Workers Solidarity Movement

A group of 50 protestors, mainly asylum seekers, has gathered outside the Mosney Centre in Co.Meath to protest at the planned movement of some of the internees to other facilities in the country.

The Mosney Centre, the largest Reception an Integration Agency (RIA) centre in the country, houses around 800 people from all around the world who have come to Ireland because of the terrible conditions and violence they may face in their home countries. The RIA plans to rehouse most of 150 residents of the centre ina centre in Dublin’s Hatch Street. The centre is a five-storey Victorian building which has been criticised as unsuitable for housing infirm, pregnant or otherwise unwell asylum seekers.  The RIA claim there are only plans to move 150 of the camp residents, however the asylum seekers feel this is only the first move in the process of winding the camp down. There are over 6,000 asylum seekers living in direct-provision hostels, often in overcrowded conditions. Likewise, they attest that the moves show no consideration for groups of friends and communites.

This marks a growing wave of repression against asylum seekers in the EU. In France, hundreds of “sans-papiers” (without documentation) migrants had their shanty’s in Calais destroyed and were interned in detention centres all over the country. Repression continues in Calais and all over France, often with extreme police brutality. A recent video uploaded to Youtube shows riot police evicting a squat and dragging babies across the ground.  In the UK a young asylum seeker called Rabar Hamad is being threatened by deportation to Iraq, where some of his family have been murdered. This is due to his age being assessed as 20-years old by a social worker, even though an independent doctor and his school teachers attest otherwise, that he is in fact 16-years old.

In Ireland, asylum seekers receive only €19.10 a week to live. This includes Oscar Sibanda, who is a 22-year old Zimbabwaen resident of the Mosney Centre and plays semi-professionally for Shelbourne football club. While other players earn wages, he only has the above paltry sum, of which €10 goes on transport to the football club. In his own words, “The other players are getting part-time wages, but I am not legally entitled to them. All I want to do is use my skills as a footballer to earn a living while I am still in my 20s, pay my taxes and be a good citizen.” He could be deported at any time, due to losing his 3-year case for asylum after being unable to prove he was at risk from Mugabe’s government.

WORDS: JW