BNP faces court over bills

The British National Party owes companies in Northern Ireland hundreds of thousands of pounds in unpaid bills, it is claimed.

The Belfast Telegraph can reveal that a number of firms here could take the party to court for monies outstanding.

One former supporter of the party has warned that small family-run firms could go bankrupt because of the shortfall, thought to total over £500,000, UK-wide.

A case has already been heard in the High Court in March involving the non-payment of election expenses relating to the Barking constituency in London, where party leader Nick Griffin was the candidate.

A company called Newton Press has taken legal action over an outstanding bill of more than £10,000 for printing services.

Last week the BNP pledged to pay off all the money it owed by the end of the year, adding that the debts were a result of spending during the last European and general election campaigns.

A former BNP supporter in Northern Ireland, who is also owed money, said he is not confident of being repaid soon.

Jim Dowson is a fundraiser who helped set up BNP offices all over the UK, including in Northern Ireland.

His firm Adlorries, which provides promotional and marketing services, claims he is owed around £160,000.

He said he has already had to dip into his own cash to pay off smaller companies related to his firm who were left out of pocket.

“The BNP claim to be the saviours of British industry and British workers, but I am afraid that around half a dozen small, family-run businesses, including some in Northern Ireland, could go to the wall because the BNP have not paid them,” he said.

“We are in a recession and times are hard enough as it is. People have been treated disgracefully.”

Mr Dowson also expressed anger that party boss Mr Griffin was spotted walking around east Belfast last week, just yards from a firm the BNP allegedly owes more than £40,000.

David Sloan from small family firm, Romac Press in east Belfast, says his company is owed £44,000.

He has defended his firm taking business from the right wing group, saying that the UK is deep in a recession.

“We were not in a position to turn people away but the BNP has basically wiped out a year’s profits,” he said.

”I have contacted police, the electoral commission and I'll take it to the High Court if I have to.”

A spokesperson for the BNP refused to confirm or deny the accusations and said that whether or not the party owes money to creditors is “irrelevant”.

Thanks to Clare Weir at The Belfast Telegraph

Swastikas daubed on homes of south Belfast migrants

Racist graffiti has been scrawled on the homes of migrant workers in south Belfast

Swastikas and racial slurs were painted on the properties in the Botanic area. South Belfast MLA Anna Lo said she condemned this “appalling” behaviour and urged people to be more tolerant.

“A lot of work has been done at community level to promote mutual understanding between local residents and new migrant workers,” she said. “Nobody wants to see this sort of graffiti. We are generally very welcoming to minorities and this sort of thing gives us a bad name.”

Anti-racism campaigner Paddy Meehan, who organised a community solidarity protest against attacks on Romanian families in the area in 2009, is calling for the community to unite together.

“If these racists are allowed to continue this unacceptable behaviour people will begin to fear for their safety,” he said.

Belfast Telegraph

BNP links to Troubles charity

Money, money, money...

A fundraising expert for the far-right BNP helped head a charity for Troubles’ victims that has raked in taxpayers’ cash

Fanatical anti-abortionist James Dowson was trustee of Solas NI — which has received more than £130,000 from Government and European Union peace grants. There is no suggestion that the money intended to help victims was misused.

Dowson confirmed his links to Solas NI after we started to investigate the secretive charity, which was set up to counsel those bereaved, maimed or traumatized by terrorist attacks. The support group has now mysteriously shut its Belfast headquarters amid revelations it has links to the far-right BNP.

Dowson was revealed in June as the man who runs the British National Party’s national call centre in Dundonald. The Dundonald BNP “bunker” is tucked away at Unit 5, Carrowreagh Business Centre.

Scottish businessman Dowson is a hardline anti-abortion campaigner who has a number of criminal convictions. He also featured in a flute band which produced tapes glorifying UFF killer Michael Stone’s infamous Milltown cemetery massacre in 1988. Dowson, 44, has a string of convictions including breach of the peace in 1986, weapon possession and breach of peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992.

