Threats to kill and assaults are included in reports of racist incidents which have increased “significantly”

Threats to kill and assaults are included in reports of racist incidents which have increased “significantly”.

The Irish wing of the European Network Against Racism [ENAR] has warned that unless national action is taken Ireland faces “sleepwalking into an Irish Trump or Brexit scenario”.

The group’s online system offers people a chance to log racist incidents, an increase of reports may suggest people are reporting more often, as opposed to an increase in incidents overall.

In one of the incidents reported via iReport, a woman described being accosted by a man on her way to work:

“I was on my way to work when a man swing a folded newspaper at me hitting me and called me a 'f***ing black woman'. I was in shock,” one woman reported.

In another a woman’s next door neighbours “came onto my property shouting that his partner was going to kill me, he was going to kill me, calling me a ‘foreign b*stard’ and a ‘dirty foreign b*tch'.

Children were also included in these worrying incidents including one 10-year-old boy who was told by another boy he was “going to be shot”. Other children had been sprayed with bleach.

A total of 150 incidents were reported to iReport between January and June of this year, 22 of these were assaults.

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Verbal abuse was reported in 79 cases.

In one instance a Traveller alleged a councillor was among those who abused him and his family as they requested a housing transfer.

“He said to me ‘I’m telling you straight to your face, I have 220 people waiting to be houses and if I was a housing officer you wouldn’t get a house [in this area]. Bringing in the likes of dirt like you and I have 220 people waiting to be housed. Why would I help you?’,” the report reads.

The report also notes the presence of alcohol and drugs when incidents took place.

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One report stated that a person “approached a girl of Arab descent shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’.

A drunken man in an upmarket Dun Laoghaire restaurant also reportedly abused a man by asking: “Here comes the Muzzy did he order batteries to blow the place up”.

The man, who was not Muslim, was very upset by the incident according to his girlfriend but they did not take further action.

Racial discrimination by people in state jobs has also increased in this round of reporting.

In one instance a black man alleged he was ordered out of his car by a garda who accused him of being an illegal taxi driver as he drove with his white friends.

Five cases reported to ENAR alleged racial profiling on behalf of the gardai.

“There’s nothing happening at a policy level. It is worrying, that level of complacency is worrying. We are potentially sleepwalking into an Irish Trump or Brexit scenario where one of the consequences of inaction is we are creating an opportunity for friction between communities.

“We need policies to address racism so we don’t end up in a situation so we don’t end up in a situation like we have in the US, UK and across Europe,” ENAR Ireland Director Shane O’Curry told Independent.ie

Online Editors