Here in Ireland over the past eighteen months asylum seekers have been organising protests
against the conditions they are compelled to live in, including blockading the ?hostels?
(effectively for-profit open prisons) where they are forced to live in appalling
conditions, which some have been made to endure for over a decade. ---- For the past
several years, Anti-Deportation Ireland, a political campaign run by both asylum seekers
themselves and by their supporters has been pushing for three demands:
1/ An immediate end to deportations. ---- 2/The immediate abolition of direct provision
---- 3/The rights to work and to access 3rd-level education ---- In June 2013 a group of
African women, residents at Drishane Castle direct provision centre in County Cork took
control of the hostel. The unpopular manager locked herself in her office, the rest of the
staff left, and the protestors were able to allow the national media in to see and film
conditions (Access to hostels is usually strictly controlled). Five of the women entered
negotiations with the owner and won improvements in the food provided, a safe play area
for children and the removal of the unpopular manager.
The fightback begins
On Sept 2nd, Asylum seekers in Athlone Accommodation Centre, a mobile home park which is
one of the biggest direct provision centres in the State stopped accepting food from
management in protest at conditions at the facility. On Sept 12th 2014 Some of the 160
residents at the former Montague Hotel, outside Portlaoise, Co Laois staged a sit-in
demonstration and refused to allow staff into the centre.
At 5am on Sept 14th at Kinsale Road accommodation Centre in Cork City, a committee of
residents (called KRAC ) began an occupation of their hostel, blockading the entrance and
excluding the staff. The blockade lasted 10 days and 10 nights and ended in a negotiated
settlement which saw significant improvement of their conditions. Blockading staff out of
the hostel meant they had no access even to the shit food they are usually given, but Cork
people including the left-wing organisations dropped over with food and financial donations.
After ten days concessions were won including 2 rather than 3 single people sharing a
room, extra buses into town, more say over the menu and no more signing in every night.
The day after the blockade ended KRAC and their supporters held a march in Cork City
Centre calling for abolition of direct provision, an immediate end to deportations and
the rights to work and 3rd-level education. A 2nd asylum centre in County Cork held a one
day protest during the KRAC blockade
At 6am on October 8th, Some 160 asylum seekers at Birchwood House direct provision centre
in Waterford began a protest against conditions at the centre and the whole direct
provision system. They locked out staff and prevented deliveries.
The background
Before the millenium, asylum-seekers were allowed to rent their own homes, and get
financial help from the state to do so, on the same basis as other people. They were
entitled to the equivalent of unemployment assistance, and to child benefit, and some
asylum seekers were allowed to do some work
In the year 2000 this situation was replaced with a system called ?direct provision?.
Under direct provision, people are effectively forced to live in one of 34 ?hostels? run
for profit by private companies (A few are owned by the state but all are run privately
and receive funding from the state).These hostels are distributed throughout the Irish
Republic and are usually located well away from local communities. People are provided
with food not of their own choosing, and are unable to cook their own food. They are given
only 19 euros to live on and are subject to many petty regulations. Some people have lived
in those conditions for over a decade, including some children who were born in those
hostels.Several single adults are often forced to share one room and families with
children are only allocated one room.
Before direct provision was introduced in 2000, the state was often confronted by
solidarity from neighbours and friends when it attempted to deport someone. Direct
provision hostels are usually situated in very geographically isolated places, with very
limited access to transport and that deliberate policy of preventing peoples integration
in to local communities makes deportations easier.
The racist referendum
In 2004, a racist amendment was made to the Irish constitution, having been passed by
referendum. It means that a child born in Ireland no longer has the automatic right to
Irish citizenship and may be deported unless one of its parents is an Irish or UK citizen.
Before the 2004 racist referendum was passed, Article 2 of the Irish Constitution, (which
had been enacted by referendum in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 with a
vote of more than 94 percent), determined the citizenship of all children born in Ireland.
