Belfast attack

[Greenwitchart]

I can see that the previous thread on the topic is full so I am starting a new one to continue the discussion.

The points I wanted to say as someone who immigrated to the UK over 30 years ago:

• This is a horrific attack and everyone's thoughts should be with the victim and his loved one.

• However, I do think that we have an issue with some people getting into the country whether legally or illegally who simply don't have the same values as the majority of the population and are not able to follow its laws and customs.

• The asylum and immigration system needs a serious overall and to do more to stop men who are a potential danger to society because of their beliefs/culture/failure to integrate getting through the system and ending up committing violent acts. Some people destroy their documents and checks can only go so far when it is hard to verify claims and the chaotic countries they come from does not have reliable records that can be accessed . There are many peaceful and genuine asylum seekers who just want a safe place to live in peace but we seem to be getting in too many angry, violent men who abuse the system and that has to stop.

• I don't want to share the streets with people who have no respect for women and girls, are religious fanatics to the point of extremism or show hate towards gay people and bring violence in general.

• Having people from different cultures coming in is fine as long as they integrate well and take on the values of the country they live in. It does not work if they just live parallel lives and fail to follow the law of the land.

Yes, THAT is the culture 🙄

But you know immigration is not at such a scale that you'd have thousands of rapists and murders entering the country right??

So if that's the scale you're talking then you're essentially suggesting that all people seeking asylum are rapists and murderers. In march 2026 in the whole of the UK there were just over 35, 000 applications for asylum awaiting a decision so you're suggesting that at least 2 or 3 in 35 asylum seekers is a rapist or a murderer? That's the level you think this is at?

We are not seeing violence on a scale to support that at all.

I think for such a small population it’s surprising that we see sex attacks pretty much every week, yes. 35,000 people is a medium size town. If there were weekly arrests for stranger rapes, or gang rapes, we would wonder WTF was going on there.

Coming from the countries most of them come from, yes I’d absolutely say thousands will arrive.

How do you know anyone hasn't committed a crime and got away with it? How do you know anyone is safe ever? How do you know anyone couldn't have a psychotic break tomorrow and become delusional and violent?

Again, you're expecting something of people seeking asylum that we wouldn't expect of Joe public on the day to day. There's noone in life who is guaranteed safe ever.

And when people voted for brexit they made our ability to sift through people seeking asylum to weed out dangerous people significantly harder. Which is why its so frustrating that farage is now peddling anti immigration rhetoric based on this given he created this problem in the first place.

Brexit did not cause immigration to increase from anywhere. The Government made a choice to do that against the express will of the people who had voted to control our borders.

The focus should be on violent crimes. There is no outrage when the perpetrator is a UK citizen. Which is the majority of the time. If someone is a different ethnicity, it’s an issue. I wish there was the same level of outrage for all violent attacks.

Such a hostile country that he was allowed to carry a knife contrary to the law of the land. The country bent over backwards to accommodate him and his family.

Brexit meant that we couldn't communicate with other eu countries to ascertain who had already been denied asylum there and why.

As a result our home office processing time for asylum claims jumped from 3-6mths to over 1.5 to 2 years.

Brexit is absolutely a bit part of the reason why we are having so much trouble with immigration and integration as a result because people can't work while seeking asylum.

Far right violent attitudes and threats are becoming normalised. Thuggish behaviour is suddenly tolerated if it’s ‘protecting British values’.

This is the scary thing that’s happening in the UK. Not the very occasional, highly sensationalised violent crime caused by someone of colour.

There, fixed it for you.

35000 claims for asylum is not the same as the number of migrants in the UK though. The overall number is larger still and we don't have the data to say who commits what crimes. So it's definitely not 2/3 in 35.

Are there any crime statistics that show the number of violent assaults in UK cities sorted by nationality/residency status of the perpetrators? Is it statistically more likely that you will be randomly attacked by an immigrant rather than someone born in the UK? Or is the proportion of violent offenders higher among the immigrant population than among native Britons? Do you think this man did this horrible thing because asylum seekers are more prone to this kind of behaviour?

And concerning the comments on respect for women/culturally ingrained misogyny… if you are real MN users and not bots programmed to push a narrative you must have come across at least one or two threads that describe some less than perfect behaviour towards women from British men.

