Much has been written recently about the forthcoming recommendations of the Working Group on Direct Provision made up of representatives of migrant-support NGOs, established ‘to report to Government on improvements to the protection process, including Direct Provision and supports to asylum seekers’. Media rumours relating to asylum seekers who have been in Direct Provision more than five years include the regularisation of 2,400 asylum seekers (Metro Eireann), the ‘fast tracking’ of 1,500 asylum seekers (the Irish Times) and asylum seekers doing their Leaving Certificate being allowed to pay the same fees as their ‘Irish’ counterparts and not as ‘foreign students’ (RTE).
The Direct Provision system, dubbed ‘inhumane by Minister of State at the Department of Justice Aoghan O’Riordán turns autonomous humans into the negatively valued category of ‘asylum seeker’. Like ‘managing not to know’ about the poor houses, Magdalene Laundries, mother and baby homes, industrial schools and psychiatric hospitals in which one in a hundred ‘Irish’ people were incarcerated for years, Irish society, despite the media reports, ‘’manages not to know’ about Direct Provision. In the Direct Provision centres – run by for-profit companies making millions on the backs of people seeking protection in Ireland – people are forced to share rooms with strangers, families are forced to live in one cramped room, unpalatable food is served at set time often leaving children hungry, and residents are subjected to disciplinary measures by centre managers and staff. Continue reading “We still manage not to know”
Launch of UNHCR report ‘Towards a new beginning: Refugee Integration in Ireland’ 3 March 2015, Mansion House, Dublin
Speakers at the launch were UNHCR Ireland director Sophie Magennis, Minister of State at the Dept of Justice Aoghán Ó Riordáin, report author Diana Gouveia, and two refugees, Mustafa Shirzi (Afghanistan) and Nadia Said (Somalia), the latter two expressing gratitude to Ireland for their successful integration. In the audience were mostly refugees (several Syrians commended for ‘creating a vibrant community’…), NGO interns, doctoral students, but very few activists.
The report (Towards a New Beginning: Refugee Integration in Ireland), based on interviews with 71 refugees, recommends ‘best practices’ in the areas of active citizenship, employment, housing, media participation, English language ‘training’, access to information. It recommends shorter stay in the direct provision system, but not its abolition or ending deportations.
The Minister said ‘no asylum seeker wants to be in the DP system’, stressing that the Working group aims to improve the system and that integration is ‘a complex process which requires time’. His general tone was congratulatory, particularly in his boast that Ireland does not have far right parties (it doesn’t need them, it has a government, says I), and his delight in the multiculturality of Ireland which was ‘so boring and monocultural’ during his youth. He highlighted the role of sport in promoting integration but said that integration is ‘about much more than antiracism’… Continue reading “Launch of UNHCR report ‘Towards a new beginning: Refugee Integration in Ireland’ 3 March 2015, Mansion House, Dublin”
Is non violence always the only way? Judith Butler in Trinity College
Trinity College Dublin was abuzz with people queuing up to hear the renowned US feminist political philosopher Judith Butler Gender and Women’s Studies talk. The following night Butler spoke at the inaugural meeting of the 245th session of Trinity’s Historical Society. The title of the session was ‘The need for radical approaches to politics and oppression’, and Butler’s topic was non-violent resistance. I watched her talk online, being an admirer of Butler’s work on gender, frames of war and precarious life. I also admire her unstinting, brave support for the boycott of Israel, for which she has been vilified in the US and Germany.
Butler’s argument was that non-violent resistance – strikes, hunger strikes, demonstrations, protests, boycotts – occurs in a violent environment. She was asking why non violent civil disobedience is often interpreted as destructive acts of violence. Why – I might add in brackets – was the imprisonment of Tanaiste Joan Burton in her car in Jobstown considered a violent offence by the Irish state, which used political policing against the demonstrators? The answer, of course, is that non violence aims to find alternatives to the status quo, and is therefore a threat, particularly in the current era of militarised policing.
War, Butler reminded her audience, stems from an interdiction to defend one’s own group, and asked if there any exceptions to non violence. In other words, would I resort to violence when I, my children, my family or my nation, are attacked?
For Butler, war is ‘framed’ in the media so as to prevent us from recognising the people who are to be killed as living fully ‘grievable’ lives, like ours. Thus, she insisted, all exceptions to non violence are problematic because ‘our’ lives are not more precious than the lives of others. Butler was praising Syriza’s decision to remove police presence from demonstrations and remove police riot gear. Non violence, for her, is both ethical and tactical as a way of looking for ethical alternatives to violence and war.
When I first listened to the lecture, I admired Butler’s affirmation of life, all life, and her insistence we need to rethink non violence as an alternative to the hegemony of the state. But then I began thinking of the implications of her ideas for people under occupation or direct oppression.
Can we honestly say to the people of Gaza, say, that the only way forward is non violent resistance in the face of the Israeli assaults, the ongoing siege and low grade attacks by Israel, ten years after it pulled its settlers and troops from the Gaza strip, which is kept under siege? Can we honestly ask demonstrators against the ongoing occupation of the West Bank not to throw stones, an act considered violent by the Israeli military courts? Can we honestly say to demonstrators against police brutality against African Americans that they should remain ‘non violent’?
Butler’s stance against war and violence is admirable, but may I respectfully suggest that it’s easy to deplore all violent resistance when you are a privileged, white – albeit radical anti- war feminist activist – American? You may castigate me for it, but I believe that oppressed people and people under occupation have full rights to exercise an ‘insurrection of subjugated knowledges’ which includes, among other things, the right to violent resistance to colonial and racial oppression.