Filipino families flee Northern Irish home after night of anti-immigrant violence

Ballymena, Northern Ireland - Michael Sancio, a resident of the Northern Irish town of Ballymena, said he was woken at midnight on Tuesday by masked men banging loudly on windows.

Sancio, his wife and daughter, and a couple who share their house - all originally from the Philippines - grabbed their passports and a few belongings and fled their home, sleeping at a friend's house on Tuesday night. They said they plan to stay further outside the town on Wednesday because they feel unsafe at home.

Hundreds of masked rioters attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in the town of 30,000 people for a second successive night on Tuesday. Police are investigating the damaging of property as racially-motivated "hate crimes".

"Last night I woke up at 12 midnight because I heard some people outside, and I saw in the window, I saw the other guys wearing a black jacket and black pants, and also they're wearing a mask," Sancio, 27, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"They started banging the window of our neighbours so I panicked because I have a daughter inside that house."

The rioters smashed the windows of the couple's car that was parked outside the house and set it and a bin on fire, said Sancio, who works at a local bus manufacturer.

The violence erupted after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court, accused of a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in Ballymena, a town with a relatively large migrant population located 28 miles (45 km) from Belfast.

The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the boys, the BBC reported, adding that the lawyer told the court that they denied the charges.

Anti-migrant violence is rare in Northern Ireland, which for decades has been more familiar with sectarian violence between resident Catholics and Protestants, including in Ballymena.

While a 1998 peace deal largely ended the three decades of bloodshed between Protestants who want to remain under British rule and Catholics favouring a united Ireland, there are still sporadic clashes.

'EXTREME FEAR'

Sancio said the masked men told them that they were not targeting Filipino people.

Around Ballymena, Filipino residents put stickers of British and Filipino flags on their doors, with messages saying "Filipino lives here" to show they were not Romanian.

Union Jack flags regularly fly in the largely pro-British town. Democratic Unionist Party councillor Lawrie Philpott told Reuters that some people who usually don't fly flags had hung Union Jacks outside their homes this week to show they are local.

Around 6% of people in Northern Ireland were born abroad, according to government statistics. The foreign-born population in Ballymena is higher, in line with the UK average of 16%, and includes a relatively large Filipino community.

Northern Ireland has been broadly welcoming to migrants but that has been tested recently. Violent disorder erupted in Belfast last August as part of anti-immigration protests that swept across several UK cities following the murder of three young girls in northwest England.

In the Republic of Ireland, rioting broke out in Dublin in late 2023 during anti-immigrant protests that were triggered by a stabbing attack that left a child seriously injured.

Sian Mulholland, a local lawmaker from the Alliance Party, said she was fielding calls from migrant families who in some cases had barricaded themselves into their homes until 0230 on Wednesday morning.

"I had been engaging with this community beforehand because the houses they are living in are not fit for purpose. They're (living in) squalor," she told Reuters.

Sancio's wife, Mariel Lei Odi, was working a night shift on Tuesday. When she returned home, she was worried about the safety of their two-year-old daughter, she said.

"When I (came home to) my husband and chatted about what happened last night: (I said) 'my daughter, my daughter, my daughter. What happened?'," she said.

Michael Asuro, who lives in the house with his wife, Jessa Sagarit, said he came to Northern Ireland just under two years ago to seek a better life. Sagarit said she felt traumatised by the events.

Police have said they are braced for more violence on Wednesday.

As residents boarded up broken windows and doors in Ballymena, the Filipino families wondered about their future and whether they will stay.

"We feel extreme fear," Asuro said.

(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson and Clodagh Kilcoyne, Writing by Padraic Halpin, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)