London (AP)-Northern Ireland, claims that 17 officers were injured during the second night of anti-immigrant violence in the city of Balimen, where rebels threw bricks, bottles, gasoline bombs and fireworks and set fire to several vehicles and houses.
Police use a water cannon and fired rubber bullets to scatter a crowd of several hundred people. The Northern Ireland Police Service said on Wednesday that the violence was dyed by about 1 hour (0000gmt). Five people were arrested on suspicion of “violent behavior”.
What caused violence?
Violence erupted on Monday after a peaceful hike to show support for the victim of the victim of alleged sexual assault over the weekend. Two 14-year-old boys are accused.
Suspects have not been identified because of their age. They were supported in court by a Romanian translator.
After the hike, a crowd of mostly young people set fire to several fires and rammed police with shells. The Northern Ireland police service said 15 employees were injured that evening.
There were similar scenes on Tuesday after dark, as well as small pockets of disorder in several other cities in Northern Ireland.
Police said social media agitators were helping to nourish what assistant police officer Ryan Henderson called “racist thugs.”
What is the background?
Some politicians have said that immigration has strained a city of about 30,000 about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Belfast, long known as a bastion of hard-British loyalism.
Jim Alistair, the leader of the Conservative Party, a traditional unionist voice, said that “the unverified migration that is beyond what the city can handle is a source of past and future tension.”
Some Romanians in Balimen have told the British Information Agency that they have been living in the city for years and are shocked by violence.
Several houses in the area of the clonavon terrace, which were at the center of violence, put signs identifying their inhabitants as British or Filipino in an obvious attempt not to be directed.
Henderson said there was no evidence that loyalistic paramilitary that still dragged over Protestant communities are behind the disorder.
This happened before?
Northern Ireland has a long history of street disorder that extends to tensions between the British Union and Irish nationalist communities.
Although three decades of violence, known as the “troubles”, have largely ended after the 1998 peace agreement, tensions remain between Protestants – who see themselves as British and Irish nationalists who are mostly Catholic. In Belfast, the Walls of Peace still separate the Protestant and Catholic regions of the working class.
Street riots are sporadically confronted with the police, and recently immigrants have become a target.
Anti -immigrant violence erupted in Northern Ireland, as well as in England last year after three girls were stabbed to death in a dance class in Taylor Swift in the Northwestern England Saport. Authorities said online misinformation was mistakenly identified by the UK -born teenager as a migrant plays a role.
What happens after that?
Police condemned the last violence and said they would call officers from England and Wales to strengthen their response if necessary.
All countries in the government to share the power of Northern Ireland have issued a joint statement summoned for peace and calling for people to reject “a dividing program that is pursued by a minority by destructive, unscrupulous actors.”
In the alleged sexual assault, the statement added that “it is of paramount importance that the process of justice is already allowed to take its course, so that this disgusting crime would be severely investigated. Those who armed the situation to sow racial tension and are not interested in the vision.