May 2015 – Free Radikal

Not very surprisingly, as the debate on the 22 May marriage equality referendum rages on, and messages compete, many of them totally disingenuous (such as the NO campaign highlighting the role of mothers and thus essentialising women’s caring and nurturing gender roles as if men cannot be caring and nurturing), one voice has been left out: LGBTQ people of colour and people from the migrant communities are not represented or visibly included in the YES campaign. It is as though they don’t exist, reflecting not merely the exclusion and discrimination of LGBT people in Irish society, but also of LGBT minorities in mainstream queer culture. However, this referendum is crucial to the migrant justice movement.

As Luke Bhuka, founder member of the Anti Racism Network Ireland (ARN), a group committed to supporting the YES vote, says: ‘The debate to date, and in particular the YES campaign, has been totally white and single-issued at the expense of a full representation of queerness in Ireland, which includes gay and lesbian migrants and refugees’. Continue reading “Where are the migrants? White supremacy and the 2015 marriage referendum”

On May 18 the Maynooth University Department of Applied Social Studies is hosting a conference celebrating 50 years to the adoption of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Despite the initial good intentions, CERD has brought about no reduction in racism and racial discrimination. With the global north continuing to wage wars against the global south, whole societies, from Somalia to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Sudan, from Syria to Ukraine, from Palestine to Congo, have been destroyed, producing millions of refugees. Meanwhile, in the global north CERD has done nothing to stop lethal police brutality against black and minority populations, the detention of asylum seekers and the ongoing discrimination against indigenous people.

And what about Ireland? Already in 2004, in response to criticism by CERD regarding its treatment of Travellers and asylum seekers, the Irish government insisted it had no intention of discontinuing its system of dispersal and direct provision which, it said, ‘forms a key part of government policy in relation to the asylum process’. Direct Provision, run by for-profit private companies, incarcerates asylum seekers, many living with hanging deportation orders, not allowed to work, access third level education, or cook their own food, living in limbo, hidden from public view. Despite the obvious infringements of the rights and the everyday racism experiences of asylum seekers’, Travellers’ and other racialised people, the then Justice Minister Michael McDowell responded to CERD by claiming that Ireland ‘has no serious racism problem’ and that it was ‘leading the antiracism struggle in Europe’. Continue reading “CERD – not much use in fighting racism”