Why people are rioting in Northern Ireland: 'It’s odious racism'
| Updated:
Migrants and their property have been targetted across Northern Ireland by rioters following the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl in the town of Ballymena.
Listen to this article
Read time: 4 mins
In brief…
- Two 14-year-olds have been charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Northern Ireland, leading to nights of riots, with violence targeted at migrants living in the area.
- The News Agents says these outbreaks are due to racism, and hate for migrants fuelled by social media, as previous sexual assaults in Northern Ireland have not resulted in violence.
- They describe online radicalisation, led by people such as Tommy Robinson, as so commonplace that communities such as Ballymena are like “powder kegs” in need of a spark.
What’s the story?
Migrant families are once again the target of violence in the UK.
Northern Ireland has been rocked this week by riots, sparked by the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl, with two 14-year-old Romanian boys being charged for the crime. They pleaded not-guilty in a court hearing this week.
The worst of the violence has been seen in the town of Ballymena, where the assault took place, with police describing the outbreaks as "racist thuggery targeted at ethnic minorities and police officers".
On Wednesday night, a leisure centre in Larne – around 20 miles from Ballymena – was attacked and set on fire by rioters. It had been used as emergency shelter for migrant families at risk of violence from outbreaks that took place earlier in the week.
Homes, businesses and vehicles have had windows smashed and been torched by rioters during three days and nights of violence, with some of those responsible filming their crimes and sharing footage online.
In the summer of 2024, anti-migrant riots broke out across the UK, sparked by the murder of three girls at a dance class in Southport by a British-born man of Rwandan descent.
Northern Ireland riots: 'This could be anywhere in the UK'
Why riot now?
As recently as January 2025 a former leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was in court on sex abuse charges. Not a rock was thrown.
There were 1,615 sexual assaults reported in Northern Ireland between 2023 and 2024. No homes were set on fire.
So what is it about this attack that has sparked such violence?
“There is this sense of, if something goes wrong, then the immigrants must be to blame,” says Jon Sopel.
“The foreigners must be to blame, even though there have been plenty of horrific cases in many towns around Northern Ireland, and the rest of the UK, of sexual assault on young girls.”
Emily Maitlis says if the same outrage isn’t applied to every young woman or girl who is the victim of sexual assault, and violence only breaks out when the alleged perpetrators are from a minority group, then the real concerns are revealed – and it’s not for the victims.
“It's not really about the girl, it's not really about abuse. It's not really about a sense of what the victims are going through, that is being used as a pretext,” Emily says.
“The question of identity is really important here, because you can see how much it affects disaffected communities.”
She says if people are serious about finding solutions to the problems in their communities, they need to “disassociate” one issue from another.
“You can say the rape of young women is absolutely unacceptable, no matter who does it or in what community,” she says.
“But you also have to say attacking migrants in their own homes is just pure and simple odious racism.”
The online element
Like previous race-riots in the UK (such as last year’s violence in Southport), some of it can be blamed on the influence of social media, where individuals with extreme views share racist content with the sole purpose of stoking tensions across the country.
“You've got Tommy Robinson now tweeting out all this stuff, a lot of the videos that are being uploaded are coming from his account,” says Jon.
“This is what he does. This is his area of operation – that foreigners are to blame.”
“If you live in London, Manchester, or Birmingham, you're used to a more multicultural society, and that isn't the case in Northern Ireland, or even in the Republic, where there's also been similar outbreaks of violence against immigrants.”
Northern Ireland is one of the UK’s least diverse communities, with close to 97% of the population identifying as white, leaving some people in this part of the country more susceptible to disinformation about minority groups shared by bad-faith actors online.
“There has been a radicalisation of a lot of online spaces, in particular, Twitter/X, and a lot of these places are powder kegs, where all it requires is a spark,” says Lewis Goodall.
“This idea of racialised violence has become commonplace online, one of the most evocative ideas historically, is that these immigrants, these people, are coming after white girls.”
Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.