When we first contacted him to ask about his links to Solas NI, he referred us to his solicitor. They released a statement to us through Dowson’s company Adlorries. In the statement, Dowson refers to Solas NI as ‘Solaris NI’. It said Dowson ceased to be a trustee of the group in February last year.

The statement added: “Jim Dowson is pleased to have been involved in a charity that set itself the agenda of making Northern Ireland safe for all by building bridges between persons of different faiths, different political persuasions and of different ethnic origins.”

Solas declares on its website that it embraces diversity and aims to ensure that victims of Troubles atrocities can turn to a “nonpolitical and non-sectarian organisation” for help. The group received £111,479 of European Union peace funding between 1998 and 2007. And from 2003-2007, Solas received £18,627 in Northern Ireland peace grants.

Dowson’s statement said that it was his “understanding” that Solas had been “dormant” since October last year. It added: “As far as Jim Dowson is aware, Solaris NI complied with all its legal, regulatory, funding and public disclosure obligations and requirements in full during the time he was a trustee and he has no reason to believe that this exemplary record was not continued by Solaris NI after he ceased to be a trustee.”

When we called at the Solas registered address in east Belfast last week, its doors were shuttered over and there was no sign. The deserted building on the Upper Newtownards Road is the same address which is still listed on the organisation’s website. A local businessman, who did not want to be named, said he had seen the BNP ‘truth truck’ – which is emblazoned with anti-abortion propaganda – regularly parked outside the Solas office.

Solas still has an operational website, but it is not clear if it is still accepting donations from the public. And when we rang the telephone number on its website, they refused to say if they had closed, how their cash was used or where they were now based.

Records show that Solas NI has the same address and telephone number as the Christian Youth Fellowship, set up by Jim Dowson. Online records show that the last registered chairman for Solas NI is Alex Thomas. Thomas’s wife, Marion, answered the phone when we rang the organisation using the number on its website. It has been claimed that Marion is in “overall charge” of directing calls to Dowson’s charity and business empire.

She refused to tell us where Solas was based when we asked about its closed headquarters. She also referred us to the same solicitor Dowson uses if we wanted further comment.

Unlike England and Wales, there is no charity register in Northern Ireland to give the public access to their details. It means there are no official documents we could view which show how Solas NI works.

Sunday Life via Hope not Hate

BNP Bosses Uncovered

Office chief James Dowson sent this pic of
himself with a shotgun to ex-employee after a dispute

This is gun-toting BNP fundraiser Rev James Dowson calmly walking down the street with his toddler son and wife – and a shotgun!

The crazed anti-abortion nutter, who has a list of convictions including possessing a weapon, sent the phone photo to a former employee after they fell out over a computer which holds the entire BNP membership database. The Scottish ‘businessman’, who has loyalist links and lives in Ballygowan, runs the right wing BNP’s national nerve centre in east Belfast under the cover name Adlorries.

But the entire operation was thrown into chaos recently after his right-hand woman quit her job of running the office and took a computer which contained the BNP membership list. Today the former employee lifts the lid on life working for 44-year-old Jim Dowson and the BNP in Belfast. She reveals how:

• Dowson sent her the photo of himself with a shotgun and threatened other members of her family with the UVF.
• The rabid nutter flew into a rage after a Belfast recruitment sent two Asian men and two gay people to work in the Dundonald office.
• Dowson runs a string of charities from the Belfast base and collects donations for doing nothing.
• BNP members have been conned into buying a lifetime membership which comes with a £100 watch – which is actually only worth £19.99.

It comes in the week when a fresh leaked list of alleged BNP members appeared on the internet and convicted race-hate leader Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on the BBC’s Question Time.

Following a dispute with Dowson the former employee, who can’t be identified, says she kept a computer belonging to the BNP because he refused to pay her substantial wages she claims she was owed. Dowson then sent her this picture of himself, armed with a shotgun. “I took that as a threat – why else would he send someone he was in dispute with such a photo?” says the former BNP officer manager.

“I worked for them at their office in Dundonald for the last eight months because it was a job and I needed the work, plus it paid well. At the start it was just like organising any other office but recently he wanted me to get more involved in the political side of things and I ended up working more for the BNP directly. But it got too difficult because I hate what the BNP stand for, plus I live with my partner in a republican area. I’m not scared of Dowson though – he’s a wannabe hardman and I think he’s full of shit.”

