These entries are documented from our press monitoring of the racist pogrom that unfolded in Northern Ireland following the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie by Hadi Alodid. It only follows the dates between 9 – 16 June 2026 and is not a complete account of events.
ELECTORAL POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT POLICY
For more information on the racist riots in Belfast, see ANTI-FASCISM AND FAR RIGHT| POLICE PRISONS CRIMINAL JUSTICE| RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
10 June: As concerns rise that the government, over the past two months, has taken no action against Elon Musk’s X platform for inciting violence in Belfast, Neil Basu, a former police national lead on counter terrorism, warns that far-right agitation over migration is the biggest national security threat facing the country. (Guardian, 10 June 2026)
11 June: Northern Ireland’s First Minister and Sinn Féin vice-president Michelle O’Neill say that the Democrat Unionist Party (DUP) were ‘reverting to type’ by raising concerns about the Irish border and migration in the wake of the stabbing of Stephen Olgivie in Belfast. (BBC, 11 June 2026)
12 June: Ulster Unionist party councillor and former police officer Linzi Mclaren urges the authorities in Northern Ireland to engage with paramilitary groups to rein in ‘rioters’. (Guardian, 12 June 2026)
15 June: Following the racist riots, Northern Ireland Communities Minister Gordon Lyons announces a scheme of financial assistance to mitigate the ‘impact of the emergency’, including extra support for councils as they respond. (Belfast Telegraph, 15 June 2026)
86 households contact Housing Executive after Northern Ireland riots https://t.co/mD98NTWJp6
— The Irish News (@irish_news) June 15, 2026
ANTI-FASCISM AND FAR RIGHT
9 June: Video footage of a knife attack by a Sudanese asylum seeker on Stephen Ogilvie in North Belfast on the evening of 8 June is widely spread on social media, including by Tommy Robinson on X, who describes the attacker as an ‘invader’ and urges supporters to protest. The family of the victim call for calm and point to the migrants who make a ‘deeply valuable contribution to our country’. (Guardian, 10 June 2026; RTE, 13 June 2026)
9 June: After the Facebook page ‘The Great Province-Wide Protest N.I.’ provides a list of protest locations, hundreds of masked men and boys take to the streets, blocking roads in and out of Belfast, burning cars and infrastructure, torching migrants out of their homes and carrying out racist attacks [see the racial violence section below]. (Guardian, 9 June 2026; RTE, 13 June 2026)
9 June: A Hope Not Hate briefing for communities establishes that the unrest in Belfast, and protests in Birmingham, Crawley, Edinburgh, Epping, Glasgow, Leeds, Lincoln, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Norwich and Southampton, were widely promoted by far-right communities online. An extended list of locations across the UK had been developed and spread on social media, shared by Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk. (Hope Not Hate, 9 June 2026)
9 June: Belfast-related protests take place in Scotland in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Ayr. 300 demonstrators gathered in Glasgow city centre flying Union flags, while dozens of protesters in Edinburgh fly the saltire. (BBC News, 9 June 2026)
10 June: Though not on the same scale as the previous night, a second night of far-right rioting by masked men and children takes place in North Belfast. Earlier in the day, only three people turn up to a planned anti-immigration protest at City Hall. (Belfast Telegraph, 11 June 2026; BBC News, 12 June 2026)
11 June: Anti-immigrant protests take place for the third consecutive day, but there is no repeat of the rioting and disorder of previous nights. (Irish News, 12 June 2026)
11 June: As it emerges that lists purportedly revealing names and addresses of ‘foreigners’ have circulated on social media, at least one property management company contacts tenants advising them on how to keep homes safe and secure. (Guardian, 11 June 2026)
13 June: In what Unite Against Racism describes as the largest anti-racist rally ever held in Northern Ireland, thousands of people gather in Belfast in solidarity with those driven out of their homes during the racist pogrom. The day before an anti-racism solidarity rally, addressed by the Lord Mayor, who received a death threat during the week, had taken place on the Falls Road. Dr Raied Al-Wazzan from Belfast Islamic Centre praises the ‘good people’ of Belfast for rallying around ethnic minority people. (Belfast Media, 12 June 2026, Canary, 14 June 2026)
Falls rally hears ‘racism is the other face of sectarianism’https://t.co/7LtZXQjI36
— North Belfast News (@NorthBelfastNew) June 12, 2026
16 June: At an event hosted by Liberty, ‘Beyond the headlines: Examining far-right violence in Northern Ireland’, Daniel Holder, Director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice in Belfast, and NI anti-racism researcher Dr Naomi Green, dismiss the idea that the pogrom in Belfast was spontaneous, drawing attention to the organized nature of the protests as well as the engagement of Loyalist paramilitaries. Previously, researchers at Trademark-Belfast, had warned of a ‘shifting dynamic within Loyalism, with younger and more militant elements driven not by sectarianism alone but by far-right narratives’. (Morning Star 14 June 2026, Liberty, 16 June 2026)
Below are quotes from their presentations:
‘As soon as the protests were announced, we knew we were going to see organised racist violence because this is what has happened in the past. We need to know why the violence took part in particular areas of paramilitary activity and not in others.’
