Politicians and public figures “need to look at the language that they are using” around migration, the justice minister has said.
Naomi Long made the comments after a number of incidents in north Belfast on Thursday which are being treated by police as racially motivated criminal damage.
Graffiti was painted on a house in the Manor Street area, windows of the property were smashed and a nearby parked car was damaged.
Naomi Long said some politicians were treating people “as less than human, and they are creating the conditions in which this kind of violence will flourish”.
Speaking on News NI’s Good Morning Ulster programme, she said it was “disgusting” that anyone would be attacked in their own home.
“It’s not acceptable to make excuses or try and rationalise it,” the Alliance Party leader said.
“It needs to be condemned and it needs to stop.”
Another two properties, one also in the Manor Street area and one in Summerhill Court area of north Belfast were damaged, and police are investigating a potential link between all three incidents.
News NI understands that two of the properties were vacant, but that a family was living in the third at the time of the incident.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) councillor for the area, Jordan Doran, said people in the area “don’t want their community to be seen as racist because that’s simply not true”.
He said residents had been targeted in sectarian attacks for several years and called for a multi-agency meeting to address the problems and “drive home the message that these communities deserve investment”.
“Any racist-type behaviours absolutely should be called out and that’s what residents are calling for,” Doran said.
“We need to see a collective message from across all the political parties in Northern Ireland”.
Long said immigrants were not responsible for problems such as deprivation and under-investment.
“They’re not responsible for under investment in the area. In fact the issues that he [Doran] raised mostly lie with the DUP minister in the department for communities,” she said.
Data released on Thursday showed race hate crime is at a record level in Northern Ireland.
In the 12 months to the end of June, there were 1,329 crimes with a race motivation.
This was up by 434 year-on-year and was the highest figure since records began in 2004.
On Sunday, independent councillor Paul McCusker said there has been a “escalation of race attacks” in the area recently, adding that residents were living like “prisoners in their own home”.
In May, a number of a number of families whose homes were targeted in a sectarian-motivated attack planned to leave their properties in the nearby Annalee Street and Alloa Street areas.
McCusker said the amount of fear that people were living in at the moment was “quite frightening”.
“People should be able to live where they want to live, and now we’ve seen people have to move out and people living in fear every single day,” he said.
He called on unionist politicians to “step up and actually put an end to this”.
McCusker said north Belfast was the most divided part of the city.
“There’s more peace walls here in north Belfast, but that does not give anybody the excuse to go out and intimidate and cause this harm,” he said.
