Danny Kinahan MLA has said that society in Northern Ireland cannot allow a climate to be created where minorities do not feel welcome.
Mr Kinahan, a member of the All Party Group on Ethnic Minorities, said:
“It is disturbing that we have now had another week in which people in Northern Ireland have been targeted because of their race or nationality. There is not, and never will be, any excuse or justification for attacking someone with a golf club, throwing a brick through a window of someone’s home, scrawling intimidating graffiti on walls or any of the other methods that are increasingly being used to target foreign nationals in Northern Ireland.
“It is hard to escape the reality that the daily reports of sectarian attacks across Northern Ireland which blighted our past are now being replaced with news of racist attacks.
“As a society we have a responsibility to ensure that a prejudice filled element are not allowed to create a climate where minorities do not feel they are welcome in Northern Ireland. As a former leader of my Party, James Craig, once put it so eloquently: ‘Remember that the rights of the minority must be sacred to the majority’.”