?Damned if they did something, damned if they did nothing? ---- A standard response (and
the one trotted out by the Minister for Justice) is that it was best for the HSE/Gardai to
err on the side of caution: ?better be safe than sorry? has been the mantra. Okay, let?s
have a look at that statement: What the danger was established in order to abduct the two
Roma children from their families? Under the Child Care act children can be taken into
care if a child has or is being assaulted, ill-treated, neglected or sexually abused, or
whose health, development or welfare has been or is likely to be impaired or neglected. No
one has remotely suggested this was the case for either child. ---- If it was, then why
did the Garda?/Health Service Executive(HSE) not remove the other children from their
homes? Is it because they were not blonde? Or are darker-skinned children not as important?
It is pretty easy to establish that even if there was a suggestion that the people raising
these children were their non-biological parents, does that establish that the best thing
to do is to rip them from their families and traumatise them by placing them in care? Were
the DNA samples so vital, could that not have happened discreetly over the next 72 hours
without having 20 uniformed Garda arrive at the girl?s house in Tallaght? And, if you take
the line of guttersnipe Mick McCaffrey of the Sunday World (vying in public with Paul
Connolly for the dubious ?honour? of breaking this story) that ?the Roma Gypsies? (as he
called them repeatedly on Prime Time) are transient in nature, could the parent?s
passports not be taken until parentage was established?
Let?s even put that to one side and ask a perfectly reasonable question: were it a
white-couple who were rearing a child who didn?t resemble them (not an unreasonable
situation- many couples in Ireland have adopted children from other countries, legally and
illegally), would we expect 20 garda coming to the house, demanding documentation and,
even if produced, that the child would be taken into care? It?s so laughable to even
suggest it- yet for some people, it seemed like the perfect response, ?better be safe than
sorry? when it?s a Roma family, which tells you how central anti-Roma racism was to the
whole affair.
The Role of the media in the whole sordid affair
What has emerged is that the whole affair began with a post to the page of ?investigative
journalist? Paul Connolly of TV3. Paul has made his ?reputation? for anti-Traveller
documentaries with TV3, so we can probably guess in advance what his views or prejudice
might be for Roma. The anonymous poster on his page alerted him to the fact that a Roma
family in Tallaght, like the family in Athens, had a blonde child who looked nothing like
them. Discarding any shred of his investigative prowess, Paul failed to notice that the
tipster had stated that ?I am from Romania myself and its a big problem there missing
kids. The Romas robing [sic] them to get child benefit in Europe? and, if he had taken the
time to investigate, he might have wondered that, given the scale of anti-Roma hatred in
Europe and the spurious myths that exist about Roma ?stealing children?, whether this
anonymous poster on facebook was the most reliable source. A producer on his show saw this
and she ?had the wherewithal, thank god, to send it on to me?. Saviour of the blonde
child, Paul Connolly was on the case and got in touch with the Gardai who swooped into action.
One must ask the question: is this how the Gardai now operate? An anonymous facebook post
to a ?journalist? will now get the forces of the State into action? Worried about the
criminality of Irish banks? Concerned about the lack of prosecutions of the political and
economic elite in Ireland for putting the country into unsustainable debt? Worry no more-
a quick Facebook message to Paul Connolly should see a whole series of men in handcuffs
being frogmarched from the leafy suburbs of Dublin by the end of the day.
The myth and reality of Roma and child abductions
However, given the recent witch hunt in Greece and Ireland (and sparking further anti-Roma
violence and attempted abductions of Roma children in Serbia, again as they were blonde)
one aspect of anti-Roma State racism needs to be highlighted: Forced removal or abduction
of Roma children by State agencies. While the myth of Roma ?stealing? children has
continually being proved to be untrue, we see again how it rears its ugly head. What
mainstream media chose to ignore are the very real and well documented cases where 600
Roma children were abducted from their Swiss families Or the complicity of Western States
in international adoption from Romania in the 1990s, which disproportionately affected
Roma) and a long standing tradition of Roma children being abducted by the Italian State
, Indeed, in Greece, the centre of the recent furore of an alleged ?Gypsy abduction?
