Police tried and failed to remove the “hate display” before it was set on fire
Northern Irish loyalists have burned a replica mosque atop a bonfire before police could intervene to dismantle the scene. The incident, which took place four weeks after devastating race riots in Belfast, has been condemned by human rights groups.
A Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) spokesperson said that a “significant and complex policing operation” to dismantle the “hate display” was underway by the time the bonfire in Moygashel, around 50 kilometers west of Belfast, was lit. The tower of shipping pallets, adorned with anti-Islam flags, was set ablaze on Thursday night.
The bonfire was originally due to be lit on the eve of July 12, when Northern Ireland’s Protestant loyalists – who wish to remain part of the United Kingdom – celebrate the victory of Protestant King William III over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Unionists marking the 12th with bonfires typically burn Irish tricolors and other images of Catholicism and Irish nationalism. In recent years, however, the Moygashel bonfire included effigies of migrants in small boats last year, and a replica police car in 2024.
Four weeks before the bonfire, loyalist gangs ransacked immigrant houses and asylum centers across Belfast, in retaliation for the attempted beheading of a Northern Irish man by a Sudanese migrant. Northern Ireland’s Catholic republicans – who want Northern Ireland to leave the UK and join the Republic of Ireland – did not take part in the riots, largely due to their own neighborhoods also being targeted for decades by loyalist paramilitaries.
Republican leaders condemned the bonfire. “This is an absolutely deplorable act following on previous hate displays at this location,” Sinn Fein lawmaker Colm Gildernew said in a statement. “It’s designed to instil fear. It’s designed to incite hatred.”
“This vile display is a blatant attempt to stir up anti-Muslim hatred and intimidate local families,” Amnesty International said. “The placing of an effigy of a mosque on top of a bonfire amounts to incitement to hatred directed at real people who live, work and raise families in Northern Ireland.”
Despite non-European migrants making up less than 3% of Northern Ireland’s population, their presence further erodes the already waning demographic power of the territory’s Protestants. According to a 2021 census, Catholics now outnumber Protestants by 45.7% to 43.48%, a significant shift from the 48% to 45% Protestant majority in 2011.
As such, loyalist leaders were reluctant to outright condemn the bonfire. Democratic Unionist Party spokesman Gregory Campbell called the burning of the mock-up mosque “regrettable,” but added that his voters have “genuine concerns” about immigration and “radical Islam.”
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