Pregnant women assaulted by racist thugs

Two Chinese families and one African family, some with small children, were forced to flee their homes over the Christmas holidays following a series of outrageous racially-motivated attacks in the Lower Donegall Road area of the predominately unionist Sandy Row.

In the most serious of the three incidents, a gang of men broke into a house and assaulted two pregnant Chinese women before breaking a man's nose by smashing a brick into his face. One of the women was in the final stages of her pregnancy and due to give birth on Christmas Day.

Later that night missiles were fired through the windows of two other homes in the area. The following weekend there were arson attacks on a further two houses in the Donegall Road and Coolfin Street areas of South Belfast. Both homes are normally occupied by Romanian and Pakistani families, but fortunately when the attacks took place both families were away for the holiday period.

There have been numerous racial attacks in the Donegall Road area over recent months, with far-right elements blamed for the incidents.

Sinn Féin South Belfast MLA Alex Maskey says the attacks were "purely racist" and that the onus was on unionist leaders to condemn them.

There have been 212 racial incidents in the North since April of last year, but the PSNI admits that there are "many more" racially-motivated attacks than are reported.

To the relief of Hua Long Lin, the Chinese man still recovering from the broken nose he got in the first series of attacks, his wife finally gave birth to a healthy baby son, Joseph, this past Saturday. Both mother and baby are doing well but the family has been left deeply traumatised by the assault. As a result of the brutal attack they are now reluctantly preparing to leave the Six Counties for good and relocate to England.