Councils and PSNI urged to tackle dangerous and sectarian 'rogue bonfires'

“FOREIGNERS OUT” was the slogan that adorned a a unionist bonfire on the Upper Newtownards Road in east Belfast this week to celebrate the Twelfth of July.

“The display of racist intolerance on a loyalist bonfire should come as no surprise to anyone,” said Sinn Féin's Ryan Carlin (pictured).

The Castlereagh representative was speaking after images of a wooden pallet with the racist threat “foreigners out” painted on it were published online on July 5.

Carlin went on to echo the words of Sinn Féin National Chairperson Declan Kearney MLA, who called on councils and the PSNI to tackle what he called “rogue bonfires”.

The Sinn Féin Assembly member said:

“Such rogue bonfires have become synonymous with the most obscene sectarian and other forms of hate crime, specifically the burning of election posters, effigies and other cultural or political symbols. The resulting negative damage to community relations is unacceptable.

“I will be writing to the PSNI to request that appropriate policing measures are put in place in the lead up to the Twelfth of July to ensure that no hate crimes are allowed to be perpetrated this year on or in the immediate vicinity of these bonfire sites and, if necessary, to ensure that prosecutions are brought forward”.

Kearney singled out the infamous Ballycraigy bonfire in Antrim which has been in the media spotlight over its display and burning of effigies of Gerry Adams on a gallows and H-Block Hunger Striker Bobby Sands in a coffin.

Swings and a climbing frame have been removed from a £250,000 playground next to the Comber Greenway in east Belfast because of the dangers posed by an Eleventh Night bonfire.

This public threat is one of a number of racist incidents to emerge and coincides with the rise in racist aggression and other incidents reported throughout England in the wake of the referendum on EU membership.

A slogan representing the neo-Nazi Combat 18 gang (18 represents the initials of Adolf Hitler) was daubed on the front of a house in County Armagh in the days after the referendum.

A Palestinian nurse, Mohammed Samaana, living in Belfast, was abused in the city's centre on Saturday 1 July by a man who told him: “Fuck off back to your own country. Get the fuck out of our country!”

It is believed that many other incidents of day-to-day racism go unreported.

● See also: “Is a ‘Twelfth’ free from sectarianism possible?”