Northern Ireland communities are enduring a terrifying fourth day of unrest as masked vandals continue to cause chaos and set fire to residential areas. The epicentre of the anti-immigrant crowds on Thursday night was Portadown, Co Armagh.
A protester filming the standoff with PSNI riot police in Portadown was seen on video being forcefully pushed by an officer, who waves a pepper spray at him while dealing with the disorderly crowds.
The police officer can be heard saying “You’re going nowhere” while the man protests his innocence, saying: “Hang on boys. I’m going home, you going to pepper spray me for going home?” Unlike the more than 40 officers injured this week, the man seems to walk away unscathed.
Simultaneously, as PSNI officers were trying to control the situation across the town, a group of police took cover behind riot vans while crowds hurled objects at them.
In a chilling echo of the violence faced by law enforcement this week, one group can be heard cheering after a thrown petrol bomb detonates against a police vehicle.
This is the first night of violent unrest in Portadown, but the fourth for the wider communities who have witnessed cars being torched and homes set ablaze every night since Monday’s riot in Ballymena.
Yesterday, masked mobs wreaked havoc in Larne, committing what PSNI has branded “racist thuggery” by torching a community leisure centre after hearing that it sheltered migrants fleeing violence in Ballymena.
The chaos spilled over to Coleraine, Co Derry, where hooligans dragged wheelie bins onto train tracks and set them ablaze, causing significant damage.
Today, at a press briefing, the PSNI disclosed that the woman at the centre of the alleged sexual assault in Ballymena, which sparked the unrest, is ‘mortified’ by the violent upheaval that has engulfed her town, forcing migrants to cower in their attics from the marauding gangs.
The PSNI Chief Constable stated: “The people who protested about what happened to this poor victim on Monday, they did lawful protest.
He continued: “The people who are threatening families, who are different to them, who are law abiding members of our community, that is racism and it’s criminality, and there’s no place for it in our society. History has shown us here more than anywhere, what happens when communities fracture.
“We, of all, people, should have learned from that, and we have. So let’s not stand for this nonsense any longer.”
When pressed further, he asserted that there is “no other reason” to target families “from ethnic and diverse backgrounds”, addressing criticism of the force’s use of the term “racist” to describe the protesters.