Dowson, who once told the Sunday World he would never “get into bed” with the BNP, has a string of convictions including breach of the peace in 1986, possession of a weapon and breach of the peace in 1991 and criminal damage in 1992. He also has close links with loyalist groups here and has produced flute band tapes which glorify UFF mass killer Michael Stone.

Following our expose of his secret BNP office back in June, Dowson told UTV that he hated the BNP and only ran their call centre on pure business grounds. However we can reveal that Dowson is a fully paid up ‘life’ member.

The former employee says Dowson once flew off the handle after a Belfast recruitment agency sent gays and Asians to work in the BNP office.

“He went mental when these two Asian fellas arrived to work for us. I asked them did they realise who they would be working for and they said they didn’t care, so long as they got paid. Then they sent us a man and a woman who were quite obviously gay and he had them chucked out before they even got an interview. I left in the middle of September and he told me to keep the computer in exchange for the wages he owed. But things turned nasty when my sister, who also worked there, left but before she did she changed all the passwords on the computers. My sister only did it because they treated her like a dogsbody.

“Jim then demanded the computer back and started to get nasty. We argued for about two days over the phone about it and then on Saturday I got the picture of him with his wife and son and a shotgun. He then called the cops to my house and had me arrested for theft. The cops are raging because he told them a load of nonsense about there being cops’ and top judges’ personal details being on the computer just to get them to arrest me.”

She says Jim idolises leader Nick Griffin and loves the BNP.

“Jim went nuts after the Sunday World story in June and pulled us all in to a meeting. He banned mobile phones in the office and he installed cameras everywhere. But so many people have left he only had one call centre salesperson left. Jim is terrified that the place is going to fold because the business has dried up. During my time we brought in 4,000 new members but he can’t get past 13,000 members.

Nutter Nick’s girl is working undiecover in his Belfast office

Jenny Matthys, daughter of race hate nutter Nick GriffinTHIS the daughter of race hate nutter Nick Griffin – and she’s set up home in Ulster. Posing in her underwear she looks like a decent fun-loving girl – but behind the veneer she’s as bitter as her dad.

Jenny Matthys is a dyed-in-the wool BNP fanatic and has been sent by MEP dad Nick to Belfast to run the party’s membership office. Jenny, who’s 23 years old, is living in a tiny flat in Comber with her new Welsh husband who also works for the BNP in Belfast.

Her dad made a controversial appearance on the BBC’s Question Time programme on Thursday night and it’s believed Jenny was in London to bask in her father’s ‘glory’. The Sunday World can reveal that Jenny moved over here in July after a string of visits to Northern Ireland. Now she’s living here permanently and has become a fan of loyalist band culture.

“Jenny loves the whole loyalist thing,” says the former office manager of the Belfast BNP office. “She’s a big fan of the Goldsprings Flute Band who are a blood and thunder band from Comber. Jenny even joined them recently and goes to band practice every week. She doesn’t play anything – instead they let her carry the flag. She went up to Derry recently with Jim Dowson and his family to see the band parade.”

Jenny is also filled with contempt for ethnic minorities.

“Jenny is just like her dad. She loves the BNP and wants to follow in her dads footsteps. In fact she’s even worse than her dad because she says stuff that he even realises is too stupid to say. And she’s like him in other ways too – she’s extremely arrogant – in fact she’s a complete bitch.

As a 17-year-old Jenny planned to run for council as a BNP representative but the plan never got off the ground. But she has spent most of her life since she was a teenager working to promote the vile views of the BNP. Her husband Angus works in the mailroom of the Belfast office and came over from Wales to live here with Jenny.

Racist gets invite to Ulster

Hardline loyalists are to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin to address supporters in Ulster.

A fascist group based in Mid-Ulster have been in contact with the BNP’s head office in London. It followed his appearance on the BBC1 Question Time show on Thursday which was watched by a record 8 million viewers. The hardline loyalists want the MEP and one of his right wing councillors to come to the province in the New Year to host a question and answer session.

