Once again an Islamic immigrant from a third world country committed a violent act last Monday, wielding a knife and attacking a 40-year-old citizen, reports BBC. The victim, Stephen Ogilvie, was taken to the hospital and last known to be in serious condition, sustaining injuries to his face and back and losing his left eye.
The attack was captured on video and has been circulating social media. Several individuals, who were described as “heroic” by an assistant chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, intervened and held off the attacker until authorities arrived.
The alleged perpetrator is Hadi Alodid from Sudan. Arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, Alodid appeared in court last Wednesday, where he was remanded into custody and refused bail. His next court date is July 8.
In the wake of the attack, violence broke out across Belfast with homes and vehicles set on fire. Authorities say masked men set fire to multiple homes they believed housed illegal immigrants. Police were also targeted in some of the attacks.
Michelle O’Neill, first minister of Northern Ireland, and other officials have spoken against the violence. O’Neill described the masked men as displaying “disgusting cowardice” and using the unfortunate Belfast attack as an excuse “to target and attack innocent people who are simply trying to live, work and raise their families here.”
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, is not surprised at the reaction.
"No, not surprised at all. Obviously, violence is bad in a democratic system, but a lot of these people have concluded — and I think with some justification — that they're not in a democratic system any longer, that it doesn't matter what they think and that the people in charge don't care what the public thinks," Krikorian says.
It should be a signal, he thinks, to the people in charge.
"The current situation where foreigners are treated preferentially over the native-born is not sustainable, and if people in charge — the governing institutions as well as other leadership classes, the media, academia, the rest of them — want to preserve a relatively stable, relatively peaceful democratic system, they have to respond to this concern on the part of the people," Krikorian states.
