A NEW REPORT has found that black people suffer the most racism in Ireland.
Afrophobia in Ireland, a report carried out by the European Network against Racism (Enar) Ireland, analysed nearly 200 reported incidents of racist abuse over a two-year period.
It found that people of African descent have to deal with regular racist abuse including harassment, violence and discrimination.
Enar is a group of more than 50 organisations, including Siptu, Age Action Ireland and the Irish Traveller Movement.
The report documents examples of racism people have experienced.
Here are some of those incidents:
A mother living alone with her two children in North Dublin recounts a lengthy period of harassment by a neighbouring woman and her children, which included repeated verbal abuse, an incident of assault, criminal damage and repeated threats:
“This Irish woman (about 35 years old) would not let my children play outside even in my own backyard, she said they are black and have no business being here. (She) calls my 12-year-old daughter ‘fat black b*tch’. She lives seven houses away from me, but she would send her children to come and be playing and throwing their ball into my garden just to provoke us and start a fight …
She has threatened to bring her family to come trash my house and set it on fire. So I am doing everything humanly possible to avoid them. We sleep with one eye open not knowing if the house will be set on fire while we are asleep as she threatens … I understand she does the same to the other Africans in the neighbourhood.
The woman said her neighbour calls her and her children ‘n***er’ and ‘animal’, and once broke her daughter’s phone.
The report claims that the harassment was reported to gardaí, but has not yet been investigated.
‘Get your f**king passports’
In other instances, people described being called names such as ‘n***er’ and ‘Paki’ due to their skin colour.
The following was allegedly shouted to a family by a woman as they walked to school:
She made comments such as ‘black and dirty’, ‘monkeys, get your f**king passports and go back to your country’, ‘black people smell like fish’, etc.
A number of physical attacks are also documented, including the following incident involving a black African man that reportedly took place on a Dublin Bus:
“I got on the bus and got upstairs to find a seat and as soon as I walked up the stairs a woman with blond hair and red dress looked at me disgracefully and said ‘look at him BLACK BASTARD, BLACK N***ER, GET OUT AND GO BACK TO YOUR F**KING COUNTRY’.”
The man said the woman continued in this vein before she began hitting his face. When he pushed her away, he said a man who was sitting behind him started to hold his neck and shouted ‘Black bastard, leave her alone’.
The man said the incident left him feeling “shaken, humiliated, shocked and completely devastated”.
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