Jesse Jackson to attend Filipino awards ceremony

Civil rights campaigner the Rev Jesse Jackson will today take part in a Belfast awards ceremony recognising the city’s Filipino community following a spate of racial attacks in recent days.

The Democratic Party member, an outspoken critic of racism in the US and former associate of the Rev Martin Luther King, will be the star attraction at the Aisling awards recognising community workers in the city. It is his first visit to Northern Ireland.

Members of the city’s Anti Racism Network staged a vigil in north Belfast last night after members of the Filipino and Chinese communities had racist slogans daubed on their homes on Monday night.

Sinn Féin Assembly member Gerry Kelly was among those who attended the rally which also followed an attack on three Latvian men in their 20s in a park in Lurgan, Co Armagh during which one of them was stabbed in the arm.

Members of the Pakistani, Ugandan, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese and Portuguese communities have also been victims of racial harassment and violence in various parts of Northern Ireland in recent months.

The threats and violence have been linked to the emergence of far right groups like the British National Party, Combat 18 and the White Nationalist Party in the North.

However loyalist paramilitaries have also been linked to the attacks, with members of the Ulster Volunteer Force being blamed.

Racial incidents have, however, also occurred in nationalist areas.

Members of the Filipino community have become nurses in Northern Ireland’s hospitals and nursing homes. Organisers of the Aisling award are planning to honour their role in Northern Ireland society.

After a meeting with Northern Ireland’s Equality Commission yesterday, the Anti Racism Network alleged some estate agents were turning some people away because they were from ethnic minorities.

ARN spokesperson Sara Boyce said: “If people are being refused accommodation based on their ethnicity, it strikes at the very fundamentals of what it means to live in a supposedly free society.

“Refusing to house someone because of their colour is something that most people would assume no longer occurs, but unfortunately, it appears to be standard practice in some parts of Belfast.

“The ARN had already brought the Equality Commission’s attention to one particular case, but we believe this discrimination is much more widespread and we now look forward to hearing how the commission intends to tackle it.”

The Rev Jackson is planning a visit to an Irish language college in west Belfast and will be meeting community leaders in the east of the city. He is also expected to view in west Belfast quilts made by victims of loyalist and other violence commemorating all victims during the Troubles.

The Rev Jackson is a founder of the Rainbow Coalition in Washington DC which campaigns for social justice and against racism.

A major figure in the Democratic Party, he failed to secure the party’s nomination for the US Presidential Election twice in 1984 and 1988.

Born in Greenville, south Carolina in October 1941, he is renowned for his skills as an orator and for his campaigning against apartheid in South Africa, for an accommodation between the Israelis and Palestinians, promoting democracy in Haiti and on tackling drugs and the crisis in the US’s health system.

He also supported US states which adopted the MacBride Principles, which committed American companies to fair employment in Northern Ireland and forbade imports from firms which did not endorse the principles.