Solidarity for Afghan migrants in Belfast

national | racism & migration related issues | news report

Wednesday May 17, 2006 19:41

by interfere - antiwar/ARN

Belfast Solidarity picket for Afghans in hunger strike meets with Irish government officials
Discusses structural racism in immigration and asylum policy

Today in Belfast (Wednesday May 17th, 2006), a picket in Solidarity
with the Dublin Afghan asylum seekers was held outside the British-Irish
Intergovernmental Secretariat. During the picket we requested to talk
to an Irish member of this intergovernmental board. After some
negotiation their office conceded and one of the picket went past the security
desk and up to the 13th floor to meet with an individual from the Irish
government.

"He first made me aware that he wasn't directly connected with the
department in charge of Asylum requests and that meeting with us was not a
task they were normally responsible for. I acknowledged this and said
that yes, we also had to be creative in finding a location to make
ourselves known to the Irish government since they don't have a consulate
or a high profile formal presence in Belfast. I also made clear to him
that I wasn't representing the picket or any organisation in any
official way, that I didn't have the power to speak for anyone else but that
this was a solidarity picket in response to the collapse of some of the
Dublin Afghan asylum seekers on hunger strike. That I had come because
the AntiRacism Network had publisized this picket, that the ARN was not
an organization as such but a less formal network designed to
facilitate communication about grassroots activism against racism, that other
persons present at the picket included the Socialist Youth, members of
the Socialist Party, Organise, and various individuals of the AntiRacism
Network and Antiwar Movement. And gave him an email address of ARN if the Irish Government
wanted to respond."

"He said the Irish Government were working to resolve the situation
with the hunger strikers and were concerned about their health. I said
that many of us were joining up the dots and seeing a bigger picture of
problematic behaviour on behalf of the Irish government. We had concerns
with their immigration policy in general, that the specific targeting
of black persons at border checkpoints was racist (I shared with him my
personal experiences of seeing this while travelling by bus to Dublin),
that the cosy relationship of the Irish government with the US
government and their foreign wars (in Iraq, also in Afghanistan the country
where these refugees are seeking asylum from, etc.) was part of a foreign
policy that supported racism and increased the flow of immigration,
that the use of the Shannon Airport by the US military was a violation of
Irish constitutional neutrality, that Ireland had benefited financially
from this close association (which also increased the push for
immigration). He pointed out that the law distinguished between economic
migrants who are not entitled a legal right to immigrate and political
asylum seekers. I told him that I personally did not make much of a
distinction because it seemed hard to draw the line between these categories
based on the economic exploitation of some many of these far away
countries. That I had been to the detention centres that asylum seekers were
made to stay in (this is not what the government calls them he pointed
out to me). sometimes for two or three years these person are asked to
live in these centres where they only get passes to go out by day and
were guarded at night (I shared with him my experience of seeing persons
from these camps harassed by the security guards for talking with us
when we visited- undoubtedly not the official policy of the Irish
government so we discussed the gaps between policy and implementation). I
also made clear that we were contesting all of these issues with the
government in the North as well."

"At the finish of this meeting he agreed to convey our grievance to the
other parts of the Irish government and said that he understood in
addition to the specific concern for the health and well being of the
collapsed asylum seekers that we were saying that the immigration and
asylum policy in Ireland was structurally problematic, leading to racist
incidents and therefore implicitly racist itself. Although he did not
agree precisely with every characterisation that I made of the Irish
government he was certainly willing to acknowledge what we were saying and
communicate our grievance to others in the Irish government."