Said a source: “Loyalists are fed up that their local unionist politicians who don’t speak up for them. We want Ulster to remain British. We don’t foreigners coming and taking our jobs and our homes. We want a councillor to stand in next year’s elections as mid Ulster has a large foreign national population. We will give him a warn welcome because we believe he speaks up for the loyalist people of Ulster.’’

Nick Griffin is no stranger to Ulster and has a long association with hardline loyalist groups over his opposition to Sinn Fein and the IRA. Five years ago, the Sunday World revealed how Griffin held a series of meetings with neo Nazis groups at a Belfast hotel. He also met a number of senior UVF figures who were Ulster cheerleaders for the BNP.

Sunday World

No peace here - the continuing shame of ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland

Matthew Collins investigates life for an immigrant family in Belfast

Just off Donegal Road in south Belfast they’re converting a city centre gravel car park into what looks like a wasteland. Local residents are doing their yearly dump of anything that burns. There are sofas, thousands of books, boxes and magazines and more than a couple of washing machines. Mattresses too, that’s obligatory. Almost anything that could be fitted into a car or a small van has been transported here and dumped.

The car park attendant turns a blind eye, though he must have noticed an articulated vehicle of some sort drop off 300 wooden pallets right in the middle of the faux wasteland. As we drive in, he holds his hand out for payment.

Five track-suited youngsters are guarding the rubbish. To them, this isn’t any old rubbish. This is their Protestant birthright – to hold a large bonfire on 11 July to signal the count-down to celebrating the glorious 12th. Except this year, the traditional marches by loyalist and Unionist Protestants have been moved to the 13th. Good Protestants do not drink and sing, march and bang drums on a Sunday. And while they guard, they drum, using proper drum sticks or, in the case of one, a set of spanners, in perfect symmetry.

Their spokesman, a large teenager who is not drumming, gives suspicious permission for photographs. Four days away from the big blaze, he’s concerned the picture will show their pyre looking a little underdone. “Hey English, come back in a couple of days and this’ll be much bigger,” he boasts. “And we’ll stick a Taig flag on top for you.”

A short walk away, in the Holylands district of inner south Belfast close to Queens University, I have an appointment with accountants. Holylands used to be a staunchly Protestant working-class neighbourhood, but as the university’s expansion has mirrored that of both the Catholic and the migrant communities, Holylands has become rows of streets with religious names as diverse as the tenants who reside there. As well as “losing” Holylands, some in the Protestant community feel they have “lost” Queens University too.

The red hand of Ulster, traditionally painted or displayed on walls of Protestant neighbourhoods, has been replaced by red stars and fists, almost defiant symbols from a burgeoning, internationalist student population, with Palestinian slogans and flags marking the contrast with nearby loyalist neighbourhoods that fly Israeli flags. There are no Irish tricolours here, no overt Republican sloganeering next to stencilled graffiti saying “Stamp Out Racism” and “Kill Nazis”. A few rows of freshly painted empty houses is all that separates the old from, perhaps, an entirely new world.

Ismael and Ghizlane are both qualified accountants, not that anyone would know. A condition of their asylum application is that they are not allowed to work, so they have not worked since arriving from Morocco in 2004.

I’m ushered inside their cramped living room where the ironing board occupies most of the space, trying to avoid waking their three-year-old son sleeping on the couch while Thomas Tank Engine and Friends plays silently on the television. Ghizlane turns it off and nods in her son’s direction. “His favourite,” she whispers. The only other sound in the room is of inquisitive canaries hopping around excitedly in their cages. Upstairs the couple’s daughter sleeps. Later the family plans to celebrate her first birthday.

Ismael carefully lifts his son, gently running a hand through his thick mop of black hair, whispering an apology in softly spoken Arabic. The boy was born with spina bifida and his life is already a painful daily grind of visits to GPs and the hospital. His parents’ lives have for five years been a daily grind of uncertainty, torment, intimidation and assaults.

