“Recent racist attacks in our city and the ever present specter of sectarian conflict must by rooted out as it has a detrimental effect on our ability to attract visitors, tourists and inward investment,” Morgan said at the launch.
Steps are being taken by government officials in Belfast to introduce hate-crimes legislation and to improve community relations between local communities and ethnic minorities.
However, the Belfast City Council failed to pass a motion abhorring racism on Monday night after it was claimed that the SDLP-drafted motion contained references to the police unacceptable to Sinn Fein and the Progressive Unionist Party.
Representatives from Tourism Ireland were unavailable for comment.
Fears have been growing since 2003 that racism might replace sectarianism as a source of conflict on Northern Ireland’s streets. In August 2003, a group of tourists from London were attacked outside a Chinese restaurant in Donegall Pass and police were called to disperse a stone-throwing mob, who attacked the tourists because some of them were black.
In February 2003, a white supremacist group handed out leaflets entitled “This is Ulster, not Islamabad” in protest at the proposed building of a mosque in Bleary, near Portadown.
And in December, the Guardian newspaper questioned whether Belfast had become the “racist capital of Europe” after police reported that a racist attack was taking place almost every day, usually carried out by loyalists.
Police statistics show 226 reported incidents of racism in the North in the 12 months to March 2003. These include graffiti, verbal abuse and attacks.
But 212 incidents took place in just nine months, from April through December last year.
“The government is about to publish new race hate-crime legislation in the next couple of weeks,” said Billy Gamble, director of the Equality Directorate of the Office of First Minister. “We are working with community groups as well to dispel tensions.”
Gamble said that in South Belfast a housing shortage has created tensions after ethnic minorities were perceived by area loyalists to have been allocated housing ahead of them.
“The locals feel like they’re being squeezed out,” Gamble said. “But more needs to be done with local community groups to show them that they’re now living in an ethnically diverse society. You have two teaching hospitals nearby, the Royal Victoria and the City Hospital,” he added, referring to Northern Ireland’s foremost hospitals, which attract medical students from around the world. In 2003, several Filipino nurses were driven from their County Antrim homes by racist attacks.
“While I wouldn’t play down the seriousness of these attacks, in relative terms there have been a relatively small number of attacks,” Gamble said. “But we are treating it seriously.”
But Anna Lo of the Chinese Welfare Association said she believed that Belfast’s growing reputation as a racist city was deserved.
“A lot of racist incidents have not been reported,” she told the BBC. “A lot of Chinese people would have kept away from reporting attacks because they are saying ‘what is the point?'”
In Belfast City Council, the motion condemning racism was rejected by Sinn Fein because of the following line: “The council calls upon the PSNI and DPPs to implement and monitor and effective strategy to protect members of ethnic communities living in Belfast.”