Racism Abounds

Rima and Michael Lynch (above) thought they and their children would be safe from racial abuse when they moved to a Catholic working-class area close to central Belfast.

But the mixed-race couple's experience over six years puts a human face on the rise of race-hate crimes in the city, beyond Protestant/loyalist areas with a reputation for xenophobia.

Rima, a Christian-Israeli Arab, has been branded a Roma, Romanian, "Jew whore" and "dirty Arab" by a family who have subjected her family to a slew of racist abuse and intimidation.

The Guardian has learned there have been 13 arrests linked to race-hate attacks in Greater Belfast since the start of last month. But the Lynch family say the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in south Belfast has failed to act against local people who have terrorised them in the nationalist Lower Ormeau area.

PSNI statistics show a sharp increase in race crimes and racist incidents in the past two years. In 2012/2013 the PSNI recorded 470 racial hate crimes but that figure rose to 691 to the year ending March 2014. In the same period incidents of racial abuse and intimidation rose from 750 to 982.

When Michael Lynch, who met his wife in Israel, moved back to his native Belfast he decided it would be safer to live in the Catholic Lower Ormeau Road area than in a loyalist area. The Lynches say they and their three children were targeted by a local woman, her husband and children, who objected to the presence of immigrants in their midst.

"At first they said I was Roma and then later Romanian," Rima said. "When I finally spoke to this woman I told her I was an Arab-Israeli, born in Galilee. At first I was called a 'Jew whore' for being Israeli and later when I reminded neighbours that I was an Arab-Christian I was branded a 'dirty Arab'.

"At first it was low-level intimidation with our windows being rapped violently at night when we were watching television in the front room, or our plant pots turned over in the street, or local kids banging the door. Later they targeted my two sons on social networks, repeating the racist slurs and later the real bullying began against the boys," Rima said.

Her husband said the racist bullying of one son got so bad he had to take him out of a local Catholic secondary school. 

"I couldn't believe this was happening in a Catholic area where I wanted the family to settle. It was near to work, close to the city centre, not far from the university district and some good schools. But after all we have been put through we are seriously considering moving out to another part of Belfast," he said.

His wife said the children of the family behind most of the intimidation called her sons and daughter "monkeys" and told them to go back to Israel. 

"They bullied a single Polish mother and her children out of the same area and I know for a fact they are putting pressure on an African lady who lives in the same street. Yet the police up until very recently were not prepared to take action against these people," she said.

Rima stressed she had "many, many good friends" among the locally born population in the Lower Ormeau but believed neighbors were terrified of their tormentors. She added: "In a strange way I could cope with this better if it was happening in a loyalist, Protestant area.

At least they are upfront and open about the way some of them in that community treat foreigners. In this area, among people of the same faith, it is more a case of being smiled at to your face and then stabbed in the back."