A SPATE of racist attacks in a Co Tyrone estate are not the work of a neo-Nazi organisation but of two or three local thugs, a community worker has told Metro Éireann.
In recent weeks, two Lithuanian families living on the Coolcush Court estate in Dungannon have been subjected to a sickening campaign of intimidation, including verbal abuse and smashing of windows.
According to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), a person claiming to represent the far-right organisation Combat 18 claimed responsibility for the window-smashing attacks against the homes of the two Lithuanian families in mid-January – however, a PSNI spokesperson last week informed Metro Éireann that it has not corroborated this claim.
Bernadette McAliskey, a prominent Northern republican who is now a community development worker in the area, said the attacks were less the work of Combat 18 and more of “Combat two-and-a-half”, in reference to the handful of locals who she believes are behind the violence on this Catholic, economically disadvantaged estate. It is understood that a Portuguese family have also been on the receiving end of similarly vitriolic abuse.
“It has nothing to do with Combat 18,” McAliskey told Metro Éireann last Friday. “The identity of the people responsible is well known to people in the area. There was a previous spate of attacks and the source of that behaviour has returned to the estate. They are locally born, bred and identifiably known in the community.”
She said the individuals had also been involved in acts of a sectarian nature, and added: “It’s untrue to say that it’s a family... it is two to three people who are related, but that is not to tar their entire biological circle. They are two or three young people who are well known in the area. They have a history of violent behaviour, racially motivated violence and gender motivated violent behaviour.”
McAliskey said she had just returned from an inter-agency meeting about the situation and that she was dissatisfied with the PSNI’s approach.
“The PSNI says it needs the community’s help, but this doesn’t remove the responsibility of the police,” she said, adding that the force was yet to question the individuals who are locally known as the perpetrators. However, she added that the residents of the estate must also show greater solidarity with their immigrant neighbours.
“It is simply not good enough to be disgusted, you have to stand your ground with your neighbours – if you don’t, just because they look a little different, then you are on the same side [as the perpetrators],” she said. “There’s a culture of 40 years of people turning the other way when things are happening, they have to accept that those days are gone.”
A PSNI spokesperson confirmed on Friday that it has not yet questioned anyone over the attacks on the two Lithuanian families. No motive has been established but the PSNI is continuing its investigations, he added.
