3 hours ago
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For four hours, two Ugandan care workers, Sumayah Nakazibwe and Stella Ariokot, were barricaded into their house near Crumlin Road, north Belfast, as smoke leaked in, and flames licked the walls of neighbouring properties.
“It all started like people were just marching, young boys between the age of nine and 20,” Nakazibwe said. “They were all putting on black, and masked.”
They watched from their window as the mob burned the tyres of a bus. “And then they collected the bins outside and then started also burning them,” she said. “And then we were like, maybe it will not escalate.”
But then the mob turned on to their street, where Romanian and Nigerian families also live alongside British and Irish families.
“They started burning, petrol-bombing, the cars,” she said. “So when the smoke started, it was just coming direct to our houses. So we called the police, we called the fire brigade.”
There were so many fires across the city that it took the fire brigade about 30 minutes to arrive.
“It was so, so, so terrifying,” Nakazibwe said, as the women watched flames take hold of nearby houses. Emergency services told them it was too dangerous for them to attempt to leave, suggesting they put on their care worker uniforms in case that helped placate any rioters who broke in.
“Someone who is actually rioting doesn’t know that the person they are targeting is actually looking after their mother or their granny,” Nakazibwe said. “Meanwhile, I left my mother back home.”
At one point, Nakazibwe collapsed from fear. “When they started throwing the stones on to our windows, she passed out,” Ariokot said. “I had to stay on the line talking to the ambulance people, and they were directing me what to do, but thank God she woke up.”
It was only when their church pastor came to the scene and was spoke to the men that it was safe enough for them to be evacuated from their home.
Pastor Jack McKee, from New Life City Church, had not wanted to go on to the streets as riots began but when he heard that one of his congregation was in trouble, he set off in his car to help.
“When I got there, I mean it was horrendous: four fire engines, police officers in riot gear, a crowd of guys standing, masked up, bricks in their hands, ambulance having to park a way down the road where they couldn’t even drive to the house,” he said.
“A house completely burned down; we had to go under the hoses in order to get into the house to get these women out.”
“There were like 20 guys, all masked up, with bricks in their hands, and it looked like they were there for some fight, so I had to go over and talk to them,” he said. “And I pleaded with them to give me 10 minutes to let me get these women out and get them into my car.”
“They gave me those 10 minutes,” he said. “Ssome of them actually dropped their bricks on to the ground and they gave me the 10 minutes and let me get them in the car.”
The women, who stayed with McKee and his family last night, were “totally traumatised”, he said.
“I never thought that I’d have to be going to rescue Christian people, in a Protestant community, being attacked,” he added.
Nakazibwe said: “I understand there are good people out there; the people who are actually rioting do not represent the whole community … just as the immigrant who really did that [attack], does not represent all of us.”
However, today, she said: “I wouldn’t go out, for safety, it’s not safe.”
“To me it was a very peaceful place until yesterday,” she added. “Like it really changed my mind. It is just too much, I felt like maybe I’m just giving up, like maybe it’s high time I go home.”
At the street off the Shankill Road, where a Romanian family was forced out of their home, evidence of last night’s riot was abundant. The shell of a burned-out car, which neighbours said belonged to the family, was outside, while windows were shattered and others boarded up.
The home had been targeted twice before, most recently a couple of months ago, neighbours said. “And they wouldn’t go, so last night was the last straw,” one said.
On Tuesday night, the house was pelted with bricks, and lit fireworks were shoved through the letterbox. Another neighbour helped the family to escape after men in balaclavas broke down the door.
“They were told to get out, and they were put out twice, and they didn’t go,” the neighbour said. She said she did not know where the family had been moved to, adding: “It’s not our problem now, they’re not here now.”
The house next door, where a black family lived, also had smashed and boarded-up windows, with neighbours saying the fire had spread there. That family fled too, and a neighbour moved their car to safety.
Across town, in east Belfast, off Newtownards Road, several houses had been boarded up, while burned debris littered the streets.
Romanian and Sudanese families were among those who had had to leave their homes, neighbours said. “There was a mob out on the street and the police … were actually chased out of the street. How can you have guns and stuff, and there’s somebody chasing you out of a street?”
A charity worker said the families had been taken to safety by police and were with officers until they could be found temporary accommodation.
One neighbour said that specific houses where ethnic minority families lived had been targeted, and that Catholics had come to the largely loyalist area to join in the violence.
“That’s a first,” he said. “We fought each other for 30 years, but they see the fear factor too.”
