ENAR IRELAND HAS said 112 incidents of racism were reported through it’s iReport system in the first three months of this year.

The most common form of racist incidents reported in this quarter were shouting and strong language and incidents involving social media.

ENAR Ireland ENAR Ireland

A significant number came from north and south Dublin as well as Cork. Young black African males are most at risk of physical attacks, according to the data:

ENAR said incidents occurred more frequently during midweek days and daylight hours, particularly connected to encounters in public places.

• Read the full ENAR Ireland report.

Fourteen assaults were reported with racists language used in twelve of these incidents.

Two of the victims were hospitalised as a result of the violence, one of which involved the victim being kicked unconscious, the other a punch to the jaw which broke it.

Both of these incidents happened in Dublin city centre in daylight hours and involved small groups of white Irish assailants in unprovoked and sudden attacks. In these two instances, the victims were Brazilian and Asian Muslim.

The report gives examples of a number of other incidents including:

• A Roma man who was attacked with rocks at his home after two front windows at his home were smashed. His family had been victims of ongoing abuse at the flat they live at. 
• A Chinese couple who were attacked by a group of young people in south Dublin on a midweek afternoon. It was not reported to gardaí.
• An assault on a black African taxi driver who was attacked by his passengers in south Dublin at 2am on a weekend morning.
• An assault reported in the media on a 19-year-old Chechen man who was pulled from his car by an gang of Irish men, pushed into a stolen car and stabbed with a screwdriver. He pretended he was dead and they hid his body. They told his mother he was dead when she called his mobile.

Today ENAR was particuarly critical of the response by gardaí to racist incidents, saying that twice as many people reporting racism to gardaí receive a negative response as do a positive response.

“These vary from the misidentification of racist incidents, to garda actively refusing to take statements from victims of racism. These experiences also reflect the much lower levels of racism recorded by An Garda Síochána than what is being reported via ENAR Ireland’s iReport system,” the organisation said today.

It said An Garda Síochána needs to “dramatically change” how it deal with racism in order to restore victims’ confidence in its ability to deal with the problem.

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