Oct. 23 (UPI) — Three police officers were injured in Dublin after being pelted with stones, bottles and fireworks as rioting outside a hotel housing asylum seekers extended into a second night by protesters angered by the alleged sexual assault of 10-year-old girl.
The Irish Garda made 24 arrests, 17 of whom were due in court Thursday on public order charges. Five minors all males, were released to be dealt with by youth corrections agencies at a later date.
However, police said the extent of disorder near the Citywest Hotel, in the west of the Irish capital and which houses families under a government protection program, including Ukrainians, was much reduced from Tuesday night.
The initial protest was peaceful, but spilled over into clashes with police after violence was stirred and organized online, the force said. The unrest continued into the early hours and saw a police vehicle gutted by fire.
As many as 2,000 people attended to main protest, with the violence perpetrated by a small number youths and “violent thugs who were there purely to incite violence and promote fear.”
Calling the disturbances “totally unacceptable,” Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly said throwing bricks and bottles, torching police vehicles and carrying weapons was anything but peaceful.
Wednesday’s arrests brought the total number of people detained over the two nights of unrest to 31, three of whom were women.
Ukrainian community spokesman Anatoliy Prymakov said Ukrainian families, refugees of the war in Ukraine, were living in fear.
“Fear and concern are the first words that come to mind because families have been told not to leave their rooms. Families were terrified. People don’t know how long this is going to last, people don’t know what’s going to happen next, people don’t know when it’s going to happen again,” he said.
Prymakov, who is also the founder of a group called Ukrainian Action in Ireland, said it was not the first time residents of the hotel and other immigrants had been targeted.
He asked people to imagine being forced to live in a situation where people who have already suffered in Ukraine escape to Ireland in search of refuge and safety find themselves targeted again.
Residents living near the hotel also said they were frightened. They told of masked youths pulling bricks from their properties to use as projectiles, using e-scooters to transport them to where protesters were being held back by riot police.
In June, at least 17 Police Service of Northern Ireland Officers were injured in two nights of “anti-immigrant rioting” amid very similar circumstances while similar scenes erupted outside a London-area asylum hotel in July.
The common thread in both flare-ups were alleged sexual assaults against under-age girls that were blamed on asylum seekers.
In the case of protests outsdie the Bell Hotel in Epping Forest, 15 miles northeast of central London, which saw the high court issue an injunction banning the hotel from housing asylum seekers, an Ethiopian national was convicted of sexual assault and received a one-year prison sentence.
The injunction was later overturned by the Court of Appeal.