As asylum seekers with very little recourse to public funds, when thugs attack people like Ismael, 33, and Ghizlane, 26, they are entirely at the mercy of the voluntary sector and organisations such as NICEM (Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities) and NASS (National Asylum Support Service).

“I want to work,” Ismael begins, almost apologetically. “I didn’t come to Northern Ireland to take money. We both can work, we have both tried to work, to help and to fit in, but there is nothing they will let us do.” Despite their near perfect English, an interpreter is present who reassuringly nods when Ismael or Ghizlane shoots nervous looks in his direction. Ismael puts his son to bed.

In 2005 the family moved from emergency accommodation for asylum seekers to a property in south Belfast. On her first trip to the shops, Ghizlane, who wears a headscarf, was punched in the face by one of her new neighbours. Other shoppers and pedestrians stepped over her as she lay on the ground. “We did not call the police, we had been warned that people may be aggressive at first. I thought ‘is this normal’ but of course, it is not,” says Ismael staring at his feet.

NICEM’s figures show that fewer than 30% of victims report racist incidents to the police, although more than half suffer repeated incidents. For Ismael and Ghizlane, the “hundreds” of incidents of spitting, verbal abuse and physical threats continued for over two years, by which time they had come to the attention of NICEM.

They had a small group of friends from Belfast’s “tiny” Islamic centre who were desperately advising them. Regular taxi rides to the hospital for their son were exhausting the family’s limited finances and they were encouraged to apply for an emergency move. “The whole time we were there not one neighbour spoke to us even though it was obvious we had a child who was sick and we had very little support. Never. Not one friendly word.

“You smile at people and it was as if they do not see you. We hated leaving the house because we never knew what was going to happen. But of course we didn’t have to leave the house to find trouble.”

Accommodation described as “perfect” was found for them in west Belfast in 2007 on the advice of a social worker that fewer racist incidents are reported there. The family settled near the Falls Road and, more importantly, close to the hospital. “The first time I used the bus there, the driver said ‘hello’ and I was really amazed,” Ghizlane says with a rare smile. “This was where we wanted to live. The house was very cramped and there was a noisy pub a few doors down, but the people were friendly.” It seemed a better place to spend the hours between weekly English lessons and almost daily visits to the hospital. Ghizlane fell pregnant again. They approached 2008 with more hope than ever before.

On the morning of New Year’s Day, Ismael was having a cigarette out on his doorstep. It had been a noisy New Year’s Eve with excited celebrations that had kept the family awake, but they had not complained. They were attracted to the hustle and bustle of Belfast and the night had been joyful.

Ismael watched two men drinking from beer cans walking up the street towards the pub. They took offence at the tall but almost painfully thin man sitting on his own doorstep smoking a cigarette. According to Ismael, they threw a set of keys at him and told him to go inside, but carried on walking. After a few moments in the pub, they returned and attacked him with a knife, stabbing him in the hand and face.

Ismael shouted for help and told Ghizlane, who had tried to come to his aid, to go back inside. Neighbours instructed Ghizlane to call only an ambulance and not the police. Terrified and confused, and watching her husband bleeding, she called both. “That was the end for us in west Belfast,” says Ghizlane sadly.

“When the policed arrived, they [neighbours] called us names for calling the police.” Both Ghizlane and Ismael required hospital treatment. The PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) did not take any statements from the couple, but advised them they would probably have to move away. “I wondered why,” says Ismael. “I had been attacked on my doorstep, why shouldn’t I call the police?” Perhaps the couple had not read the west Belfast “welcome pack”, which advises against calling the police to a racist incident.

“Nobody ever spoke to us again,” says Ismael. The silence can be intimidating too. Their landlord started demanding money from the couple that NASS had already paid. The community had withdrawn its support and the search for a new home began.

The family had been in east Belfast only five months before they had to move again. On 23 August 2008 four families in and around Imperial Drive were visited simultaneously by men with baseball bats and hammers and told they were “not welcome”.

“I had a month-old child now and here were young men with hammers and baseball bats telling us to leave by the end of the week. I called the police who came very quickly. My doors and windows were smashed and the people who did it were just standing there outside my house while the police were inside.

