N. Ireland thugs drive Gypsies from homes

updated 9:22 p.m. ET June 17, 2009

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The thugs used bricks and bottles to drive more than 100 Romanian Gypsies from their homes in a wave of attacks.

On Wednesday, the victims were sheltering in a community center after a church plucked them off a Belfast street.

The grim images from this week — families carrying possessions in bundled blankets, a mother clutching her 5-day-old baby — are more evidence of rising anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe, but also of a situation unique to Northern Ireland: new fault lines in its tragic history of ethnic divisions.

About 20 Romanian families, carrying their belongings in suitcases, duffel bags and blankets, were being sheltered on the community center's indoor tennis courts. One man carried an accordion, while parents gripped the hands of young children and some women covered their heads with jackets and sweaters to avoid being photographed.

The families were taken in by the City Church on Tuesday after youths attacked their homes in a working-class neighborhood of south Belfast, smashing windows and hurling threats. Local authorities moved them to the roomier community center Wednesday morning. Some said the attackers had guns, but there were no reports of serious injuries.

'They wanted to kill us'
"They made signs like they wanted to cut my brother's baby's throat," said one man, Couaccusil Filuis. "They said they wanted to kill us."

Police said the racist attacks started last week, with gangs smashing house windows and attacking cars. The violence flared again on Monday when youths hurling bottles and Nazi salutes attacked an anti-racism rally called to support the migrants.

Belfast City council press officer Mark Ashby said the majority of the victims were Roma, or Gypsies, from Romania.

Romania's Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks and urged British authorities to take measures to avoid more racist violence.

Marian Mandache, from the advocacy group Romani Criss, said the Northern Ireland violence was the latest in a disturbing trend of attacks across Europe.

"Starting with Italy in 2007, there have been waves of ... racist attacks against Roma," said Mandache. "Afterwards, there were attacks in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania."

The Northern Ireland government said the displaced Romanians would be given temporary accommodation in Belfast. But many said they wanted to leave Northern Ireland.

'We are not safe here'
"We want to go home because right now we are not safe here," said a woman who gave only her first name, Maria. "We want to go back home to Romania, everybody right now does."

Racial tensions are rising across Europe as the pace of migration grows and the economy worsens. Far-right parties picked up seats in many countries in elections for the European Parliament earlier this month. The whites-only British National Party, which calls for the "voluntary repatriation" of immigrants, increased its share of the vote and won its first two European seats.

Europe's 7 to 9 million Roma people face widespread prejudice in Romania — where estimates of their numbers vary between 500,000 and 2 million — and other countries. The European Union's rights agency has said Roma face "overt discrimination" in housing, health care and education, despite many government programs designed to help them.

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