Feeling extremely unsafe in NI

Hey everyone,

I've never felt this unsafe in a country ever. When I was in my birth country I got abused and whatnot, and there are lots of terrorist attacks going on in England but I still feel the least safe here in NI.

The reason for this is mainly the paramilitary. I'm not even sure if I am allowed to write about them without getting into trouble. My accent is more British than Irish and my housemate is British and we often get told to keep our voice down in case someone hears us talk and goes off...and just..I'm from a very open and free country and I'm an equalist (or at least try my hardest to be one) so living here, where gay marriage and almost all cases if abortion is still illegal and a relationship between men only decriminalised but lesbians are fine...just makes me so uneasy. I had my fair share with men sexually assaulting me and well...rape as well...and..I don't know.

Living here makes me feel uneasy and unsafe. I can't move at the moment and housemate is involved with people from the paramilitary because he doesn't believe they're "real" and they know where we live..I'm really scared but I think it's for a reason. I live in one of the roughest areas as well, taxis don't even want to come here at night. Before we moved here we did do some research but didn't realise how bad it was until we met some actual people from here. And I didn't know about the abortion or same-sex laws either.

I'm sorry if I offended anyone from NI, I just don't get why things like this are still okay in 2017 and I'm frightened to go out.

Please let me know if it's not a good idea to talk about the paramilitary and I'll delete it if I can :(

Firstly, northern Ireland is part of the UK, so they are British as well as Irish....Britain being England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The rest of Ireland is known as the Republic of Ireland or Eire. When you say your housemate's accent is more British do you mean English? Anyway, that's enough of the history/geography lesson lol!

I'm sorry to hear that you didn't feel safe in your home country, that's hard. However, northern Ireland has had its political problems over many years, mostly in and around Belfast so i'm not sure where your research was done. England is relatively terrorism free to be honest, London being the worst hit usually...the bigger cities can be easy targets just as in any country, and there are 'no-go' areas too, but there are many parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Nothern Ireland that are safe and wonderful places to live.

The other part of your question was about abortion and Gay marriage. Many parts of the world hold fast to their traditions and beliefs whether people agree or not. The rest of the UK has more liberal laws about these issues and women have for many years, travelled to other parts to deal with selective termination. Terminations on medical grounds are allowed I believe.

As for talking about paramilitaries here, why would you want to? Even though we have one or two political threads on the forum, talking about the 'troubles' of northern Ireland might be considered inflammatory to some. So personally, I would say it's probably better not to. However there may be other members who could advise you about that, as I'm not sure what the forum rules say on this to be honest.

ISB ☺

No wonder you're frightened, we are talking violent criminal types here. Sadly, no matter how much you cure the problems it will always leave behind a mixture of people affected and we can't expect them all to be good human beings after committing violent acts.

Religion is much more important over there than the rest of the UK so their laws and society are behind us in some respects. Even then, changing the law is quick but changing attitudes is a much longer process.

There is one real solution here and that is to get out of an area that is so rough. Remove yourself from places where they go and cut went ties to them.

You're an EU citizen so can you come over here?

I don't see why you shouldn't discuss this. It's causing you anxiety, it's not about NI & ROI politics and shouldn't be turned into that as it will hardly help you. (I don't mean Cath explaining the situation, I mean the rights & wrongs)