Belfast, in Northern Ireland, is experiencing days of enormous racial tension. They are not new, because he already suffered from this fever two years ago, and that redoubles the danger: there are shadows, there is a risk of repetition of incidents that left more than a hundred police officers injured and around fifty detainees.
What is happening now is that groups that the local government indicates as far-right are taking to the streets in large numbers, committing acts of vandalism and attacking civilian homes in areas with high immigration, in protest of a particular crime committed by a person from Sudan, a violent act recorded and viralized, which has triggered contained hatred.
Groups of masked men – the vast majority of them men – set fire to family homes and set fire to several private cars. The Police have had to evict dozens of parents and children – from a two-month-old baby to Ukrainian refugees – who would otherwise be exposed to the flames. Today their houses have dawned, at least blackened by smoke, but also completely destroyed by fire, with the windows broken or charred. Their cars and motorcycles are junk. “You are not welcome,” reads some graffiti. The majority of victims of this violence are black.
The agents themselves are also receiving beatings and throwing objects and burning patrol cars. No official data on personal and material damage has yet been released.
“There is no excuse or justification for these attacks,” Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill said this morning. “That groups of masked men set fire to family homes is an act of repugnant cowardice,” he maintains. “The attack in north Belfast was atrocious and unjustifiable. But there are dangerous attempts to exploit that fact to single out and attack innocent people who are simply trying to live, work and raise their families here,” said the nationalist leader in X.
The origin
The spread of a video of a knife attack, which left one person with serious neck and head injuries, is at the root of this crisis. It all happened on Monday night, when a black man of Sudanese origin, around 30 years old, tried to behead another man, around 40, who in the images appears to be white. It happened in north Belfast. The attacker was carrying a large kitchen knife and the brutality with which he used it immediately generated a flood of comments.
According to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the crime occurred around ten thirty at night (an hour more in Madrid). The alleged murderer, who is in custody, tried to end his victim’s life with knives, especially in the upper part of his body. The Northern Irish press speaks of an attempted “decapitation” of his victim, on whom he was sitting astride. The victim’s face is completely covered in blood.
In the images multiplied on social networks, you can see how a group of citizens rushes against the aggressor, in an attempt to stop him. One of them hits him with a hurley, the flat wooden stick used in the game of hurling. The police later arrive at the scene, the Kinnaird neighborhood.
The detainee, a man of Sudanese origin, arrived in Belfast after traveling from Paris and Dublin. On September 28, 2023, the British Home Office had granted him a temporary visa for five years. However, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Ryan Henderson, has avoided confirming whether his entry into the territory was regular or irregular, hiding behind the fact that the investigation is at a very early stage. “At the moment, we rule out that there are more people involved in the incident or that what happened has any terrorist component,” he said, according to the BBC.
The case is not being treated as terrorism for now, he adds, and confirms that this Wednesday the arrested person will appear in court, accused of attempted murder and possessing a knife.
Regarding the victim, who, like the aggressor, lived in the neighborhood where the attack occurred, the authorities have not revealed details of his identity. It has only been confirmed that he remains in serious condition with injuries to his eye, face and back. Belfast Magistrates’ Court, according to The Irish Newsreports that the man has lost an eye and that he worked as a radiologist in the National Health Service (NHS).
“This is the pure definition of racism”
The Minister of Justice of Northern Ireland, Naomi Long, is clear that vandalism and hatred are a matter of far-right groups, not of a citizenry enraged by this initial attack. “This is the pure definition of racism,” he told the BBC. “Yesterday we saw an avalanche on social media by far-right commentators who were clearly trying to foment racial tension, relying on the narrative they promote about immigration,” said Long, leader of the multi-denominational Alliance Party. Anti-immigration groups had called for demonstrations yesterday in different parts of the British province, the policy confirms.
In his opinion, malicious people, who would have previously had “difficulties locating the province on a map”, tried to exploit fear and anger, understandable after the knife attack, to attack people of the same skin color. “Do not allow malicious people to manipulate your legitimate concerns,” he said. “In Northern Ireland we know the damage that can be caused by demonizing an entire group of people because of the behavior of a few, and we don’t want to go back to that.”
PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has also claimed that the violent riots in Belfast were a “huge act of self-destruction by brainless idiots who are actually only harming their own future”. For now, the agents defend their communication protocol in this case, criticized by the communities in the target, since it was initially reported that the aggressor was from Somalia and not Sudan and the members of this community were the first affected. Hatred, whatever the passport, is undeniable.
A car burns in east Belfast during a protest following a knife attack on June 8, 2026 that left a man seriously injured.
The fire service of Northern Ireland recorded 256 calls and 62 actions on the ground between 7:00 p.m. and midnight yesterday, the majority in the region’s capital, where it needed 21 additional units to deal with emergencies, reports EFE.
On Tuesday, in a rare joint statement, the leaders of Sinn Féin, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Alliance, Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) declared themselves “united” in condemning this “horrible incident.” “There is no place in our society for this type of brutality,” they stressed. “We recognize – the note continued – the distress and fear that this incident will cause in the local community. We urge people not to share the deeply disturbing images or videos, as their graphic nature would only serve to re-traumatize those involved.”
The five political leaders reiterated their commitment to guarantee that “violence and hatred, in any of their forms” do not generate division: “We ask for calm and that the necessary space be allowed for Justice to take its course.”
Even so, Claire Hanna, leader of the opposition Social Democratic and Labor Party in Northern Ireland, has not hesitated to use harsher language, when seeing the persecution to which migrants are being subjected: she speaks directly of a “racist pogrom”, which neither society nor the Government can consent to. “The digital ecosystem that exalted him will turn the page and the people of Belfast will have to deal with the consequences,” he told Reuters.
A worrying context
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described the initial knife attack as “disgusting”. He also finds the subsequent violence “shocking and totally unacceptable.” “There is no justification for the violence and disorder we saw threaten our communities, nor for those who fomented it, whether online or elsewhere,” he says in a post on “The priority must be to call for calm, and that is what I ask now. We must let the police do their job,” he says.
This crisis comes at a time of great tension in the country following the murder of a student who, while dying from stab wounds, was handcuffed by police after his killer, a Sikh man, falsely claimed a racist attack.
It also comes after repeated protests over immigration, in which populist parties claim that Britain’s asylum policy has allowed dangerous men into the country, further heating up tempers.
Technology billionaire Elon Musk shared numerous messages denouncing the situation in the United Kingdom, for example. In response to a post by anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson about the incident in north Belfast, in which he called for protests after “another attack by invaders against our people”, Musk declared: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and STRONGLY will we achieve any change!” Reuters recalls.
Small protests were also recorded in front of Parliament in London, and other rallies were reported throughout the United Kingdom, for now without major consequences.
