{"id":184399,"date":"2025-06-14T18:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T18:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/184399\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T18:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T18:25:09","slug":"northern-ireland-anti-immigration-riots-force-closure-of-home-swim-club-of-irish-olympian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/184399\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland Anti-Immigration Riots Force Closure of Home Swim Club of Irish Olympian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Larne Swimming Club in Larne, Northern Ireland, has had to suspend practices after the leisure center where they practice was set on fire in an act of vandalism. The program is the home club of 2020 and 2024 Irish Olympian <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/swimswam.com\/tag\/danielle-hill\/\" class=\"auto-link-tag\" title=\"View more articles about Danielle Hill\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Danielle Hill<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo child should ever be forced to witness masked men in their home community,\u201d Hill said in an Instagram post. \u201cNo child should ever have had to witness the site [sic] of individuals in Balaclavas. Let alone understand the fear such images provoke. Yet, last night they did.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe local leisure centre is a safe place for so many, from young children (as young as six) learning to swim to elderly residents, has now been transformed into a place marked by fear and trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hill decried the attacks, which were a spillover of anti-immigrant disorder in nearby Ballymena, as \u201cracism in its rawest and most dangerous form.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Larne Swimming Club said on June 12 that \u201call club activities are suspended until further notice,\u201d saying the attacks caused \u201cappalling and unnecessary damage to the Larne Leisure Centre.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Nearby Ballymena, a town of over 31,000, has seen a week of anti-immigration riots, where masked individuals attacked police and set homes and cars on fire. The flashpoint came after two 14-year old boys were arrested on charges of serious sexual assault of a teenage girl in Ballymena. The two teenagers spoke Romanian and had a Romanian interpreter in court.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, police said 63 officers were injured in four nights of violence so far. Anti-racism counterprotests have also begun forming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Larne Swimming Club in Larne, Northern Ireland, has had to suspend practices after the leisure center where&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[75638,1144,16,15],"class_list":["post-184399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-danielle-hill","tag-northern-ireland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114683125617787974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}