MEAN STREETS

Since our report in the last issue of Hot Press regarding proposed amendments to the Immigration Bill, which would facilitate the imprisonment of asylum seekers who have had their applications rejected, the climate has grown even chillier for refugees and non-nationals in Ireland over the last two weeks.

On Monday June 12, The Minister for Justice and the British Home Secretary agreed terms for a bilateral exchange of fingerprints taken from asylum seekers as young as 14. The exchange of information would take place between the Garda's National Immigration Bureau and British police and customs.

The Minister's proposal was questioned by the Refugee Council, who maintain that the practice should only be carried out in order to detect asylum applications already made in other EU countries.

A spokesperson for the Council also told Hot Press: We would be concerned about the Minister considering fingerprinting from 14 years upwards effectively the fingerprinting of children considering it wouldn't occur where a person is suspected or convicted of a criminal offence. If it is used correctly we don t have any fundamental objection to it in the sense that it should only be used to determine the state responsible for the application for asylum, but it shouldn't be used for any other reason, including cross-checking of criminal records or any of those ancillary objectives that we would hope the Department of Justice do not have in mind. The fingerprinting of asylum seekers carries certain connotations in Irish society, so it's up to the Minister for Justice to make it very clear that the reason they are being fingerprinted is purely to determine who should examine their application.

The Minister, for his part, defended the proposal, which is already installed in the US and other EU countries, saying it would not criminalise or stigmatise the asylum seekers.

The fingerprinting issue coincided with a series of racist attacks which threw a harsh light on Irish attitudes not just towards asylum seekers but also non-nationals and even tourists.

On Sunday June 11th, Mr David Richardson, a white English tourist accompanied by his black wife Laverne and 24-year-old son Christian, was stabbed repeatedly in a racially motivated attack by a group of six or seven youths outside a chip shop on Pearse Street in Dublin. The family, from Bristol, were walking towards Ringsend after failing to hail a cab, when they were accosted by a gang of youths shouting "Niggers out" and throwing beer cans.

When Christian – who has lived in Ireland for the last 12 months – attempted to intervene, his father was stabbed, suffering massive blood loss from wounds to his back and chest, and later undergoing surgery at St. James Hospital, where he received 18 pints of blood. His condition remained critical for several days. The morning after the attack, detectives from Pearse St. Garda station raided a number of houses in the Pearse St. and Ringsend areas, where they recovered bloodstained clothing. Two teenagers and a 29-year-old-man were arrested.

The Richardson stabbing followed a number of other racially motivated incidents in recent weeks. In April, an attack on 16-year-old Nigerian Paul Abayomi left him with head injuries, inspiring a protest by some 70 asylum seekers and refugees in Dublin's city centre.

Then, in late May, 25 year old Nigerian man Stanley Obinna Chukwu was attacked in Waterford. Mr. Chukwu was sent to the city under the government's mandatory dispersal programme, and within days of his arrival, complained of being beaten up, having his nose broken and being repeatedly threatened by youths who told him blacks were unwelcome in the town. After being followed by the same youths when he returned to hospital for treatment some days later, he packed his case and returned to Dublin, and says he has been afraid to leave the city ever since.

A spokeswoman for the Anti-Racism Campaign stated that she was not surprised by such incidents occurring where communities are not consulted about asylum seekers coming to their areas, and when the government are sending out messages that they are at least spongers, and at best criminals. .

According to the Refugee Council, the debate is dominated by statistics, numbers, references to 'floods and tides' of refugees instead of explanations on what sort of conflicts they re coming from, what people have been through before they get to Ireland. When somebody does make a statement on asylum seekers that leads people to believe that there is an enormous amount of them in the country, that we're being kind of overrun. You'll notice that the government are silent, they don't clarify it for anybody. That lack of speaking out, the lack of enthusiasm for dispelling the myths, indicates that the government are quite happy to allow the scaremongering to continue. They have a massive responsibility to dispel all those myths.

But we have to acknowledge as well that they've set £1 million aside to combat intolerance and racism and prejudice, and that money is going to be in advertising, education, long-term strategic approaches to such things. But that came out about six months ago, and we haven't seen it in action yet at all, so it remains to be seen how exactly they re going to operate this campaign and how long-term it's going to be.

Following these recent attacks, anti-racism groups have appealed for the close monitoring of hate crimes. At present, Gardaí do not have records of racially motivated hate groups, but the National Consultative Committee for Racism and Interculturalism are urging the implementation of the Gardaí's PULSE system, which has the capability to categorise racist offences.

The Refugee Council are also pushing for the Guards to develop a system whereby, if a person says their attack was a racially motivated attack, that it's recorded as such. The reason being that we can't correct or aim to improve the situation that exists at the moment in Ireland if we don t have facts in place. If we want to create a transparency in the system, then those attacks have to be recorded as racist if they are racist.

A recent survey conducted by the African Refugee Network found that more than a third of African refugees in Dublin have experienced verbal or physical abuse, while the Refugee Council cite strong anecdotal evidence of a rise in attacks on blacks and non-nationals. These findings coincide with the publishing of Amnesty International's annual report for 1999, which observed a fall in tolerance towards refugees, plus an increase in racially motivated attacks.

It's up to the government to come out and say very publicly that racism won t be tolerated in our society, concludes the Refugee Council's spokesperson. Up to now there have been what I would describe as 'quiet murmurings' from the government. For example, Minister O Donoghue spoke in the Dail this week about "not tolerating racism", but it's not enough to just say it in the houses of government: it needs to become public, it needs to become accessible to the man in the street.