Earlier this month, a troubling video emerged from the streets of Dungannon, the County Tyrone town, of a 30-strong gang of men from East Timor, attacking a lone male.
The video of the violence received such a response that it was widely shared, racking up hundreds of thousands of views after activists uploaded it onto platforms including Telegram.
An attack in Dungannon in Northern Ireland by a gang of up to 30 immigrants, some armed with knives, has left a man with serious head injuries.
Police found the victim lying unconscious in the Sloan Street area of Dungannon on Sunday morning.https://t.co/PCKj3tPjwt pic.twitter.com/plR7X00SoU
— UK Justice Forum 🇬🇧 Latest Video News Updates! (@Justice_forum) October 10, 2023
The clip, in which 30 men can be seen charging towards a lone individual, then shows the victim being pounded and battered by the gang, while lying on the ground, surrounded by the men. Women can also be heard screaming in the background, in scenes which have been described as “deeply disturbing.”
The gang then fled the scene on foot, and no one has been arrested, more than a fortnight on.
The BBC were among outlets to report that a man suffered serious head injuries after being attacked by the group. Police said that a witness saw the group “armed with knives” at the Market Square and the Irish Street area of the town at 3:20am on Sunday, 8th October.
The man had been left on the street by the gang, and had only been found after police received reports of the incident, and found him, unconscious, on a nearby street.
As per a recent report in The Sunday World the weekend before last, the victim of the attack “remains in hospital, still unable to give a statement to police.”
I spoke to a number of local sources, who expressed concern about the disorder and violence in the area, and who told me there are a now a number of established East Timorese gangs in the town. Tensions are now spilling into nearby Cookstown, with local schools experiencing reported issues which meant police were called over a number of incidents.
One source told me that the police have been involved in that town, too, with race relations training having been delivered at a local school due to vicious fighting between foreign students and locals.
A source said that in Dungannon, racial tensions are at peak boiling point between those from East Timor, with gangs reportedly congregating at various locations in the town, with their presence described as intimidating.
“It’s not uncommon to see these gangs fighting in the town at night. It is something locals have had to put up with for the last number of months,” a source living in the town told me. The female source also said she would not walk alone after dark in the area.
“I live close to where the fight took place, and it’s one of a number of incidents that happened over the last number of months. This isn’t the first time. I would have gone out on a walk after teatime or later in the evening, but there is no way I’d feel safe doing that now with what’s happening in the town,” she said.
Her hometown, she says, has become almost unrecognisable.
“You wouldn’t know people there anymore, so it’s very different to how it was. I don’t want to sound racist, and I’m not, but I do feel there is a fear of raising racial issues and tensions because people don’t want to be called racist. But we do have to identify what the problem is, and why these gangs exist.”
A local councillor was among those to say that there is a sense of fear in the town, which has a population of just over 16,000. Clement Cuthbertson of the DUP condemned last week’s attack, telling the media he is fearful that “someone will be killed.” He toldThe Belfast Telegraph that there have been “reports of gangs roaming the town” for “some time now.”
Mr Cuthbertson called on police to “act quickly” – and has voiced concern that matters could escalate. He referenced a number of “serious incidents” in the town.
“In recent times we have seen horrific social media videos circulating of serious incidents in the Railway Park and Irish Street areas of the town,” he said.
“The police must act quickly and stamp this behaviour out before someone is killed.”
“This latest incident, especially with the allegations that those involved were armed, will increase fear in the Dungannon community,” he added.
“For some time now, there have been reports of gangs roaming the town. Hopefully, the CCTV cameras in the Market Square will enable the police to identify those involved.”
The local source told me it was not uncommon to see gangs from the Indonesian country, fighting at night in the town square, making it a dangerous place, especially for women.
It begs the question, has there been too much immigration, and too little integration, into the Northern town? If you’ve seen the video, it’s perhaps hard to reach a different conclusion.
A staggering 34.85 per cent of the town’s population was recorded as being foreign-born in the last census – by far the largest foreign population of any settlement in Northern Ireland. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of immigrants living in Dungannon surged tenfold, the biggest rise seen in any town, with many coming to work in local food processing plants and factories.
Clashes between rival groups of immigrants have been well-documented in the area, and there have been several attacks on immigrants too, an indication of underlying tensions in County Tyrone’s second largest town.