“The police took away the hammer and baseball bat for finger printing, but just came back and said we should leave. They were taking this very seriously, I don’t know whose finger prints they were, but although they did not make any arrests they were genuinely concerned for us.” The house was attacked three more times before they left in September.

Now they are in the Holylands, cramped in a house with damp that is making Ghizlane ill. “But the students are so very friendly,” she says. “Now it is the end of term a lot of them will go away and although the peace will be nice, it is nice when they are around.” With the bonfires being prepared and drummers already drumming, the approach of the 12th brings apprehension. “We want to be a part of this country,” says Ismael. “My children were born here. I could go and watch the parades and assimilate, but they just don’t seem to want me to, even though they do not know me.”

An assault on us all

“The Romanians have gone,” Patrick Yu tells me. And so has some of Patrick’s spark. In previous dark hours, somewhere inside Patrick there had still been a smile, a warmth, even when the Chinese community were fleeing south Belfast in fear of their lives three years ago. He seems genuinely drawn and distressed. “I miss David Ervine [former loyalist paramilitary and politician]” he tells me sadly. “There just seems no way into the paramilitaries like there used to be, to mediate and get this to stop.”

“This” is a spiral of violence that is seemingly out of control. The Irish media are firmly assured in the convenient belief that a mythical nazi Combat 18 unit is responsible for ethnic cleansing across the province. Patrick’s organisation NICEM is stretched to the limit. “What figures do you want?” he asks. “This morning’s, this afternoon’s or this evening’s racist attacks?”

Patrick doesn’t accompany me to Sandy Row, “Heartland of South Belfast Ulster Freedom Fighters”, the nom de plume for the UDA. He doesn’t think he can stomach a meeting with paramilitary spokesmen and anyway he has to drive to Stormont for a meeting about housing. “They don’t want to help because they fear, in the middle of decommissioning their weapons, people will think that they’re involved in racist violence and not sectarian violence. Why should the peace process only involve two communities?”

Patrick’s American assistant Jolena Flett nervously joins me in the back of Jackie McDonald’s car. She has kept us waiting a good few minutes while, I suspect, she was weighing up whether this was an entirely good idea. McDonald and his driver had arrived outside NICEM’s offices less than five minutes after I had rung him suggesting a cup of tea.

McDonald is the alleged (his emphasis) brigadier of south Belfast UDA and the alleged overall commander of the UDA. His official title is community worker. In his office, he is businesslike. He looks you straight in the eye when he speaks, on or off the record. And Jackie can talk, brilliant anecdotes with quick-fire humour. “The UDA is not ethnically cleansing anyone. Write that down, I’ll wait for you. But neither are we kneecapping or giving ‘digs’ in the stomach to people who are doing this stuff. Have a look at what the Unionist politicians have given these [loyalist] communities in return for votes. The great King Billy himself could ride down here on his horse at night and he’d be mugged.

“I call the police, I tell anyone who comes to me and says ‘Jackie, so and so has robbed me’ to call the police. We’ve put the guns away, we’ve had to. If people know who is behind these racist attacks, I’m telling them to call the police. We won’t get anything done for these communities if Jackie McDonald is the one going around dishing out law and order. And these kids behind these attacks in South Belfast won’t listen to a UDA with its guns put away anyway.”

Out on Sandy Row for a photograph, everyone says good morning. McDonald is warm and embracing of his people. People listen in to what he is saying. Perhaps he could condemn these racist attacks louder, then? “I do, but who writes it down and prints it big enough? I’ve been on all the marches, all the protests, but this does not work. I don’t want a far-right group filing the void here in these communities and it is only real work that can stop that from happening. But I do think, look at how many people are moving here into a shrinking community that’s crying out for help and political direction and I know the same things are happening in nationalist and republican communities too.”

Eastern Europeans bear the main brunt of Protestant anger. They’re accused of “Romanising” the empty streets in south Belfast, as well as taking the few remaining jobs. Over 40 Polish people from nine families have been “put out” (forced to leave) in south Belfast this year. The justification was “community anger” over football violence when the two countries played in the city earlier this year, but many worry that Polish children are “catholicising” Protestant state schools in the area and believe that the Poles all hold Republican sympathies.

