Live Register TV Interview with Shane O’Curry, Director of INAR
Read the full article by The Live Register here
We take this up the issue of state racism in our interviews with Shane O Curry and Ronit Lentin where we explore Ireland’s abysmal record in its interactions of migrants who are considered ‘non-white’.
We spoke to Shane O Curry Director of INAR, a national network of anti-racism organisations. Shane outlines the reality of racism in Ireland today in the face of official denial. Through the Ireport.ie initiative, which enables easy and safe reporting of racist incidents, INAR continues to the challenge this denial by presenting verifiable evidence.
According to Shane:
“Unfortunately reports of racist incidents against Roma are common place. There is a significant level of deep hostility manifesting in violence and patterns of ongoing harassment and bullying directed at members of the Roma community across Ireland and that is something that we are picking up on”
He describes Ireland as a “rogue state” in terms of official policy around racial profiling, which at present is not outlawed but instead supported by the state, contrary to a multitude of international agreements at UN and EU level that seek to tackle institutional racism. He also outlines how in 2013 Ireland has no national strategy or plan to tackle racism. He points out that An Garda Siochana are immune from the limited equality legislation that purports to tackle racism. INAR describes this legislation as ‘unworkable’ citing that it has seen less than one person a year prosecuted for racist crimes as actual number of racist incidents reported continues to rise.
Shane argues that institutional racism and racist media framing have primed society for the events that unfolded against the Roma community:
“It is the job of journalism, be it press or broadcast to enlighten and inform. Not to dis-inform, to whip up prejudice and to create the conditions under which these actions happened and unfortunately they did happen in the context of a poisoning of the debate which was contributed to by bad journalism”
Read the full article by The Live Register here