Tag: Ireland

End direct provision system

Ronit Lentin

asylum-seekersI 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”

Racist videos and Irish immigration policies

,
Ronit Lentin

shatterLast 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 ). Continue reading “Racist videos and Irish immigration policies”

Headless hookers and suitcase bodies

, ,
Ronit Lentin

In July 2004 a badly decomposed body, described by the media as that of ‘a black non-national woman’ was discovered in a black plastic bag on a river bank in Co Kilkenny. Because she arrived as an asylum seeker in 2000, and, like all asylum seekers, had been fingerprinted, Gardai identified her through the finger printing data base at the Garda National Immigration Bureau as that of the 25 year old married mother of two Paiche Onyemaechi. She turned out to be the daughter of the Malawian chief justice and a lap dancer and prostitute. Because her body was found without a head by a local Kilkenny woman walking her dog, it did not take long for media representations to describe Paiche Onyemaechi as a ‘headless hooker’. Continue reading “Headless hookers and suitcase bodies”