Northern Ireland secretary condemns ‘racist thuggery’ after further violence

The Northern Ireland secretary has condemned “racist thuggery” in Belfast after a second night of violent anti-immigration protests, in which 16 people were arrested and 12 police officers were injured.

Hilary Benn said during the violence, which followed a serious knife attack on Monday, people were stopped in their cars to be asked where they come from and were targeted because of the colour of their skin.

Asked whether these were racist riots rather than protests, Benn told Sky News: “If you are targeting people on the basis of the colour of their skin how else can you describe them? That is racist thuggery, there’s no question about it at all.”

He said 12 police officers were injured and 16 arrests were made during the unrest, which had left people from minority ethnic backgrounds in Northern Ireland living in “terror and fear”.

The Northern Ireland secretary, Hilary Benn, left, said the disorder was racist riots rather than protests. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA

The Police Service of Northern Ireland would be receiving assistance from Police Scotland, including dog teams to help with public order control, Benn told BBC Breakfast.

Unrest was reported in Belfast, Derry and Coleraine but there were fewer disturbances than on Tuesday, when mobs targeted people of colour after a knife attack in north Belfast left a man, named as Stephen Ogilvie, severely injured.

A Department for Infrastructure vehicle was set alight as rioters confronted police with bricks and paving stones near the Sandyknowes roundabout in Newtownabbey in north-west Belfast. Rioters attempted to set fire to a derelict property and set alight wheelie bins, with some individuals throwing petrol bombs at police lines. In Derry, police reported items having been set alight on the Ardmore Road. The family of Ogilvie said they were disgusted by the disorder.

John Blair, an Alliance member of the Northern Ireland assembly for South Antrim, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Newtownabbey had been subjected to unrest by “a mob on a rampage of violence and destruction”.