PROTESTS in Northern Ireland last week were condemned by the Archbishop of Armagh, the Rt Revd John McDowell, as “a source of great shame”.

On Monday, the police said that 64 police officers had been injured over the course of four nights in attacks that they described as “racist thuggery, pure and simple”. Twenty-nine people were arrested, of whom 21 were charged.

In an statement released last Friday, Archbishop McDowell described the “scenes of violence” as “hiding behind the figment of ‘legitimate concerns’ but in fact motivated by crude racism”.

He said: “Groups of young men (and the shadowy and unaccountable people who control them) planned and carried out attacks on civil society and on democracy. The damage they have caused is not just material; it cannot be simply swept away.

“As disciples of Jesus Christ, called to respect the dignity of every person made in the image and likeness of God, we should put ourselves in the shoes of someone trapped inside a house or a hostel while an angry mob gathers outside. It must be utterly terrifying. Imagine the lasting impact of such terror on a child.”

The violence began in Ballymena, in County Antrim, and soon spread to other twos and cities including Larne, Coleraine, Belfast, and Portadown, where the police had to deploy water cannon.

The origin of the unrest was the court appearance in Coleraine Magistrates’ Court of two teenage boys accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Ballymena. They spoke in Romanian through an interpreter. Later that day, a peaceful protest over the alleged assault in the town turned to violence.

Businesses were damaged as doors and windows were smashed. It is understood that houses where immigrant families were staying were targeted. Six homes were attacked as bricks, fireworks, and petrol bombs were thrown.

“It is only by the grace of God, and by the actions of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the fire service last night, that we are not looking at something more serious,” the Northern Ireland Assembly member for North Antrim, Sian Mulholland, said in Stormont the next day.

Archbishop McDowell said: “The people who are the target of such squalid protests have come to this country to make a new life and to make a living. Just as we would rightly refuse to be judged by the criminal actions of any individual who happens to be from the same nationality or ethnicity as us, so we should question those who do so of others.

“I have also a legitimate concern that the scapegoating of people whose skin is a different colour, who speak different languages, or who practice a different faith, will allow policymakers to continue to ignore the actual, deep-seated problems which make Northern Ireland a place of low productivity and social and political unease.

“Above all, I have a concern that speaking about other people and cultures in sub-human and certainly sub-Christian terms, and acting towards them as though they are in some way inferior to me, will deaden my soul to the love of the God of all nations, whose Son allowed himself to be bowed to the ground to bring an end once and for all to every ethnic division.”

The MP for North Antrim, Jim Allister, referred to “unfettered immigration” leading to “significant demographic change in the area”. A report published by the Northern Ireland Assembly this year estimated a net international migration total of 62,000 people over the period 2001-23. The majority of people have come from Ireland, Poland, and Romania, it said; only 3.5 per cent of the Northern Ireland population come from an ethnic minority (England and Wales have a figure of 18 per cent).

The number of international migrants into the the mid- and east-Antrim council area over the past two decades, according to the Assembly research, was 4900. Its population at the last census in 2021 was just under 139,000 people.