?It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland, which
includes its islands and seas, to be part of the Irish Nation. That is also the
entitlement of all persons otherwise qualified in accordance with law to be citizens of
Ireland.?
The referendum inserted the following racist obscenity into the Irish constitution:
?Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution, a person born in the island of
Ireland, which includes its islands and seas, who does not have, at the time of his or her
birth,at least one parent who is an Irish citizen or entitled to be an Irish citizen is
not entitled to Irish citizenship or nationality, unless otherwise provided for by law.?
NGO?s no solution
The underlying reason why direct provision exists is to make it easier to deport people.
Deportations are the fundamental way in which state racism operates. Deportations and
other restrictions on migration are important to capitalism as tools to maintain global
inequalities of wealth which themselves are a major source of profit.
Migration-related NGOs in Ireland are largely state-funded and are provide a
?compassionate? face to brutal state racism. They have historically called for reform form
of, rather than the abolition of direct provision and never criticize the policy of
deportations.
They are the first to try and bring an end to direct action by asylum seekers by a process
of mediation. In recent months NGOs have called for faster streamlined process of
deportations called ?the Single Application Process?
The government response to the 2014 wave of direct actions by asylum seekers has
consistently been that people should wait for the report of a working group which it has
set up. The ?working group? consists of government politicians and around 20 NGOS. It is
not yet public knowledge exactly which NGOs are what the terms of reference are, but the
government and several of the NGOS have been arguing for a Single Application Process.
It is likely that the NGOs will be the same ones who have been part of the NGO Forum on
Direct Provision, established in 2010. AkiDwA, Barnardos, BeLonG To LGBT Youth Services,
Crosscare Migrant Project, Cult?r, Doras Luimn?, FLAC (Free Legal Advice Centres), Galway
Refugee Support Group, Irish Catholic Bishops? Conference Refugee & Migrant Project, The
Integration Centre, The Irish Refugee Council, The Jesuit Refugee Service, Mayo
Intercultural Action, SPIRASI, and Tralee International Resource Centre.)
Asylum seekers themselves will be unrepresented on the working group. Instead the NGOs
claim to speak on their behalf (One asylum seeker is likely to be part of the working
group, but only because he works for one of the NGOs, not because he has been chosen by
asylum seekers as a delegate or representative).
Closing the door
The Single Application Process will mean that legal processes of resistance to being
deported will be dealt with at one time. At the moment if you are unable successfully to
argue that you should be granted refugee status because of your circumstances as an
individual, you can then apply for subsidiary protection because a community you belong to
is collectively subject to persecution. If you are unable to prove your case for either of
those types of protection, it is possible to apply for compassionate leave to remain based
on the extent to which you have contributed to and integrated into the community in Ireland.
With the SAP you?ll only have one chance to argue for all three and can be deported more
quickly if you aren?t successful. Nasc advocates the replacement of the current protection
system with a ?single procedures mechanism?. Under this, the three forms of international
protection (refugee status, subsidiary protection and leave to remain on humanitarian
grounds) would be reviewed concurrently. As all challenges to decisions must currently be
made through judicial review to the High Court, this would significantly reduce the burden
on the State, the courts and also shorten the length of time spent living under the Direct
Provision system.?
The NGOs also often argue that a time-limit of either 6 or 18 months should be placed on
the length of time someone spends in direct provision. Anti-deportation Ireland argues
that direct provision should be abolished, not kept in a slightly reformed state.
The government has also been careful to damp down even the modest expectation that people
who have already spent long periods in direct provision should receive residency as part
of an ?amnesty?
There are several things which are problematic about the involvement of NGOs in
campaigning about direct provision:
1/ Some of their funding comes from the state which limits their
ability to challenge government policy None of the NGOs oppose the policy of deporting
people. Most of them call for a time-limit of 6 or 18 months in direct provision rather
than its abolition. (Often this approach is in the smallprint of their ?End Direct
Provision? campaign literature)They campaign for a streamlined faster system of
deportations (?the Single Applications Process?)
