I have written about the direct provision system several times. It is an inhumane system, in which hostel managers have the discretion to maltreat asylum seekers at will, and in which asylum seekers live in ‘zones of exception’ where the law pertaining to Irish citizens does not apply. Several reports have detailed the problems faced by asylum seekers in direct provision. However, although asylum seekers are never just victims of the system and although many have used inventive strategies to improve their condition despite not being allowed to work or study, only recently has a group of residents decided to spell the realities of their incarceration out.
Contrary to the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA)’s own House Rules and Procedures Booklet, this group, residing in Eyre Powell Hotel in Co Kildare, has outlined the realities of their existence. Let me look at some of RIA’s regulations and some of the realities. Continue reading “End direct provision system”
Last week two racist and antisemitic extreme right YouTube videos appeared on the airwaves. Though mostly directed at the Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, I also co-starred in one of them, both of us described as ‘Jews destroying Ireland’. While the Minister was attacked for ‘shattering the nation with policy designed to deconstruct our ethnic and cultural identity’, for ‘fast-tracking bogus asylum applications’ and running ‘anti-Irish’ schemes, including one which aims to turn the country into a ‘Balkanised multiracial dystopia’, I was castigated for supporting immigration and calling for the destruction of the ‘Irish race’. One of the comments posted on the clip refereed to me as ‘rat-faced vermin’ and another congratulated the video-maker: ‘Top vid. Another eye-opener.’ (see http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/66081/irish-justice-minister-targeted-youtube ). 
I was expecting that the subject of this article, Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan, would not be alive by the time this article was published. Adnan, a 33- year old baker and father of two daughters living in the occupied West Bank, is a political activist and spokesman for Islamic Jihad, who was hunger striking against the Israeli practice of administrative detention. His 66-days strike was the longest in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr Adnan was hospitalised and lay shackled to his hospital bed, despite the Israeli authorities’ commitment to unshackle him. However, as I was preparing to write this, Mr Adnan agreed to end his hunger strike in return for the state of Israel releasing him on 17 April.
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