I was shocked to read about the appalling attacks on the homes of certain local Polish immigrants in this week's Lurgan Mail, however, to read that these attacks were so confidently attributed to "racism" on the part of the perpetrators was almost eq
ually disturbing.
Firstly, are the Polish a separate and distinctive racial or ethnic group to our own? I suggest not.If your newspaper can produce verifiable evidence that they are then many of your more cynical readers might be convinced.
What kind of profound insight can your journalists have into the motivations of criminal attacks on the homes of foreign nationals that led them to consider only racism? How about anti-immigrant sentiment, the race,ethnicity,nationality or skin colour of the victims in this case would be inconsequential.
Perhaps xenophobia was the motivation, the attackers perhaps concluding that uncontrolled mass immigration is an extremist policy which is certainly not in their best interests - they didn't vote for it and cannot vote against it... but all this is mere conjecture much like your reportage.
One of the most tragic effects of the contamination of the media with political correctness is that truth is always the first casualty and must always be suppressed by the need to prop up the failed concept of "multiculturalisim" by so many of the wealthy,middle class, PC left wing types who will celebrate any culture, except their own and who know better than the rest of us.
We can be thankful that no immigrants were injured in these attacks but when immigrants attack us - they fare rather better - they KILL us!
In recent years a young woman raped and murdered in Coleraine by a Polish immigrant, in Belfast a young woman raped and murdered by a Nigerian immigrant and not forgetting a young man kicked to death in Dungannon by two Lithuanian immigrants - all no longer with us to celebrate the diversity.
I do not expect the Lurgan Mail to be impartial but I do expect it to tell the truth.
EDITOR'S NOTE:- For a start the Lurgan Mail is basing its assertion the attacks were racist on the fact police are treating them as hate crimes. Daubing 'Poles out' on the wall of one of the houses makes race an issue in this crime.
It would seem we have a different definition of racism to that held by our correspondent. In my book attacks on migrant workers are racist crimes. He points to a possible motive as xenophobia - isn't xenophobia just another form of racism? As for telling the truth, in my opinion we did just that, and a rather unpalatable truth it was.
I'd also like to clear up one fact alluded to by Mr Clifton, the attack in Dungannon involving two Lithuanian men - I remember one such case in which the victim was also Lithuanian (I was acting as editor of the Tyrone Times in Dungannon on that particular week). Is this the attack to which Mr Clifton refers?
