Minority communities in NI 'living in perpetual fear'

Minorities in Northern Ireland are living in perpetual fear as race hate crimes continue to rise, a campaigner has said.

Tura Arutura from the the African Arts Collective was speaking after new figures from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) show race hate crimes remain at their highest level since records began in 2004.

In the past year police recorded more than 1,500 racist hate crimes and an additional 2,367 race incidents.

Racist rioting in Ballymena last summer influenced the numbers with 348 incidents recorded during that violence.

Reports of racist incidents have remained elevated since then, with the period from June 2025 to March 2026 making up eight of the 10 highest monthly levels of race incidents on record.

"It's not just a summer thing - it is constant," Arutura told Good Morning Ulster.

"People of colour, minoritized people are living in perpetual fear, always looking behind your back."

He pointed out recent online abuse directed towards an Irish-born woman of Somali heritage who won a pageant in Dublin.

"If you go online, you will see the kind of barrages that are happening to people of colour," he said.

"The girl who became a Dublin Rose of Tralee. You see the hatred that is going to her. My social media is off the scale."

Arutura has called for better investment into housing and healthcare as well as into education.

"Hospitals and the clinics are housed predominantly by people from other parts of the world," he said.

"We need to actually educate people on why it is important to look after our ethnic minority communities."

Patrick Corrigan, the Northern Ireland director of Amnesty International, described the situation regarding race hate crime in Northern Ireland as a crisis.

"If you look at the graph charting this problem over the last 10, 20 years, the last few years saw just an absolute massive spike in racist violence, racist hate crimes," he said.

"And it's not going to come down unless we see better response from the PSNI and much more effective political leadership from the executive office."

Sinn Féin MLA and policing board member Deirdre Hargey said political leaders need to be more robust when it comes to condemning racially motivated crimes.

"When family homes are being attacked, when we [have] seen windows being put in, there can be no ifs or buts around that and I think we do need to clearly call it out and that was something in fairness that the police did do last year on the back of the Ballymena riots.

"They did say that these were racially motivated, but we do need to see all political leaders showing the same leadership."

• The figures show racist hate crime has been rising sharply in Northern Ireland since 2020.

• Police recorded 1,507 race hate crimes and 2,367 race hate incidents between April 2025 and March 2026 - up 320 crimes and 561 incidents on the previous year.

• Eight of the 10 highest monthly totals for race incidents since records began were recorded between June 2025 and March 2026.

• Belfast accounted for almost half of all race incidents and crimes.

The NI Executive has launched a 12-week public consultation on a new Draft Framework for Race Relations and Delivery Plan.

The framework aims to replace the 2015–2025 equality strategy which was found to have been undermined by a lack of direction and budget.

It is focusing on tackling systemic racial inequalities, promoting inclusion, and ensuring a diverse society.

The consultation is running until 3 June.