Five serious racist incidents reported in Ireland each week

Racism is on the rise according to the Immigrant Council of Ireland.

Reports of discriminatory behaviors including verbal harassments and attacks on homes have gone up by at least five times since last year. “Most incidents happened at work, on the internet or while accessing official services, and mainly involved people from Africa,” relates the Irish Independent.

Additionally, the Immigrant Council of Ireland reports that an alarming 50 incidents of racial harassment have occurred in the last 10 weeks alone. “We are responding to an average of 5 serious incidents a week, while the figure for 2012 was an average of 1 a week,” the press release states.

In particular, a lot of these racially motivated attacks seem to be targeted at the immigrant population. The Irish Examiner cites data from Tell MAMA, an organization based out of the UK, showing that Islamophobic - specific hate crimes have been on the rise for the past year across all of Europe. “Attacks against women form the bulk of the incidents they have reported and the majority of perpetrators of these attacks have links with far-right groups such as the EDL and the British National Party (BNP).”

“The organisations dependent on this funding are lifelines for at-risk individuals and families across Ireland,” says Siobhan O’Donoghue from the Migrants Rights Centre.

The government’s unwillingness to release “European funds already allocated to Ireland for integration and refugee services,” says O’Donoghue, “raises serious questions about their commitment to integration at a local level.”