What do you think is really going on here? That an incompetent Labour government are shipping boatloads of murderers and rapists into the UK and turning them loose to wreak havoc?

I sometimes think that a lot of people have forgotten that the current crises in cost of living, mental health, NHS inadequacies, failing schools, etc are in large part due to:

1. the 2008 recession
2. the damage done by leaving the EU
3. the COVID hangover

People are miserable, afraid for the future, insecure, anxious, angry…and justifiably so, but the issues being thrown around on this thread really cannot be condensed into a tidy little box labelled IMMIGRATION.

I am back to thinking that posting here is a waste of time because I really am not convinced that I am responding to real human beings.

Exactly, it’s not the entire culture is it, but it’s clearly a corner of it, just like the masks and the fire setting and the instruction to close shops, and the police not getting involved. Important to acknowledge, but stupid to judge all the men women and children of Belfast by this snapshot though, right?

Agreed and again as someone living in an affected community, its scary and intimidating for local people too. Tonight all business's were told they'd be targeted if they didn't close. That's local peoples livelihoods. Local people have been putting flags up in their windows because they're scared their homes will be targeted by a mob and their property damaged.

It's nothing at all to do with protecting culture. Again I'll say in NI especially it's down to troubles legacy and paramilitary groups exploiting community tensions to gain traction and power. To think it's anything else is really naieve.

The murderer of Nowak was Sikh, as well as a British citizen.

There aren’t weekly arrests for stranger rapes because the most common scenario for rape is between parties known to each other, and because that scenario often means victims don’t report at all. Far more likely to report stranger rape, and for that rape to be investigated, charged and convicted (if perpetrator identified). So none of it’s really comparing like with like.

You know fine rightly that they weren't the right type of British citizen though or it wouldn't have had so much uproar.

For Christ's sake he's a police officer - of course he doesn't want violence. He doesn't want himself and his colleagues getting injured or members of the public being killed and breaking the news to their loved ones. He doesn't want children in these communities terrified.

He agrees with the protestors that the Government need to stop the flow of violent male asylum seekers and deport the ones that are there. He understands the public anger.

But you already know that and are just deliberately "misunderstanding".

💯

Just as we know that those rioting and setting fires inBelfast are opportunists.

Where are you deporting these people to though? Particularly if they are claiming asylum on the grounds they'll be killed if they return to their country of origin?

I'm 100% anti death penalty and I know some people are for it in certain circumstances but for me deportation to a country where you know someone will be killed is an absolute no go because its essentially a death sentence. That would be a major abuse of human rights law here. So I'm not sure how you could deport them unless they're a different type of migrant.

To be honest, as someone who works in this sector its worrying to hear that a policeman doesn't understand the nuance of migration and violence given that some asylum seekers will be violent as a direct result of severe ptsd, or who become mentally very unwell due to the hostile environment the home office process creates let alone the stress of seeking asylum. I know that doesn't apply in all cases, but it will in a lot of cases. A policeman should be very informed on this given that he serves asylum seeking communities as much as he serves local communities. And there's a significant distrust of police in newcomer communities for very good reason.

There were many people against the plan for deportations to Rwanda and I bet a fair few of them are changing their minds.

"Smash the gangs" has been entirely ineffectual and will continue to be.

I have no doubt there are, when something bad happens lots of people do tend to have a knee jerk reaction to it including people previously sat on the fence.

Also the number of small boats is decreasing. We've had a 12% drop in the last year.

Rwanda deportation scheme was a dreadful idea all round. As a country still very freshly recovering from a traumatic genocide legacy the idea that they are equipped to support deportees with their own recent trauma was a bit mad. Never mind the fact that many asylum seekers try to make it to a location agreed with family incase they are separated during the journey, or trying to get to a location where they know someone and have a support network. Again it comes down to human dignity. It's not enough to just plop someone down somewhere random and say "there you go just make a life here" . It treats people as much less than what any of us would want to be treated were we ever to find ourselves in those shoes.

So plenty of human rights abuses in your country then. And rather than be accountable your country would just rather pay that off.

That's cool if that's what you want for where you live, but it's not what I want for where I live and wouldn't fit with my own values either.

It's also interesting that you think knowing one person who's been through a war is the same as knowing all people who have been through a war. And I say that as someone who has indeed lived through a war. I've yet to kill someone but I know plenty of people who have. Also plenty of people who emigrated to get away.