In Belfast, a video of a man brutally slashing and stabbing another man’s head and face went viral Monday night, sparking a wave of anti-immigration protests and riots Tuesday.
Authorities identified the suspect as Hadi Alodid, a Sudanese national granted asylum in Northern Ireland in 2023. His victim, Stephen Ogilvie, lost his left eye in what has been described as a “near-beheading” due to the severity of the cuts to his head.
The on-camera brutality of the attack spurred hundreds to take to the streets, first in protest but soon in violent rioting. Crowds of rioters hijacked vehicles, set fire to houses and cars, and targeted individuals in their community known or believed to be foreigners. In one area, hundreds of masked men walked the streets shouting “foreigners out” while kicking doors down, breaking windows, and burning cars.
The violence carried out by the rioters deserves utter condemnation. Burning out homes and terrorizing neighborhoods is not protest. People do not first put on masks to do these things unless they know their actions are reprehensible and criminal. Innocent families have lost their homes, cars, and livelihoods and entire neighborhoods are shell-shocked by the events of Tuesday.
Not all of the people who wished to protest did so violently. Two men in particular said they “were shocked [by the stabbing video]” and wanted only to show solidarity with the victim, not engage in rampant destruction.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the violence and arson as “totally unjustified” and vowed to “ensure that justice is done” concerning those responsible.
But if the response from political leaders, however, is no deeper than rightly calling the riots “outright thuggery … nothing less than disgusting cowardice,” and “shameful and disgraceful,” they will miss the deeper systemic failure of European immigration policy that helped create the current situation.
The sentiments that fuel these types of riots do not emerge in a vacuum. They have been building in Europe for years. Across Europe broadly, people feel that their leaders have lost control of immigration through their open-door policies. Polling done in 2025 found majorities in all seven countries, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, surveyed that immigration has been too high and that immigration had been bad for their country.
Many feel that the speed and severity with which France, the U.K., and other states respond to immigration protests, whether peaceful or disorderly, far outstrips their response to crimes committed by migrants and asylum seekers. Lydia Gall, senior Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in January 2026 that “The UK is now adopting protest-control tactics imposed in countries where democratic safeguards are collapsing … The UK should oppose such measures, not replicate and endorse them.”
In 2018, for example, a Dutch judge gave an Afghan man who raped an 18-year-old girl a reduced sentence, from 24 months to 20 months, to avoid the man losing his refugee residency status. The judge said in the aftermath of the public outcry that the typical sentence would have “far-reaching legal consequences for his status in the Netherlands.”
None of this justifies masked men burning homes or targeting whatever foreigners they can find. But it does explain why immigration has become such a volatile issue across Europe. When governments minimize the social consequences of their policies and instead appear more eager to police public anger, they should not be surprised when trust collapses.
