A Pakistani family has been attacked in Belfast just hours after moving into a house in the loyalist Village area in the south of the city.
A plank was tossed through the front window of the Tavanagh Street house late on Wednesday night. No-one was injured but glass was shattered across the room where a heavily pregnant woman and her brother-in-law had just finished eating. Both were badly shaken.
"We refer to it as hate crime and that's basically what it is," Insp Darrin Jones of the PSNI said. There are growing fears that this crime, like many of its predecessors, is symbolic of an increasingly organised campaign - mainly in loyalist areas - against minority communities.
There was a chorus of condemnation from local politicians, the churches and community activists.
Although relatively minor by the North's own standards of inter-communal violence, Wednesday's attack is the latest in a growing number of hate-motivated incidents. The PSNI Chief Constable, Mr Hugh Orde, admitted in his last annual report that some 700 such crimes have been committed in the past three years alone.
Polling evidence shows Northern Ireland to be the most racist region of the United Kingdom. The North's equality commission reports that there are 16.4 attacks per 1,000 of the population compared to 12.6 in England and Wales.
Dame Joan Harbinson, head of the commission, believes people in Northern Ireland are more likely to be racist than sectarian.
The last census figures state there are some 1,100 people of black African, Caribbean or other black ethnic background. In addition, there are some 2,700 of Asian background and 4,145 Chinese. However these figures are almost certainly underestimates and Mr Patrick Yu of the Council for Ethnic Minorities believes the actual figure to be closer to 10,000, many of them in Belfast.
The recent spate of attacks follows the British National Party's stated intention to organise in Northern Ireland and field candidates for election.
Some, such as Mr David Adams, a former loyalist politician, reflected a widely held view when he suggested in The Irish Times last August that there remains a distinctive appetite among some communities to identify difference and then attack it.
Others believe that, with a relative calm descending upon some areas beset with "traditional" sectarian problems, racism is rising in prominence and especially in areas intolerant of others who are not white and heterosexual.
The plight of immigrant families, forced earlier this week to flee their home because of intimidation, highlights the ongoing nature of the problem. Dame Joan Harbinson believes Northern communities are too complacent about racist attitudes.
"We must face up to the reality, as demonstrated by the recent spate of assaults and intimidation of innocent families, that there is a malevolence minority of people who are engaging in racist violence," she said yesterday.
She called on community leaders to take the lead and demonstrate that prejudice is unacceptable.
Elected representatives in south Belfast sounded a warning. Mr Alex Maskey of Sinn Féin and a former Lord Mayor said: "They are part of a campaign of violence and intimidation aimed at driving ethnic minority communities out of these areas. This campaign has to stop. If it does not then I have a real fear that someone will be killed."
Ms Carmel Hanna of the SDLP, a member of the Chinese Welfare Society, said: "There is no difference at all between the newer manifestations of racial hatred and our own home-grown hatreds between Prods and Taigs. They are all a seamless whole."