Aleksandra Lojek-Madziarz, (pictured) a Polish journalist and community worker, feels this intensified when Polish football fans “stupidly” travelled from Scotland and unfurled an Irish tricolour carrying the letters “IRA”, presumably in support of Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc. Republican dissidents had carried out terror attacks shortly before the game.

“I like the people here,” she says. “They are good people reacting in some cases very badly to change. The Polish community is, however, quite strong and resilient and I am a patient person too.

“Comparatively, Northern Ireland is a wealthier place with a lot more to offer some Polish people, but we are not here to take anything from Protestant communities, we don’t want to vote them out of house and home or change their country. They don’t see that, because they do not feel the benefits yet in post-conflict Northern Ireland, and I can see that every day when I meet people who are really struggling, who still have poverty and other unresolved issues. They have to stop thinking of us as an historical enemy, because we do not come here with that burden or intention.”

Patrick Yu finally went to see Jackie McDonald on 10 July, about a letter he had received purportedly from the UDA’s youth wing, the Ulster Young Militants, telling him and NICEM to leave Ulster before the 12th or be “blown up”.

You may also be interested to read The name that fits the crime Matthew Collins investigates the anti-Romany violence in Belfast. From Searchlight Magazine July 2009

Searchlight

Belfast Romanians rehoused after race attacks

Up to 20 families moved to temporary accommodation after repeated attacks on their houses

Romanian families forced to flee their homes in Belfast because of racist attacks have been temporarily rehoused, but many said they wanted to leave Northern Ireland.

More than 100 Romanians had to seek shelter in a church hall last night after suffering repeated intimidation, including bottles being thrown through their windows.

The families, who are members of the Roma ethnic group, were given shelter at the O-Zone sports complex in the city today, and Stormont's social development minister, Margaret Ritchie, said they were to be offered emergency lodgings tonight. It is understood that they were later moved to student accommodation in the Queen's University area, which has been made available for a week.

Gordon Brown condemned the attacks, saying: "I hope the authorities are able to take all the action necessary to protect them." Belfast's lord mayor, Naomi Long, said the attacks had brought shame on the city.

A Romanian mother of two sheltering at the O-Zone said the families were terrified. The woman, who gave her first name, Maria, said everyone was adamant they wanted to return to Romania. She said attacks had been intensifying over the past two weeks, with youths threatening her and her children. Other people spoke of men armed with guns telling them to leave the country or face being shot.

"We are OK, we are safe here now," she said. "But we want to go home because right now we are not safe here [in Northern Ireland]. We want to go back home to Romania, everybody right now does. I want to go home because I have here two kids and I want my kids to be safe."

Belfast's small community of Romanians grew noticeably grew about eight months ago. The streets from which the Romanians fled are on the border between the city's multi-racial university district and the loyalist working class Village/Donegall Road area. On Monday night, a number of young men from the Village area threw bottles and stones at an anti-racist protest on the Lisburn Road called to show solidarity with the Romanians. The mob chanted Combat 18 slogans, although security sources in Northern Ireland said there was no evidence the neo-Nazi terror group had organised cells in the Greater Belfast area.

The two main loyalist paramilitary groups, the UVF and UDA, have condemned the attacks and said none of their members were involved.

The deputy first minister, Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, said the attacks had been carried out by "racist criminals within our society who are unrepresentative of the vast majority of the people of Belfast".

Anna Lo, an assembly member for the Alliance party in south Belfast, said the families were "very frightened" and many would prefer to return to their homeland rather than remain in Belfast.

"They are really very frightened," she said. "The women, when they were talking to me yesterday, they were really upset, tears in their eyes and said, 'You know we love it here, we'd like to live here, but we're too scared.'"

Some within the Village/Donegall Road community have tried to make a stand against the aggressors. A poster on a boarded-up window at 14 Belgravia Avenue, a three-storey house occupied until Monday by several Romanian families, read: "Village says No to racist attacks." A similar poster nearby was torn down by a woman on her way to work, who declined to comment.

