Almost seven years ago, John O’Donoghue – the then Minister for Justice, and current Ceann Comhairle (chairman) of Dáil Éireann – played down the rising level of racism in Irish society when he told the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa that Ireland would deal with racism when it comes.
Since that statement in September 2001, a great deal has happened in the area of cultural diversity in Ireland.
On the negative side, racial discrimination continues to eat deep into the fabric of the society – something that has been well highlighted by Metro Eireann over the past few years.
But of significant note in this week’s issue of Metro Eireann is the serious racist abuse that was recently directed against Teboga Sebala, an African player with Gaelic football side Eire Óg, during a match in Carlow – not to mention soccer star Emeka Onwubiko’s experience of racial taunts from an opposition team during a match in Dublin last year.
While it is too early to judge the handling of Sebala’s complaints by the GAA, which has already released a statement condemning the incident, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) has on their part accepted that Onwubiko suffered “abuse”. However, the FAI said it was not able to proceed with the case because there was no direct witness to the incident.
Unfortunately, not very much is being done to directly fight racism wherever it exists, despite the fact that we have had so much time to deal with it. Rather, efforts are being mainly directed in the promotion of cultural diversity in society with the hope, perhaps, that racism might just go away.
Metro Eireann strongly believes that some of the racist incidents that have occurred since 2001 could have been prevented had we adopted a strong position to deal with it from the beginning, even in advance of its manifestation. The Government must adopt a strong stance against racism by ensuring that a powerful anti-racism awareness campaign is continuously in place, and that the laws guiding against such incidents are regularly strengthened.
editor@metroeireann.com
Corrections and clarifications:
In the headline of our lead story last week ( , 24 July) we should have included Irish and English, bringing the total number to 77.