(Daniel Holder, Committee on the Administration of Justice in Belfast)
‘Although the international lens has now gone, it’s important that we keep the spotlight on what has gone on, and continues to go on, in Northern Ireland’.
‘The voluntary sector and unpaid volunteers are the ones that protected our communities it wasn’t for this coalition we would have been in a very different place.’
(Dr Naomi Green)
POLICE | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE
11 June: Analysis by the Guardian and the Belfast Telegraph finds that Northern Ireland’s overall crime rate fell last year to its lowest level since 1998, while racist hate crime reached its highest level on record. (Guardian, 11 June 2026; Belfast Telegraph, 10 June 2026)
11 June: The Accountability Police Northern Ireland group say that the PSNI were warned eight months ago that anti-immigration activists were circulating the addresses of properties targeted during the racist riots. Dozens of reports, focused particularly on Newtownabbey, north Belfast, which was at the centre of serious disorder, were sent to police between November 2025 and June 2026. One Facebook post said that asylum seekers housed in the Glengormley area will be dealt with, and that ‘Anyone caught funding or helping these animals in being housed will be condemned as equally guilty’. (Guardian, 11 June 2026)
‘A monitoring group repeatedly warned the Police Service of Northern Ireland over the past eight months that anti-immigration activists were circulating the addresses of properties that were targeted in this week’s Belfast riots.’https://t.co/j0rkjDnbZB pic.twitter.com/XfAHD5lTq0
— Institute of Race Relations (@IRR_News) June 12, 2026
12 June: Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson says that police have no evidence that paramilitaries orchestrated the racist violence in Belfast. Police confirm that plastic bullets were used 20 times during the riots. (Guardian, 12 June 2026; Belfast Media, 11 June 2026)
13 June: Speaking at an anti-racist rally in Belfast, Melissa McMahon, Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR) criticises the police reaction to the ethnic cleansing of people forced out of the home. The PSNI simply called at people’s doors, telling them they weren’t safe, she says, leading activists to do their job for them, entering loyalist areas, at great personal risk, and getting families to safety. (Canary, 14 June 2026)
16 June: The Northern Ireland First Minister asks the PSNI to investigate allegations that, during the anti-immigrant violence, police officers close to the Mater Hospital in north Belfast advised health staff to show their IDs to the rioters as they passed ‘checkpoints’ set up by the gangs. (Irish News, 16 June 2026)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
9 June: Ethnic minority businesses are targeted for racially motivated attacks and Romanian, Sudanese and Ukrainian families are amongst those forced to flee burning homes as mob violence, compared to ethnic cleansing, erupts mostly in east Belfast. 100 masked men march down one street, kicking doors, breaking windows and saying they were ‘getting the foreigners out’. Rioters specifically target homes of non-white residents, or residents suspected of being migrants. (Guardian, 10 June 2026; Hope Not Hate, 10 June 2026)
9 June: Two Ugandan care workers are rescued from their homes after a church pastor pleads with a mob of rioters, who were petrol bombing and burning cars, to allow them to leave. The fire service were reported to have attended a total of 62 incidents.(Guardian, 9 June 2026; Hope Not Hate, 10 June 2026)
10 June. Police issue a warning that social media users are ‘putting lives at risk’ after a list of Belfast House in Multiple Occupation addresses are widely circulated online. (RTE, 13 June 2026)
11 June: Unison report that a nurse with ‘a different skin colour’ who had ‘insisted on doing her shift’ was chased by four masked men into Ulster Hospital in Belfast and that ‘terrified’ health workers from overseas, who are being followed to and from work, are afraid to leave their homes. (Belfast Telegraph 11 June 2026)
11 June: The Anaka Women’s Collective launches a crowdfunder for those burnt out of their homes in Belfast. In Ardoyne, North Belfast, neighbours, elected representatives and community workers from PPR and Ankara Women’s Collective rally around ethnic minority families threatened by masked men and tell them to leave the area. A video circulates online showing an Ardoyne man verbally abusing a Black resident, saying ‘This is my area. This is IRA area. I do whatever I want in this area’. (Belfast Media, 11 June 2026)
Ardoyne community rallies around ethnic minority families after threatshttps://t.co/up2dKc6Yne
— North Belfast News (@NorthBelfastNew) June 11, 2026
12 June: The Syrian owners of the Sham supermarket in a loyalist area of south Belfast say that it’s time to leave Northern Ireland after their business is destroyed for the second time in two years by masked men targeting ethnic minority businesses. (Middle East Eye, 12 June 2026)
12 June: GB News presenter Bev Turner denies that the racist violence in Belfast amounts to a riot, claiming on air that ‘not a house has been burnt down’ despite her own reporter describing families being evacuated from burning homes. Stop Funding Hate founder Richard Wilson warns that framing mob violence as ordinary frustration ‘makes the next ones more likely’. (Byline Times, 12 June 2026)
15 June: In relation to the riots in Northern Ireland, 86 households contact the Housing Executive and 26 request emergency accommodation. (Belfast Telegraph, 15 June 2026)