2/ Their approach of claiming speaking on behalf of asylum seekers (as on the government
working group is something that has a disempowering effect. It would be great if just one
of those charities relinquished their place to someone living in direct provision.
3/ When protests are organised by asylum seekers themselves, NGOs immediately attempt to
mediate and defuse the situation. During the protest at Drishane Castle a worker for the
leading NGOs tried to persuade the protesters to negotiate with the Resettlement and
Integration Agency as individuals, rather than collectively. Luckily the protesters chose
not to take that particular advice.
4/The presence of NGOs on the current government working group renders them compromised by
their involvement in the State?s racist control strategies, in a similar way to the role
played by trade union leaders during Social Partnership in Ireland. If the working group
does end up recommending the continued existence of direct provision (with reforms) and
streamlined deportations (the Single Applications Process), then the government will be
able to say that their policies have been endorsed by all the relevant charities.
5/Until the recent wave of direct action by asylum seekers, the media almost always turned
to one of the Migration-related NGOs for their perspective on direct provision, rather
than to asylum-seekers themselves or to Anti-Deportation Ireland.
6/ Another problem with the NGOs is that most of them are signed-up members of the
Turn-Off the Red Light campaign which wants to criminalise the customers of sex-workers.
That would have the effect of driving sex work further underground and rendering it more
unsafe for sex-workers.
?Eventually?on a smaller scale, but more insidiously?the capital available to NGOs plays
the same role in alternative politics as the speculative capital that flows in and out of
the economies of poor countries. It begins to dictate the agenda. It turns confrontation
into negotiation. It depoliticises resistance. It interferes with local peoples? movements
that have traditionally been self-reliant. NGOs have funds that can employ local people
who might otherwise be activists in resistance movements, but now can feel they are doing
some immediate, creative good (and earning a living while they?re at it).? - Arundhati Roi
in ?The NGO-ization of resistance?
An anarchist approach to solidarity
A fundamental principle of anarchism is internationalism. We oppose nationalism and the
existence of nation states and we argue for solidarity with ordinary people all over the
world..with unpaid workers , paid workers, with the unemployed and with those who are
unable to work. We see the important conflict as the one between the rich and the rest of
us, not one between ordinary people from one part of the planet with ordinary people from
another.
Another anarchist principle is that decisions should be taken by the people directly
affected by them, that people subjected to a particular form of oppression should be
supported in organising themselves to combat it. Recent occupations of direct provision
centres by their residents also fit well into something anarchists advocate: taking
direct action to bring about political change.
Because anarchists neither seek election nor accept state funding for our political
organisations we are in a position to clearly criticize both the state and charities for
the policies they advocate. We are one of the only voices which is able to do so.
And we can offer our unconditional to support to asylum -seekers fighting to live and work
wherever they choose since we acknowledge no legitimacy in states or their borders
"Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an
iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider
themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any
other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight,
kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others."
Emma Goldman: from "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty"
in the 1917 edition of Emma Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays
WORDS: Paul McAndrew
http://www.thejournal.ie/asylum-seekers-limerick-protest-1632579-Aug2014/
http://www.thejournal.ie/refugees-athlone-direct-provision-protest-hope-centre-1662107-Sep2014/
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/justice-officials-to-meet-asylum-protesters-30583832.html
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/asylum-seekers-mount-protest-at-cork-direct-provision-centre-1.1929294
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/asylum-seekers-refuse-food-in-protest-over-conditions-at-direct-provision-centre-1.1918296
http://corkindependent.com/20130627/news/asylum-deal-drishane-asylum-residents-demands-met-S67931.html
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/160-asylum-seekers-protest-at-waterford-direct-provision-centre-1.1955913
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» (en) IIrish Anarchist Review #10 - A Prison by Any Other Name - The fight against direct provision