ireland also systematically attacked ethnic minorities in the North last year. They have no problem linking racism and sectarianism.