Those from East Timor, one of the poorest countries in East Asia, make up the majority of immigrants living in the Mid Ulster town. While they are known to have a strong work ethic and contribute much to the life of the local community, it is becoming increasingly clear that integration seems to be failing when it comes to a segment of the male community.
The small nation in the South Pacific has a troubled history, and only won its right to self-rule 20 years ago after a bloody two-decades long conflict which saw a third of its population wiped out due to famine, disease, and violence. There are reports that while things have improved, the country is still flooded with gangs – including neighbourhood gangs, politically-linked groups, and martial arts groups.
A decade-old report in The Guardian detailed how there are 90,000 gang members in the country, just under one tenth of the population. A gang culture could go some way in explaining the scenes being witnessed in Tyrone.
Another report, from Reuters, details youth gangs with names including “Cold Blooded Killers,” “Beaten Black and Blue” and “Provoke me and i’ll Smash you,” signalling the troubles facing the new country. A 2007 report on East Timor’s myriad gangs and youth groups, conducted by Australia’s aid agency, said that “The common thread is the involvement of large numbers of young, marginalised males.”
It is significant, then, when you see the issues facing towns like Dungannon, that the report detailed how some areas had become “virtual no-go zones after dark” due to violence spilling out across urban neighbourhoods.
“For much of the past six years gangs have also made parts of the eastern city of Baucau a virtual no-go zone after dark, setting up barricades and extorting motorists,” the report accessed by Reuters said.
To this day, the UK government advises visitors to “be vigilant at all times in the county” and that “crime continues to be a problem in Timor-Leste, including gang-related violence, robbery (in some cases armed), and assault.”
“Be vigilant at all times and avoid displaying expensive items of jewellery or carrying large sums of money. There have been reports of harassment and violence against women,” the Home Office advises.
“There are occasional incidents of fighting between groups in various districts around Timor-Leste, often but not always related to martial arts groups. These incidents often involve stone throwing and occasionally machetes and knives. Most happen at night. Foreigners haven’t been targeted, but leave the area immediately if you’re aware of fighting,” travel advice also details.
This advice is insightful, and it is indeed the case in Dungannon that locals say the victim of the recent incident is reportedly not a local. He is reported to be from East Timor. It becomes clear when you look at the international advice, that what we may be seeing is a culture of infighting now imported into the streets of places like Dungannon. Surely, to say that this type of violence and mob mentality has occurred in some sort of vacuum, overnight, is not truthful.
The elephant in the room when it comes to immigration is of course, integration. It is easy to flood areas with immigrants, but far more difficult to work on community relations and ensure proper integration is achieved. In some places across Ireland, it increasingly looks like people are living in communities parallel from each other.
There is a sense, from speaking to local sources, that Dungannon, once regarded as being significantly more wealthy and middle-class than nearby towns including Cookstown, is descending, in some parts at least, into a very different place to live – one where locals cannot leave their homes for fear of armed gangs. That, surely, is a result of people being very poorly integrated.
There is also the question of whether we are turning a blind eye to racial infighting, and its disastrous impact on the lives of local communities, for fear of being perceived as racist or bigoted. This is unhelpful and unfair, in my view.
There are many people in Dungannon and across Northern Ireland more broadly who are living, breathing examples of integration. Some of those from East Timor run successful businesses in the town, and very many work multiple jobs to provide for their families. They are regarded as friendly, hard-working and respectful by many people.
But this should not give us leave to minimise the actions of some from the community, who clearly have not integrated so well. We are seeing the cultural fabric of many places shift radically, and we will only see this more in the years to come. More than 600 pupils at the St Patrick’s primary school in the town have been reported to be foreign-born (as per this report in The Irish Times), while immigrants went from making up just one per cent of the town’s population in 2001, to over 10 per cent in 2011. That figure is only growing, and perhaps what we are seeing is a fallout.
We can predict a surge of migration heading for our shores in the years to come, because as Suella Braverman said at the recent UK Conservative Conference, moving from a poor country to a richer one, is no longer a pipe dream, but an entirely realistic prospect for very many people.
It is my view that we should honestly assess what the scale of potential immigration into a tiny place like Northern Ireland might look like, at a time when things appear to be less and less stable. We have not, for example, had a functioning government since the start of 2022, and now we are seeing the situation unfold where armed gangs can wreak carnage and they still remain at large. Political correctness stifles people from saying anything.
I do think we have to have the honesty to examine and question the consensus on immigration, and really ask ourselves, is the glaring problem simply too much immigration, and not enough integration?