{"id":438312,"date":"2025-09-20T10:22:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T10:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/438312\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T10:22:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T10:22:16","slug":"anti-immigrant-violence-continues-in-northern-ireland-town-protests-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/438312\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-immigrant violence continues in Northern Ireland town | Protests News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Published On 12 Jun 202512 Jun 2025<\/p>\n<p>Click here to share on social media<\/p>\n<p>share2<\/p>\n<p class=\"rich-share__social-text\">Share<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of people gathered on the streets of Ballymena in Northern Ireland on Wednesday, facing police armed with riot shields and water cannon on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/6\/12\/n-ireland-hit-by-third-night-of-racist-violence-main-flashpoint-calmer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">third night of disorder<\/a> in the town.<\/p>\n<p>The crowds eventually dispersed without a repeat of the chaotic scenes from the previous two nights, when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/6\/11\/police-injured-houses-burned-in-second-night-of-riots-in-northern-ireland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">houses and businesses were torched<\/a> and 32 police officers were injured.<\/p>\n<p>The violence erupted in the town after the arrest of two teenagers accused of attempting to rape a teenage girl. The pair appeared Monday in court, where they asked for a Romanian interpreter.<\/p>\n<p>Police have not confirmed the ethnicity of the teenagers, who remain in custody, but areas attacked on Monday and Tuesday included neighbourhoods where Romanian migrants live.<\/p>\n<p>Ministers from every party in the province\u2019s power-sharing executive strongly condemned \u201cthe racially motivated violence witnessed in recent days\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Residents had been \u201cterrorised\u201d and police injured, they said in Wednesday\u2019s joint statement, urging people to reject the \u201cdivisive\u201d agenda being pushed by a \u201cdestructive\u201d minority.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>In response to what they termed \u201cracist thuggery\u201d, police deployed riot officers with dogs and have asked forces in England and Wales for help quelling the unrest.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the unrest in Ballymena \u201cmindless violence\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>About 20 miles (32 kilometres) southeast of the town, masked men set a leisure centre in Larne on fire, local media reported. The centre was temporarily sheltering people from Ballymena who had been evacuated.<\/p>\n<p>People living in Ballymena described \u201cterrifying\u201d scenes in which attackers had targeted \u201cforeigners\u201d over the previous days.<\/p>\n<p>Some people fixed signs to their houses indicating they were Filipino residents, or hung up British flags.<\/p>\n<p>Northern Ireland\u2019s First Minister Michelle O\u2019Neill, the Sinn Fein vice president, called the violence \u201cabhorrent\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said in a statement that its officers \u201ccame under sustained attack over a number of hours with multiple petrol bombs, heavy masonry, bricks and fireworks in their direction\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the injured officers required hospital treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Police Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson on Tuesday denounced the violence as \u201cracist thuggery\u201d and said it was \u201cclearly racially motivated and targeted at our minority ethnic community and police\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published On 12 Jun 202512 Jun 2025 Click here to share on social media share2 Share Hundreds of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[299,16494,53067,6657,12,1144,2579,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-438312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-europe","9":"tag-gallery","10":"tag-in-pictures","11":"tag-migration","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-protests","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115236132970608325","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438312","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=438312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}