(which later turned out to be an unofficial adoption, not uncommon in some parts of
Europe, whereby Roma families are given children to look after when the biological parents
are unable to do so, or fear stigma for having a child ?out of wedlock?), it seems to have
gone largely unnoticed that over 500 Roma children placed in the care of the Greek State
have gone missing
?The hypocrisy of the Greek authorities in alleging child abduction and trafficking on the
basis of no evidence whatsoever is stunning in light of the Agia Varvara scandal of only a
decade ago. Five hundred and two Roma children ?disappeared? from an orphanage in Athens
where they had been placed. Despite demands to investigate the fate of these children,
little was ever done. The Greek government have now removed the report that they
submitted to the European commission from their website, with only the archived web copy
remaining, in a blatant attempt to cover this up. This report makes for chilling reading.
In particular, pay attention to page 3; the end of paragraph 2.
?It seems like the children (many of them Albanian) were given to traffickers, who paid up
to 500 euros to remove them from the institution for the purpose of economic exploitation
? prostitution or the sale of their organs.?
So one blue-eyed child that plays into anti-Roma hatred and perpetuates an old stereotype:
International media frenzy, calls for crackdowns, international witch hunt, copycat State
abductions.
Contrast that with 500 missing Roma kids: not a care in the world. And yet, you?ll still
get plenty of people telling you that the system is blind to ethnicity. Sure it is.
An embarrassing exposure to institutional state racism
In this case we had a number of State organisations, the Garda?, and the HSE, all
immediately act on an anonymous tip off received via facebook to a renowned sensationalist
journalist, which resulted in them separating one child from her family. Meanwhile in
Athlone Garda? separate a young Roma boy from his parents.
Instead of an appeal for calm and one where the authorities should be allowed to conduct
their investigation, and let us all see what evidence for these children being taken away,
appears, the Minister for children, whilst the investigations were ongoing said ?As
Minister for Children, I would be encouraging people to report if they are concerned about
children.? A statement like that is only going to fuel the growing hysteria surrounding
such an emotive issue.
But from what we know it was the Garda? who tipped off the media. RTE covered the case by
dispatching their Crime correspondent, Paul Reynolds who couched his report on Tuesday
night in the usual cliches of crime correspondents. We were informed that the Garda?
?had prior dealings with the family?- which we all recognise as being the Crime
Correspondent?s code for ?into something dodgy?. So immediately the State broadcaster is
letting people know that ?these people? are up to something dodgy. What Paul Reynolds
failed to mention is the reason that the family were known to Garda is that they had made
numerous complaints about their house being targeted by racists- eggs and stones being
thrown at windows etc. To cement his point, Reynolds then made the comparison to the case
of Maria in Greece- surely, he is letting us know, there is something underhand at play.
And he closed off the report with the information that the Garda? had been in contact with
Europol and Interpol. All in a days work for a crime correspondent, his job was done,
there was sufficient grounds for his friends in the Garda? to act this way, sure they were
now talking with their partners in fight against international criminality. No coverage
of this matter by RTE?s social affairs correspondent, Joe Little, he was probably out
interviewing some Bishops about canon law.
RTE and others informed us that the Garda? were ?unhappy with the providence of documents?
such as birth certificates and passports . This was reiterated in other media, with the
Irish Times saying that, when asked, they struggled to locate documents, but eventually
found them. They also gave confused information about their daughters? birth. Let?s pause
it there for a moment. Imagine you?re a member of a marginalised ethnic group, who
disproportionately have negative dealings with the police forces. You also know that a
family who share your ethnicity have been arrested for the suspected abduction of a
child. A child, who like your own, has blonde hair. Then 20 Garda? arrive at your house.
English is not your first language- so that might explain some difficulty in explaining
your case. Another question: how many Irish parents can immediately locate passports and
birth certificates of their children? Now imagine you have to do that with 20 Gardai in
your house, terrifying your children. And now imagine doing all that while speaking in
Rom. Yeah, for some reason, I suspect you might also find it tough.
