{"id":221834,"date":"2025-06-28T17:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T17:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/221834\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T17:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T17:07:12","slug":"ballymena-race-riots-im-an-immigrant-in-northern-ireland-i-had-never-seen-bigotry-i-experienced-in-ballymena-vasundhara-sirnate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/221834\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballymena race riots: &#8216;I&#8217;m an immigrant in Northern Ireland &#8211; I had never seen bigotry I experienced in Ballymena&#8217; &#8211; Vasundhara Sirnate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Vasundhara Sirnate, who has lived in NI since 2017, reflects on years of experiencing racism in her adopted community, and explains why recent anti-immigrant violence felt tragically inevitable\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Vasundhara Sirnate has written about her experience in Northern Ireland after recent rioting in Ballymena\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/a6f1d083-c0eb-4f00-88b8-65f6501477a8.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Vasundhara Sirnate has written about her experience in Northern Ireland after recent rioting in Ballymena<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">On Sunday, June 15, I asked my husband to drive me through the streets that witnessed rioting in Ballymena.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The violence in the town occurred two miles from where we live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vasundhara Sirnate, who has lived in NI since 2017, reflects on years of experiencing racism in her adopted&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1211,1144,1610,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-221834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-antrim-news","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-police-service-of-northern-ireland","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221834","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=221834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}