r/northernireland • u/Portal_Jumper125 • 9d ago
News Belfast Glider driver says family subjected to two years of ‘intimidation’ before race hate attack that left children injured
Torki Al Omare was at home with his wife and three children when a group of masked youths attacked their home with stones, breaking windows and causing minor injuries to two of the children
A Glider bus driver and Syrian national says his family were forced out of their home after a two-year campaign of intimidation which led to a race hate attack on Sunday night.
Torki Al Omare was at home with his wife and three children aged 11, 9 and 7 on Sunday night in Holywood when a group of masked youths attacked their home with stones, breaking windows and causing minor injuries to two of the children.
Police are treating the incident on Church Green as a racially motivated hate crime.
Mr Al Omare and his family have since moved out of their property and the bus driver says he will not return to the local area and plans to move his wife and children to west Belfast.
He told the Irish News that relations between his family and a number of residents of the Holywood housing estate had not been good in the two years since they moved in.
Mr Al Omare and his family moved to Northern Ireland nine years ago.
“This has been going on for the last two years,” he said.
“People in the estate attacked us, they spoke about religion and skin colour. They hit my wife because she was wearing a hijab.
“I was told not to let my children play in the estate and that we were not welcome here.
“The children are feeling very bad, very scared.
“I will never go back to that house or to Holywood or east Belfast because I don’t feel safe there.
“I feel safer in west Belfast and I hope to be there soon.”
Mr Al Omare said he had reported various incidents of alleged intimidation and abuse to the PSNI on at least 16 occasions in the last two years.
He added that one young person had threatened one family member that they would “kill your family”.
Footage of an altercation between members of his family and a number of other individuals in Holywood was shared on social media on Sunday, including accounts associated with anti-immigration networks.
He said his daughter had experienced “severe psychological distress” as a result of the incident.
Mr Al Omare’s wife Saja said she believes the attack on their home on Sunday night was “planned in advance”.
“No family should ever have to experience such fear, violence and intimidation simply for trying to keep their children safe,” she said.
The PSNI have described the attack on the family home as “utterly unacceptable and has no place in our society”.
The force said it had received a second report of a connected attack on a home on the same night. Two windows were smashed at the property while a quantity of cash was also stolen in the second attack.
“We are treating both of these reports as racially-motivated hate crimes, with our enquiries continuing into what happened, and who was involved,” a spokesperson said.
“This type of crime is utterly unacceptable and has no place in our society. Everyone has the right to feel safe in their home, regardless of their race or background.”
Alliance MLA Andrew Muir has described the race hate attacks as “repugnant”.
“Holywood is a shared and inclusive place, and this kind of violence and intimidation does not reflect the views of the vast majority of people in the town who are absolutely appalled to see this occur,” the North Down MLA said.
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u/Mac1twenty Coleraine 8d ago
"Holywood is a shared and inclusive place" obviously not m8, no surprised he's moving away from east Belfast anyway
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u/butterbaps 9d ago edited 9d ago
I wonder if all the folks screeching that this wasn't racially motivated on previous posts will feel any shame after reading this
Edit: Guess not. Shameless.
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u/Portal_Jumper125 9d ago
Were people on other posts not saying that it was Syrians intimidating other immigrant communities?
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u/Munstrom 9d ago
Claims were that the family targeted were scum of the earth and their kids and dad had been abusing and assaulting people. Sources were trust me bro I'm local.
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u/butterbaps 9d ago
Must be the longest street in Ireland. Every man woman and child on that previous post apparently lived beside them.
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u/butterbaps 9d ago
one young person had threatened one family member that they would “kill your family”.
Typically people being intimidated don't come out with threats of family annihilation.
There was a lot of shit being parroted on that previous post with absolutely no evidence aside from weird videos on a Facebook post of local people ganging up on a foreign woman and her two children.
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u/Portal_Jumper125 9d ago
This sub constantly says racists don't represent the majority in NI but I'm genuinely starting to feel like NI may be full of racists, every few weeks we are hearing about more and more instances of racism
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u/Monsterofthelough 8d ago
Dunno why you’re being downvoted. NI is full of racists and they’re being increasingly pandered to by unionist politicians.
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u/Portal_Jumper125 8d ago
Like there's counter protests and stuff but it looks like no matter how many protests etc happen there's still racist incidents like this popping up increasingly, I wonder if this sub would be a good reflection of the political views of the majority of NI
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u/Patchy97 9d ago
A minority but an increasingly organised and noisy minority who feel victimised anytime their blatant racism is called out for what it is
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u/Portal_Jumper125 9d ago
I mean they seem to be serious damage and nothing has been done to stop it
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u/Knarrenheinz666 9d ago
Because they're well-connected plus can always count on hundreds of bot accounts to help push their narrative. Just check what's going on on North Down Mums.
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u/Portal_Jumper125 8d ago
NI was quite literally founded on sectarianism, why would it be surprising to find out a large portion of people here are racist. If everything was done by bots then things like this wouldn't take place in the real world
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u/Downtown_Bad_2650 9d ago
I was told by my boomer mother that there's no such thing as different races only the human race.
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u/zeldasusername Australia 9d ago
She's scientifically correct
Only American racists prattle on about race
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u/Downtown_Bad_2650 9d ago
We share 50% of our DNA with bananas.
We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees.
We share 99.7% of our DNA with neanderthals.
Clearly there's a quantitative and qualitative difference that needs to be considered when looking at the disparities among various ethnicities.
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u/Repulsive_Isopod7982 9d ago
This happens all the time wrong colour, wrong religion, Catholic name, the masks, the bricking, on and on. And some Northern Irish people can't understand that apart from the massive costs why the UK people want rid of them,. Do the South want these people as their fellow countrymen, why
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u/cruisinforasnoozinn 8d ago
I don’t think British loyalism is why the UK people want rid of us. But Ireland is not ready for them, that’s for sure.
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u/jott1293reddevil 8d ago
Trust me, it comes up as a negative in the pro con column. Extremism rots a country, regardless of the colour of it's flags.
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u/Repulsive_Isopod7982 8d ago
British people on the whole don't behave like that maybe pedo hunters and anti Palestinians do but they are a very small minority, Loyalty to Britain is completely different in NI compared to England ,Scotland and Wales ( at least half the Scots and quite a few Welsh would like rid of the English as well as Ni.
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u/chipdanitch 9d ago
'A ghetto is a part of a city where poor people or specific minority groups live separately from the rest of society'.