By 10 p.m. on Wednesday, the disorder appeared more muted than Tuesday’s, with reports of some protests and items thrown at police officers.
Two police officers were injured in Tuesday’s unrest, described by the police as sporadic pockets of disorder across Northern Ireland. The violence came after the authorities charged Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese man, with attempted murder in a stabbing attack in Belfast on Monday night, prompting calls from anti-immigrant activists for protests amid heightened tensions in the United Kingdom over immigration.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said in a statement that a large policing presence would be maintained across the country in the coming days “to reassure communities and ensure public order.” They later called a list circulating online calling for specific properties to be targeted as “totally unacceptable.”
“It is putting lives at risk and has to stop,” the police said, warning that people sharing the information with the intention to endanger others could be committing a crime. The police said on Wednesday evening that projectiles had been thrown at officers in some locations just north of Belfast and a water cannon had been used “in an attempt to maintain public order.”
Some of the most harrowing scenes on Tuesday night had played out in Belfast, where families had to flee burning homes.
Paul Doherty, a community worker and local councilor from west Belfast, described what he’d seen on Tuesday night as “absolutely appalling.” He said there were “mobs of people basically chasing people from their homes.”
Police officers on Tuesday inspecting the area near where the stabbing occurred in Belfast.Credit...Isabel Infantes/Reuters
Government leaders issued sweeping condemnations of the unrest.
Michelle O’Neill, the first minister of Northern Ireland, appealed for calm, saying there could be “no excuse and no justification for these attacks,” in a statement issued early on Wednesday.
“Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,” she wrote. “This is outright thuggery.”
She called the earlier stabbing of Mr. Ogilvie in north Belfast “heinous and wrong” and added that “there are dangerous attempts to exploit that to target and attack innocent people.”
Graphic video of the stabbing, showing the suspect swiping at a man whose face and neck are covered in blood, had spread quickly online on Tuesday, spawning a number of anti-immigrant posts and calls for protests.
Among those stoking outrage over the stabbing was Tommy Robinson, a far-right English agitator with a number of criminal convictions. Mr. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, had urged people to take to the streets after what he called an “invader attack on our people” in posts on social media.
The billionaire Elon Musk had shared lists of locations around Northern Ireland for people to gather and reposted messages of far-right figures in Britain.
Jon Boutcher, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, urged young people to think twice about the calls for violence, saying at a Wednesday news briefing that “it’s very easy, these days especially, to look online and be persuaded by people who know nothing about Northern Ireland.”
While he declined to identify anyone specifically, he said the police would be working to understand “who is orchestrating this online and in person.”
Charred debris in east Belfast on Wednesday morning after a night of violent protests. Some immigrants were victimized, forced from their homes.Credit...Isabel Infantes/Reuters
The police and local community members in Belfast acknowledged that some protesters had gathered peacefully. The violence was carried out by young people, many of them masked, who specifically targeted immigrants, according to the police, witnesses and online video footage.
Northern Ireland is the least ethnically diverse part of the United Kingdom, with just about 3.4 percent of residents from minority ethnic backgrounds.
But in the years since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought peace to the region after decades of sectarian violence, immigration to Northern Ireland has grown; the country is steadily becoming more diverse, particularly in urban areas like Belfast.
Still, Northern Ireland remains the most deprived part of the United Kingdom in terms of resources and opportunity, and neighborhoods in Belfast are among the country’s poorest and most disadvantaged.
In some communities people feel left behind, struggling against a lack of jobs and opportunity. That helped created the conditions for anti-immigrant and far-right sentiment to grow and be picked up by fringe groups.
“People being burned out of their homes is not new to Belfast,” said Carl Whyte, a local councilor who grew up in the north part of the city, alluding to the sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. “And last night, we saw that being used toward immigrant families.”
Jonathan McKee, a local pastor, said he received a distressed call from one of his congregants, a woman in her 50s, who has lived in Belfast for over 20 years. Protesters had smashed her windows, targeting her home “because she’s Black,” and her neighbor’s house was on fire, Mr. McKee said in an interview. The woman, who was born in Uganda and is a care worker, is afraid to return home, Mr. McKee said.
“To be burning people out of their homes is not the way forward for this community,” Mr. McKee said.
Chinonso Uche, 32, a nurse who works at a Belfast hospital, said footage of the protests left her fearing for her life. Originally from Nigeria, she has lived and worked in Belfast for five years and said in a phone interview that she had been the victim of racist attacks twice in the last year, including when a rock was thrown at her.
On Tuesday, she and other immigrant staff members ended their shifts early, fearing attacks. She said three of her colleagues were stopped on their way home by people demanding that they confirm that they had the right to work in Northern Ireland. Police officers had to escort at least one of them home, she said.
Mr. Doherty, the community worker and representative, said that he was “hopeful” that tensions would calm, and that people needed to be talked down from further violence by leaders from across the political spectrum.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, whatever your background is, think of your own children,” he said, adding, “Think of the fear that children went through last night, whenever their home was being torched. I think we need to bring it down to a human level, and respond to this in a way that everyone can move forward together.”
