RSI stands against hate: Our response to recent events in Belfast

12th June 2026

On 8 June, a man was attacked in North Belfast. While violence remains frequent across Northern Ireland (NI), this incident caught the attention of the far right, because they perceived the alleged perpetrator – who is Black – to be someone who was born outside the UK. Almost exactly a year on from the Ballymena ‘riots’, we once again saw racist violence in NI. Over the last few days, people have taken to the streets to ‘protest’ against migration and migrants, only to then set fire to homes, buses and cars. They have burnt down businesses owned by people of colour. They have reportedly even created ‘migrant car checkpoints’, to check the ethnicity of drivers who are just going about their day-to-day lives.

Once again, migrants and ethnic minorities in NI have been intimidated and subjected to violence and harassment, collectively being punished for a crime they did not commit, simply because of who they are perceived to be.

These violent actors should not be seen as ‘bad eggs’ or ‘lone wolves’. Politicians and the media in the UK – even those who might define themselves as ‘progressive’ – are spurring on racist rhetoric, using their authority to place the blame for collapsing public services and the housing crisis on migrants, asylum seekers, or anyone who looks ‘foreign’ to them. We are gravely concerned at the lack of a clear response from political leaders against these recurrent harms. When violence is organised, coordinated, and directed at people on the basis of their race or national origin, we must call it out for what it is: racism. Anything less risks normalising it.

Racism grows where it is not confronted. Every act of violence against a person because of their race, nationality or religion diminishes us all. We stand with the communities of Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland who are living in fear, and we call on UK politicians to stop painting migrants and asylum-seekers as undesirables and as the causes of the country’s social ills. This, too, is racism.