Police say leaflets opposing the Irish language that were placed on cars near Belfast city centre is being treated as a “hate incident”.
The flyers were left on vehicles outside The Points bar on Dublin Road, where a weekly Irish-language class was taking place.
The leaflets stated: “English is our mother tongue” and that most Irish people “should hate the Irish language”.
In the message on the flyer, it also said: “English is the ancestral language of most Irish people.
“English is the language of the Irish people.”
The message said the government “should respect the will of the Irish people not to speak Irish” and that it “would do much more for the Irish people if they taught Latin in our schools instead of Irish”.
The leaflets were left on around 10 to 15 cars of people believed to have been attending the class on Monday.
A woman who attended the class told BBC News NI that she believed it was “clearly low-level intimidation”.
“It was very targeted,” she said.
“They obviously knew there’s an Irish-language class there.”
She added: “I think a couple of the students were kind of, ‘Is this safe?’
“It was a wee bit scary to be fair. You just didn’t know if people were still watching you.”
A PSNI spokesperson said: “Police received a report of leaflets being placed on a number of vehicles parked in the Dublin Road area on Monday evening, 9 December” adding that “enquiries are ongoing into this report, which is being treated as a hate incident”.
