With Northern Ireland accused of being the most bigoted society in the western world, Róisín Ingletalks to people whose experiences bear out the statistics
Early last Friday morning, police came to the home of 21-year-old French woman Celine Maillard in Portadown and suggested that, for her own safety, she should pack her belongings and move out.
"At first I didn't understand," says the pretty classroom assistant, sitting in the house of a work colleague who is letting her stay until she finds another place to live. "When the police told me I would have to move out, I told them: 'No, you don't understand, I am not illegal here, I am an EU citizen, I am a classroom assistant.' It just seemed crazy."
The police constable explained that she had done nothing wrong but that they had reason to believe somebody was planning to target the house, situated on a staunchly Protestant estate, because she was a foreigner.
Police believe the racially motivated plan was prompted by Maillard's car, which has been parked outside her front garden since January. A Citroen, it is her pride and joy, she says. She spent the Christmas holidays with her family in France and drove the car back for the first time last month. The French registration plate, police said, may have left her open to attack.
As is normal procedure in these cases, she had to sign a police statement, handwritten on blue paper, which she shows me, still clearly bewildered. The statement reads: "Police are in receipt of information that persons may be targeting your house for some sort of attack as they believe you to be a foreign national."
She was given a booklet about how to check her car for suspicious devices each morning and other information to ensure her personal safety.
Maillard was informed that she did not have to move, but that if she stayed she was taking a risk. An elderly Polish woman had been trapped in her home on a Protestant estate recently when heavy bricks were piled outside her door.
"My parents are going mad with worry," Maillard says. "They want me on the first plane back to France, but I will stay for another year. Before this, I lived quite happily in Portadown."
She is still coming to terms with events.
"The police told me it happened because I was a stranger in an estate full of very small-minded people. It's like the movies; things like this don't really happen, it doesn't feel real," she says.
THE FACT IS that race-related incidents are not only a reality in Northern Ireland, but are on the increase and have been since the numbers of economic migrants and foreign workers arriving from Portugal, Poland and Lithuania began to rise.
Over the last five years men and women from these countries have flocked to Northern Ireland in their thousands to take low-paid jobs in factories such as Moy Park in Portadown.
There are good news stories from their presence here which don't tend to make the headlines. Dwindling school populations are being boosted by the new communities and their presence has made the rental property sector in certain areas more vibrant. Earlier this month, a Lithuanian consulate was welcomed to Dungannon, Co Tyrone, to foster better relations between that community and locals, and over the last couple of years several migrant support projects have been opened across Northern Ireland. And while pubs such as The Tunnel Bar in Portadown have become places where foreign nationals can be seen mixing with the locals, sipping espresso and cheering their home football teams on the TV, there is, as Maillard discovered, a more sinister side to the story.
One Portadown businessman, who didn't want to be named, says that there has been a "softening" in relations between the Protestant and Catholic communities in the area but that tension between immigrants and locals, especially in loyalist areas, is more noticeable. The latest statistics from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) show that between April 2004 and March 2005 there were 813 racially motivated incidents recorded, a figure which rose to 936 during the same period the following year, an increase of 15 per cent. These incidents include everything from verbal intimidation, stone-throwing, harassment, arson, graffiti and attacks on property to serious physical assault.
Last month, a mattress in the hallway of a flat housing four Chinese students in south Belfast was set on fire in what members of that community believe was a racist attack. Over the last couple of years the vast majority of these incidents have occurred on Protestant estates, although race crimes have been recorded in Catholic areas too.
Compounding the figures, a study published earlier this month revealed Northern Ireland to be the most bigoted country in the western world. Co-written by Vani Borooah, professor of economics at the University of Ulster, the research showed that people in the North were the least likely to want to live beside someone of a different race and were more opposed to migrant workers than most of the other countries surveyed. The bigotry was not just around race. Northern Ireland was also shown to be the most homophobic society in the world.
"For decades in Northern Ireland people have found it very easy to hate each other and now it seems that hate has been redirected away from the traditional targets," says Prof Borooah. When he arrived in Northern Ireland twenty years ago his neighbour's friends joked about the "terrible consequences" from Borooah, an Indian native, moving in beside him.
"My neighbour - who, incidentally, is the best neigbour one could have - and I can laugh about it now, but it took him years to tell me about it," Borooah says. "When I look at why Northern Ireland scored so high on the bigotry scale I have to think it's because the mindset there is still preoccupied with 19th-century ideas of feudalism and sovereignty, which most people have moved on from. It's a small minority of people who will ever act on racist thoughts, but when you hear about some of these incidents there is a sense of people marking their territory like dogs and some of them are terrified of anyone invading that territory."
AS THE MAJORITY of the racially motivated attacks and incidents occur in Protestant areas, there is pressure on those in the unionist community to provide leadership on the issue. But as Paul Berry MLA, who will be an Independent Unionist candidate in Newry and Armagh in the upcoming Assembly elections, concedes, speaking out against racism isn't a vote-getter.
"There are real concerns in the Protestant community," he says. "There are misperceptions that immigrants are 'taking our jobs, taking our benefits'. What happened in this country over the last 30 years has left people wary of anyone who might take over. It's unacceptable, of course, but there is very real unease and concern in Protestant communities, where many of these people are being housed."
Will he talk about it on the doorsteps?
"It's not an issue people want to talk about, to be honest," he says.
Racism is not a new problem, but some believe the Troubles masked prejudices which are being given full voice now. When Anna Lo arrived in Belfast from China in 1974, racism was a taboo subject among her community.
The chief executive of the Chinese Welfare Office in Belfast and an Alliance candidate in the Assembly elections, Lo says that when she tried to speak out about it, the elders in her community would tell her: "No, don't, you will stir up trouble, and anyway what do you expect when you are in someone else's country?"
"I always felt very strongly that you need to speak out, and it's more important than ever now," she says.
While growing up, her two young sons suffered racial abuse, as she did herself, and these days, canvassing around south Belfast, she carries a small personal alarm given to her by the PSNI after some Northern Irish contributors to a right-wing website published abusive content linking her to prostitution.
She takes it all in her stride, saying her new panic alarm is "cute and very discreet". Then she gets serious. "We need to educate local people that immigration is a good thing. Immigrants fill jobs locals don't want to do, they pay taxes, they enrich our society," she says.
"Being known as the most intolerant country in the western world is not going to attract industry to Northern Ireland, or new workers, or funding for our universities. It's up to church leaders, the police, politicians and community activists to speak out and lead the community on this. We need to clean up our act."