Landlords' fears amid city race attacks

A Belfast estate agent claimed today that he had been told to refuse to rent properties to people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Following a series of racist attacks on families living in loyalist areas of south Belfast, William Faulkner said landlords were increasingly worried about the impact of the threat.

He said: “I’ve been actually told not to rent to Chinese or black people.

“People I’m letting houses for are very concerned because they have an investment and they can see it going down the river.

“There was one house that was bought for over £80,000 (€115,085) and it is burnt now.”

In the latest incident, a pregnant Pakistani woman and her brother-in-law were targeted on Wednesday night.

The man and his eight-and-a-half-months pregnant sister-in-law had retired for the night when a 6ft wooden plank was thrown through the front window of the house in the Donegall Road.

The plank smashed a downstairs double-glazed window, showering glass over the living room area where the pair had been eating 20 minutes earlier.

Neither of them were injured but both were badly shaken by the incident.

The Donegall Road and other loyalist areas have witnessed a number of attacks and threats by racists in recent weeks.

Last month Chinese and Ugandan families fled their homes in the Village district after their homes were attacked on the same night.

The racial attacks have been widely condemned across political divides in Northern Ireland and by the province’s Equality Commission.

Democratic Unionist Assembly member Mark Robinson yesterday called for tougher sentencing for those behind the threats, claiming it would send out a message that racial violence would not be tolerated.

Sinn Féin, the nationalist SDLP and the cross-community Alliance Party have also condemned the incidents, warning it is only a matter of time before lives are lost.