‘We feel extreme fear': How Northern Ireland's riots are haunting migrants
On the second night of the riots in Ballymena last week, Michael Asuro's Ford Focus hatchback was rolled out into the middle of his street and set alight.
Crouching inside his bedroom in the small Northern Irish town just north of Belfast, Asuro kept the lights off to deter the attackers, having heard the sound of the rioters breaking down his neighbours' front door. Then he watched from the window as they smashed the glass of his car and set it on fire.
Asuro, a Filipino migrant, arrived in Northern Ireland on a skilled worker visa in September 2023 at the age of 23. He now lives in Ballymena with his partner and works as a mechanic, working on coaches – one of the 4,000 or so Filipinos in Northern Ireland's 1.9 million population.
'I don't feel safe living in Northern Ireland now,' he tells The Telegraph after the experience last week, adding: 'We feel extreme fear. We are not here to destroy the community. We are here legally. We are here to raise our family. We are far away from the Philippines.'
The violence began last Monday at a vigil in support of a schoolgirl who had allegedly been sexually assaulted by two Romanian-speaking teenagers. The boys, both aged 14, were charged in court with attempted rape and required a Romanian interpreter.
The alleged assault ignited years of simmering unrest between the migrant community and the locals of the town.
Rioters sought out houses believed to belong to migrants and set them alight with fireworks and petrol bombs thrown through doors.
Footage showed flames engulfing a glass-fronted leisure centre, where migrants displaced by the riots had been sheltering. 'It's pure racism – there is no other way to dress it up,' said Michelle O'Neill, the first minister of Northern Ireland, of the violence.
Non-Roma immigrants resorted to putting up signs displaying their nationality, such as 'Filipino lives here', or displaying the King's coronation memorabilia and crockery featuring Elizabeth II, in a bid to deter thugs.
A week later, the streets of Ballymena are quiet again; days of rain helped disperse the mobs. 'I've never thanked the Lord for the rain in all my life, but now I have been so grateful for the rain,' says one Filipino migrant who has lived in Belfast since 2002.
But a sense of fear persists for those in the migrant community, who now feel they are walking targets. The migrant says that her daughter is so scared to walk through the street that she now wants to dye her hair blonde 'so she won't be targeted'.
'I love Ballymena, we have integrated into the community, we pay our taxes, we have created friends. We are not bad people, we are just living quietly,' she reflects.
Simona Lazar, speaking on behalf of the charity Union Romani Voice, told The Telegraph that more than 300 Romanians have now left Ballymena for their own safety.
'We are in contact with Romanian families on the ground: mothers, fathers and young people who say they feel petrified and unsafe where they live now,' she says.
'There are families simply asking to live without fear, they are asking for their children to go to school without being targeted, to walk through their neighbourhoods without intimidation.
'The community feels discriminated against and unsafe. They fear that they will be killed,' she adds.
'Our culture is rich, our history is deep and our contribution to British society is real. We are not asking for special treatment, we are asking for safety, for justice, for equality and for a society where no child grows up afraid.'
Northern Ireland has seen significant demographic change this century, experiencing a fourfold increase in minority ethnic residents in two decades – from just 0.8 per cent in 2001 to 3.4 per cent in 2021.
Between January 2010 and December 2020, according to medical card registrations, Romanians constituted the third highest inflow to the province. Inward migration from Europe has fallen sharply since Brexit, however, with India, Ireland and Nigeria now the top three countries of origin.
Ballymena, where unemployment is above average, was 94 per cent white at the time of the latest census, with just 6 per cent of the population from another ethnic background.
There, the Roma community has long been accused, by some, of failing to integrate.
'These problems have been around for a very long time and very systematically in Northern Ireland,' says Nina Briggs, a 30-year-old who lives in Belfast as a migrant from Boston in the United States. She moved in September 2021 when she received an offer from Queen's University Belfast to study for a PhD.
Ethnically Asian, she says that abuse comes as soon as locals realise that she is non-white.
'When I speak to folks on the phone or in writing, it isn't obvious. But I am ethnically South-East Asian so I look very different,' she says. 'I have faced racist comments and abuse in the streets, there are shops I don't go to.
'In a university setting, you get comments that we are stealing local places. Sometimes I've just been jumped on randomly – people start throwing things or hitting me. Once, an old gentleman hit me with a tray at the airport.
'I feel unsafe and disregarded.'
She explains that many migrant groups now have a 'lockdown protocol' in case violence 'kicks off'. In periods of extreme violence or intimidation, those who appear white will go shopping on behalf of those migrants who don't, and take their children to school.
'We shut down and rely on our 'white-presenting' allies to get our kids to school,' she explains.
Back in Ballymena, the scars of the riots are visible as the community recovers from a week of tumult and trauma.
Police say that 31 arrests have so far been made relating to racially-motivated disorder, with 23 charged.
Schools have been declaring themselves safe spaces for children to seek refuge. Education Minister Paul Givan told the Assembly that over the past week, children who have arrived at school 'showing all the signs of trauma as a result of what has happened on our streets'.
Asuro, meanwhile, is trying to move on from the terrifying experience of seeing his car set alight.
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