Guardian

Families flee after attacks by racist mob

A number of Romanian families have been been forced from their homes in Belfast in recent days by a racist mob claiming to be from the fascist group Combat 18, it can be revealed.

Their south Belfast homes came under sustained attack from Thursday evening, with their windows smashed and doors kicked in by crowds of thugs gathering outside shouting racist slogans. One family fled from their home in Belgravia Avenue. Another family, with a newborn baby, has been left terrified after their home at Wellesley Avenue came under attack just days after they were forced out of another property.

A number of local residents last night stood guard outside their new home in a bid to protect them. One local resident, Paddy Meehan, said: “About 12 of us worked in shifts to defend the house last night. Local residents think these people have to be defended. These thugs have been shouting that they are Combat 18 and they dropped a letter containing text from Hitler’s Mein Kampf through the letterbox of one of the properties.

“This has been going on for several nights. Sometimes there is about 20 of them gathering outside the properties. There is a hardcore of maybe six or seven shouting abuse and kicking doors down. These families are terrified, so are all their young children. They feel very isolated which is why the local community is gathering around them to support them,” he added.

The PSNI said police in south Belfast are investigating a number of racist attacks and criminal damage to properties and a car in Wellesley Avenue and Belgravia Avenue on a number of occasions between June 11 and 14. A spokeswoman added: “A crowd gathered on each occasion at the properties and a number of windows were smashed. Police have not received reports of any injuries.”

Residents in south Belfast are planning to stage a protest outside the Mace shop on the Lisburn Road this evening to show their support for the Romanian families and to call for an end to the racist attacks. These attacks come at a time of increased racial tensions in Northern Ireland.

The PSNI’s annual crime statistics have shown that incidents of racism, which range from verbal abuse to physical attacks, are continuing to rise across the province. Almost 1,000 incidents were reported to police within the space of 12 months. Earlier this year more than 40 foreign nationals were intimidated out of their homes in Belfast over a two-week period.

The Polish Association said in April that, following violent clashes between Northern Ireland and Polish football fans before a World Cup qualifier at Windsor Park, 46 people fled the Village area of south Belfast and Albertbridge Road area in the east of the city because of physical abuse and attacks on property.

Belfast Telegraph

Elected less than a week, and already targeted by racists

Northern Ireland's first Chinese politician has vowed not to be deterred by racists after abuse was posted about her on a high-profile website.

Police are continuing their investigations into allegations of racism against south Belfast MLA Anna Lo after new bigoted footage appeared on the video website YouTube. The videos, which are seen 100m times a day, were removed after they appeared in the comedy category showing a poster of the new Alliance MLA being defaced while the culprits ridiculed her accent.

The footage was removed as soon as the Belfast Telegraph alerted Ms Lo, the PSNI and the website to the material.

This is the latest in a series of racist on- line attacks against Ms Lo, who is the first politician of Chinese descent to be voted into government in Europe. Ms Lo's face has been maliciously posted onto pornographic websites and she has been abused on a hate site which links into a network "for national-socialists world-wide" and claims to be part of the infamous neo-Nazi group Combat 18.

Ms Lo today said that, while the racist slurs are upsetting, the overwhelmingly warm response she has received following her election as south Belfast MLA is much more representative of local people.

"I have had a meeting with police about this kind of thing before but they cannot do much because no actual threats have been made against me. When the sites are shut down, they are just re-opened somewhere else. In all societies there are small elements who are against you simply because of who and what you represent. I think my election shows how far we have actually progressed as a society. The fact that Northern Ireland is the first place in Europe to vote in a (Chinese) politician is a very positive image for the province world-wide. Therefore, I try not to think about the abuse on the internet."

A PSNI spokesman said: "Police inquiries are ongoing into an existing issue regarding internet content. The PSNI do not monitor internet sites on a day-to-day basis; however, we will take appropriate action when we receive a complaint of a criminal offence in our jurisdiction."

Nobody from YouTube was available to comment.

Belfast Telegraph