Travellers hounded by racist law

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday July 25, 2002 16:59 by McMean

On Tuesday, more Travelling families sought sanctuary on the lawn of Bishop Walsh's Episcopalian Residence in Ennis to escape the Guards and the Department of Justice, who last week began to enforce the criminal trespass legislation brought in by the government just prior to the election.

"No one thought they would actually implement this disgraceful
law - they thought it was just an election stunt to draw votes on
a racist ticket," commented one Traveller. But last week the
guards arrested Traveler men and took away their homes, the
trailers, and left their families and their children homeless.
Some slept in cars. Another family, with nine children, was
accommodated in a local community centre. Their trailers are now
parked up behind the Garda station, while Ennis enjoys its flower
show.

The Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, who has been concerned
about the Traveller issue over the past 30 years, is reported as
saying that "I do have difficulty with the idea that people are
being told to move where there is no place for them to go." He
has asked Clare County Council to provide land. "I know they do
have land."

The new law, known as the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act
2002, was the subject of a seminar organised by Trinity College
Law Centre on Tuesday 23 July. The Act makes it a criminal
offence to enter and occupy land (or bring onto or place on it
any object) where those actions are likely to cause some
specified detrimental effects.

The Act gives powers to the Guards to arrest and charge people
committing this offence with trespass, to fine them up to O3,800
and/or send them to jail for one month, and to confiscate their
caravans.

Over 1,000 Travellers, according to David Joyce of the Irish
Traveller Movement, who spoke at the seminar, are currently
camped on public land awaiting accommodation. Many more camp on
public land because no transient sites have been provided.

The Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act of 1998 stipulated that
local authorities had a statutory obligation to provide this
accommodation. But local authorities have singularly failed in
this. The 1995 Task Force identified the need to provide 3,100
new units of accommodation. Since 1995, only 886 units have been
provided.

"The reality of this situation is that there are at least 1,017
Traveller families living in unofficial camps without access to
water, toilets or refuse collection, who face eviction and have
nowhere to go," said Martin Collins, Human Rights Commissioner
and a founding member of Pavee Point Travellers Centre. "They
have no legal place to camp.

"The arrest of the four families in Ennis, the movement of a
family in Lucan and the forced eviction of a family parked on
public land for nearly a year by the gardai in Cork, only weeks
after signing into effect this Act, show how this act will be
implemented and the real intentions behind it.

"The act is a direct, blatant attack on Traveller culture. It is
the criminalisation of Traveller identity. It is deliberately
designed to eradicate the culture of nomadism and to enshrine the
property 'rights' of those who have property, over and above the
rights of Travellers to have a home and enjoy their nomadic way
of life. Worse, the Act protects and even encourages
anti-Traveller, racist attitudes amongst local authorities which
have failed to implement the legislation requiring them to
provide Traveller accommodation within their areas."

"The impact of this Act is reminiscent of how Travellers were
treated in the past," said David Joyce. "Over the last 60 years
Travellers have faced continuous eviction from camps and
recognition of the nomadic identity of Travellers has won little
consideration by the state. Far from accommodating nomadism, the
issue has been one of how to control it."

It has been the same all over Europe with the persecution of the
Roma, the gypsies, the Travellers - a saga of racist abuse which
the horrors of the Holocaust allowed people to push under the
carpet of modern Europe.

"This law sends a message to Travellers that they are not wanted
in Ireland today," said Joyce.

It may be the message of the former housing minister, Bobby
Molloy, who introduced the Act, and of the new Minister of
Justice, Michael McDowell, who has wasted no time in enforcing
it. Will the Irish people stand by and let them make it their
message?