Solidarity for Afghan migrants in Belfast

national | racism & migration related issues | news report

Wednesday May 17, 2006 19:41

by interfere - antiwar/ARN

interfere at tiscali dot it

Belfast Solidarity picket for Afghans in hunger strike meets with Irish government officials
Discusses structural racism in immigration and asylum policy

Today in Belfast (Wednesday May 17th, 2006), a picket in Solidarity
with the Dublin Afghan asylum seekers was held outside the British-Irish
Intergovernmental Secretariat. During the picket we requested to talk
to an Irish member of this intergovernmental board. After some
negotiation their office conceded and one of the picket went past the security
desk and up to the 13th floor to meet with an individual from the Irish
government.

"He first made me aware that he wasn't directly connected with the
department in charge of Asylum requests and that meeting with us was not a
task they were normally responsible for. I acknowledged this and said
that yes, we also had to be creative in finding a location to make
ourselves known to the Irish government since they don't have a consulate
or a high profile formal presence in Belfast. I also made clear to him
that I wasn't representing the picket or any organisation in any
official way, that I didn't have the power to speak for anyone else but that
this was a solidarity picket in response to the collapse of some of the
Dublin Afghan asylum seekers on hunger strike. That I had come because
the AntiRacism Network had publisized this picket, that the ARN was not
an organization as such but a less formal network designed to
facilitate communication about grassroots activism against racism, that other
persons present at the picket included the Socialist Youth, members of
the Socialist Party, Organise, and various individuals of the AntiRacism
Network and Antiwar Movement. And gave him an email address of ARN if the Irish Government
wanted to respond."

"He said the Irish Government were working to resolve the situation
with the hunger strikers and were concerned about their health. I said
that many of us were joining up the dots and seeing a bigger picture of
problematic behaviour on behalf of the Irish government. We had concerns
with their immigration policy in general, that the specific targeting
of black persons at border checkpoints was racist (I shared with him my
personal experiences of seeing this while travelling by bus to Dublin),
that the cosy relationship of the Irish government with the US
government and their foreign wars (in Iraq, also in Afghanistan the country
where these refugees are seeking asylum from, etc.) was part of a foreign
policy that supported racism and increased the flow of immigration,
that the use of the Shannon Airport by the US military was a violation of
Irish constitutional neutrality, that Ireland had benefited financially
from this close association (which also increased the push for
immigration). He pointed out that the law distinguished between economic
migrants who are not entitled a legal right to immigrate and political
asylum seekers. I told him that I personally did not make much of a
distinction because it seemed hard to draw the line between these categories
based on the economic exploitation of some many of these far away
countries. That I had been to the detention centres that asylum seekers were
made to stay in (this is not what the government calls them he pointed
out to me). sometimes for two or three years these person are asked to
live in these centres where they only get passes to go out by day and
were guarded at night (I shared with him my experience of seeing persons
from these camps harassed by the security guards for talking with us
when we visited- undoubtedly not the official policy of the Irish
government so we discussed the gaps between policy and implementation). I
also made clear that we were contesting all of these issues with the
government in the North as well."

"At the finish of this meeting he agreed to convey our grievance to the
other parts of the Irish government and said that he understood in
addition to the specific concern for the health and well being of the
collapsed asylum seekers that we were saying that the immigration and
asylum policy in Ireland was structurally problematic, leading to racist
incidents and therefore implicitly racist itself. Although he did not
agree precisely with every characterisation that I made of the Irish
government he was certainly willing to acknowledge what we were saying and
communicate our grievance to others in the Irish government."

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Comments (5 of 5)

Tomorrow at 4pm

by Davy Carlin - Organise!

Thu May 18, 2006 10:33

I do not think the above author was trying to be 'revisionist in any way - indeed it was I who suggested for the comrade to go into the 'meeting' rather that I.

But just for the record -

Yep the picket was organised by Organise! and it was also Organise members in the ARN and not the ARN SG who publicised it within ' all various Networks. As stated, it was important to do, given that nothing was being done - by way of Solidarity in Belfast, more especially as the issue was and is getting grave.

So Organise! decided to take an essential initiative.

What is more important though - is that people are contacted for tomorrows solidarity support - This at City hall at 4pm - Spread the word

Well done and thank you

by Justin Morahan - Peace People

Wed May 17, 2006 23:52

Thanks to all who organized and took part in this action. Cross-border solidarity is so important.
It's great that our Irish Government are being told in Belfast that their handling of asylum seekers in this neck of the woods is so inhuman.
Thanks for a brilliant report

the above report

by boul - Organise!

Wed May 17, 2006 22:07

organiseireland at yahoo dot ie

PO Box 505, Belfast, BT15 2HQ

The above report seems to imply that the ARN organised this picket and Organise! merely turned up to support it.

While the author of the report was alerted to the picket due to the ARNs welcome contribution to the publicising of the event this wasn't an ARN organised picket and I'd just like to clarify that. Of course Organise! want such events to be as broad based and inclusive as possible and are glad to have been part of an action in solidarity with the hunger strikers that included ourselves, the Socialist Party, Socialist Youth, people associated with the ARN and a number of other individuals.

inter-governmental & inter-faith & inter-departmental & inter-national...

by .:.

Wed May 17, 2006 21:46

Well done!
Interesting question though might now be raised as the civil service begin to "yes minister!" style glance out the window cringing in various departments down south in Dublin -
Which department bears or will bear responsibility?
When these men applied for asylum it was Mc dowell's patch. When they were carried out of the cathedral to hospital during their first water fast , they were on Mary Harney's patch and even merited attention from the Taoiseach's patch "coz their first water fast was like serious cliché time", whilst of course Bertie's brother's department of foreign affairs is the one which decided, decides and ahem will go on fudging the state of "war / peace" in Afghanistan and is the one which has to try and contain the imminent solidarity protests and internationalisation of Irish migrant protests globally, & now thanks to our solidarity activists of Belfast the memo goes through another department ( & we presume coz we're grown ups the monitoring services of the spies for which Ulster is so renowned). Of course this wouldn't have happened if De Valera had backed the building of a catholic cathedral for a catholic city. It is all so silly, bit like the BBC mulling over the categorisation of this story for the last week, would it go in "northern ireland" (where most anglicans represented by St Pat's live) or "europe"? Interestingly 6 million Afghanis for reasons you'd best get explanations from either Bertie Ahern's brother's department or Mr Blair, no longer live in Afghanistan but in neighbouring Pakistan. & only 2 million of them so far have permission to be there, but Pakistan doesn't want to deport them back, just in case one of them is osama bin laden in a cunning disguise . I wonder how many of them are blind cripples? hmmmmmmm. I wonder how many people with disabilities do the PD departments of justice and health deport?

Interestingly enough most of us, and certainly most of the Irish government can / could put up with hunger strike for quite a few weeks. Once upon a time fasting was thought to be good for the soul....
Go to the scales now! as long as you're not diabetic (like one of the Cathedral protesters) and already underweight (like three of the Cathedral protesters) you too (U2) could go on hunger strike. We could as a nation move down the obesity charts (Mary Harney's department) & fight the body fascism of size-ism and become associated with "hunger strikes" globally and do something more meaningful for Irish health than giving up smoking............ hey we could even pretend we were doing it for the poor starving babies in Afghanitan, Africa, Albania, Algeria, b- ,c- ,d- ,e- ,f- ,g- ,h- ....

& on...
we're only starting

In solidarity

by Sean - Organise!

Wed May 17, 2006 20:04

Report of the picket is avaliable here!
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76063

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Solidarity for Afghan migrants in Belfast

Comments (5 of 5)