MOYGASHEL, Northern Ireland, July 9 (Reuters) – Northern Irish police arrested a man on Thursday over the placing of a replica of a mosque at the top of a bonfire due to be lit in a pro-British town, an action condemned by the British government and local politicians.
Bonfires are lit across the British region in mainly Protestant “loyalist” neighbourhoods on the eve of July 12 commemorations of William of Orange’s victory over the Roman Catholic King James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
The replica mosque on a tall structure of wooden pallets was erected a month after anti-migrant violence swept the Northern Irish capital, Belfast. Banners below it read “secure our borders” and “end the threat of radical Islam”.
“This is not about tradition and in no way does it represent the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland. We must stand united and completely reject such hatred,” Britain’s minister for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, wrote on X, describing it as a “sickening and cowardly act of intimidation”.
Colm Gildernew, who represents the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party, called for police to remove what he described as a clear hate crime. The main pro-British parties also condemned the action.
Police said a 56-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of displaying threatening, abusive or insulting material which is intended to stir up hatred.
Anti-migrant imagery has in some instances replaced pictures and effigies of Catholic Irish politicians and anti-Catholic slogans commonly placed on some of the bonfires.
A model of refugees in a boat was set alight last year at the same location in Moygashel, 65 km (40 miles) west of Belfast. That also followed a period of violence in which migrants’ homes were attacked.
Rioters targeted homes and businesses of ethnic minorities in riots last month after a viral video showed a stabbing in which a man lost an eye. A man police say is from Sudan or Chad has been charged with attempted murder.
The replica of the mosque had an effigy of a person in one window holding an item that looked like a knife.
(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson in Belfast, Writing by Padraic Halpin, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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