What was also paraded in RTE, Tv3 and the Times was the discrepancy between the parent?s
birth date and records in the Coombe. Amazingly, one newspaper (the Independent) managed
to get confirmation on the same day that there was a corresponding birth cert in the
Coombe- the original problem was that it didn't correspond with the family's current
address. Case closed, or should have been. No, the Gardai still had doubts: the child's
passport photo was not 100% like the child. Again, without any form of expert analysis
required, it might have been easy to check the date on the passport and make some sort of
rational deduction that, like all other children, Roma children do change in appearance as
they grow older.
Within all the feeding frenzy and the fact that this family was ?known? to the Gardai, not
one mainstream media reporter asked the obvious question: if they knew about this family,
how had they failed to notice the ?crime? of a blue-eyed child being with a Roma family
before. There are two obvious explanations:
1. The Garda and HSE are completely inept in relation to anything relating to child
welfare as this ?issue? wasn?t obvious to them or
2. It was a racially motivated action, based on the case of Maria in Greece.
When people start talking about the HSE/Garda only ?doing their job? and not seeing the
race element to this case, they need to seriously step back and ask questions about the
timeline of this sorry debacle.
Let us move onto another crime correspondent, Mick McCaffrey of the Sunday World felt the
need for some more evidence, or at least expert opinion, so he mentioned that the garda?
had felt the need to talk to some expert.
?He explained that garda? actually went as far as to contact a hospital consultant to
determine if it was possible for Roma people, who typically have very dark features, to
give birth to a blonde child.
"They were told it would be very unusual," Mick McCaffrey added.?
The coverage of the story only continued to fuel hysteria and paint a picture of
inevitable criminality on the part of the family involved.
The question remains why did this happen. The answer remains there is a deep propensity
for racism within the institutions of the State. In Mcpherson?s definition arising from
the Stephen Lawrence enquiry where ?the collective failure of an organization to provide
an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or
ethnic origin.? In this case the Roma family were being singled out for delivery of a
very specific service which the garda? reserve for criminal investigations.
The HSE role cannot be ignored in all this. What kind of service was it providing to the
family. As it is our understanding that the removal of a child from the family is a
matter of last resort and can only be done when there is as threat of the child being
assaulted, ill-treated, neglected or sexually abused, or whose health, development or
welfare has been or is likely to be impaired or neglected. These decision would be based
on evidence, normally gathered by the HSE itself. The question remains what happened in
these cases and who decided to implement the ?nuclear option? of removing the child.
Rather than the Garda? talking to some hospital consultant who appears to be unenlightened
about recessive genes, one might think that it was the role of the HSE who might have a
pre-existing relationship with this family to consult someone in relation to the matter.
But it appears that none of this happened.
Instead, in a wave of hysteria not witnessed since the great outbreak of moving statues in
the late 1980?s (another austere time) it appears that all the authorities threw off the
shackles of rationality and went to their happy space of thinking of Gypsies as child
stealers!
What this is and was is a sorry revelation of institutional racism. It should be an
embarrassment to the authorities involved and in a democracy we have this naive notion
that someone should be held accountable.
But our democracy is an Irish one where tribunals last lifetimes and no-one goes to prison.
Our democracy is one where the government police checkpoints in industrial estates so as
to catch people who might be working and not telling them. One where the message to the
youth is to feck off if you?re going to cost us money and come back when you?ve made
something of yourself for ?the gathering?. A democracy where it suits the powers that be
to set, old against young, sick against healthy, Irish against foreigner, working against
unemployed, settled against Traveller, whilst those at the top continue as before bearing
no responsibility for the mess we're in.
Zero responsibility and no accountability leads to the same amount of change.
Unfortunately it is the inevitable prediction of the authors that the report that will
come out from the days we took the Roma children from their parents with the comment
No further action required *
Guest Writer: Damien Walshe
In this guest piece Damien Walshe, long term anti-racist activist, takes the opportunity
to reflect on what happend in the last week when State authorities acted to take away
blonde children from their Roma parents.
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