COMMUNITY representatives in the Colin area have hit out at graffiti that has appeared in the area and other parts of West Belfast, comparing the government’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic to genocide.
The graffiti appeared at a number of locations over the past week including pensioners' bungalows, schools, the new Brook Leisure Centre and the Colin Connect transport hub.
Expressing her outrage at the criminal damage, Annie Armstrong from the Colin Neighbourhood Partnership said: “Since we posted the photographs on Facebook it is clear that people in our area are as angry as I am about this.
“I am really annoyed and extremely angry as this is all over the place. It is on people's private property, it is on the church, they have written all over the new Colin Connect and they have put it on pensioners' bungalows.
“There are others within the community who are able to go out themselves and clean it off but these pensioners are not going to be able to do that. They are not going to have the means to do it.”
Describing the graffiti as an “absolute disgrace”, Annie said that the actions are detracting from the fantastic work going on within the Colin area to improve the image of the community.
“These are people who are claiming that they are allegedly protecting the community from the vaccine. How are they protecting anybody by participating in criminal damage? Who gives them the right to do that? Would they write it on their own walls?” she asked.
“These people are scurrying around in the dead of the night and haven’t even the guts to come forward and show who they are. There is lots of good work going on in this community to improve the image of the area and people are proud of the area.
“This is criminal damage and it is making people very angry. We put up banners around the schools for road safety and they have defaced them as well.
“We are in the process of dealing with referrals for families who need support during this awful time. We are trying to provide that support and we are having to leave it to go out and deal with this,” she said.
Adding to that, local councillor Danny Baker said that the people of the Colin area work very hard to keep the community tidy.
“Any form of graffiti just brings the area down. A lot of our young people are involved in community clean ups and there has been an awful lot of graffiti going up around the area,” he said.
“It looks untidy and we want a clean, tidy environment for our children growing up and for all the citizens in the Colin area.
“For me, it is personally disappointing. We have been doing some great work recently to tidy up our alleyways and the next stage of that is to get flowers and bring colour to the community.
“This graffiti is bringing the image of the area down. We were at a stage where there was very little graffiti in the area for a couple of years and the area was looking lovely and it will be looking lovely again when we get this cleared up.”
