At 18 years of age, the twin girls may have been seasoned revellers or maybe they felt a bit nervous. Younger Gen Z are wary. They don’t drink much and they feel the edge in town. They know all about the feral youth who roam in gangs and can take a man down like a pack of hyenas, jumping on his head in Templebar or Talbot Street. But maybe the twins felt safe, walking along one of the busiest and best-lit thoroughfares in Dublin, Dame Street at 2am on a Saturday night. They may have felt safe too because they had each other. But they were not safe. As they crossed the road a stranger accosted them and would not take no for an answer. They walked on. It made no difference. They pleaded with him to leave them alone and kept walking. A man got involved to try to protect them and their attacker slashed them all with a broken bottle.
One of the twins tried to protect the man but she was pulled down and punched in the head. One of them needed staples in her scalp, the other will need surgery in her hand. The man required stitches and green shards of glass were found in their lacerations. A 27-year-old Somali of no fixed abode called Shando Alfa is in custody. It is unclear when or how he entered the country but last November he was wandering round on the quays intoxicated and carrying an open flick blade in his right sock. In a separate incident he was carrying a steak knife in the docklands area and spat at guards. Despite having previous convictions, he had been given a fully suspended sentence and was free to roam the streets.
Fear
The first emotion this story evoked in me was fear. Pure fear. The protective fear of a mother of a teenage girl. The next emotion was anger. Anger towards the Government, whose policies have allowed this to happen. I didn’t feel any other emotions and certainly not hatred for Somalians. I twice worked with a fine example of one who is now a CBS cameraman. It did not cross my mind to pivot to ‘all Somalians.’
Schoolchildren being stabbed outside their school is new”
As a women’s rights campaigner, I know well that male violence against women and girls is nothing new in our country, sadly, but I submit being attacked with a broken bottle for saying no to street harassment is, I think, new.
Having your home in the sleepy village of Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath, invaded in the middle of the day by an African man who says he is going to rape your sixteen-year-old as he drags her upstairs and into your bathroom is….new.
Schoolchildren being stabbed outside their school is new.
Despite homosexuality being a crime until 1993 and homophobia widely accepted well into the 90s, the catfishing and decapitating of gay men is…….new.
Divided
Ireland is experiencing a new layer of violence and crimes that were hitherto unheard of and we are increasingly divided into those willing to see this, and those not.
But despite the framing of the media and politicians, why do so many Irish people feel such outrage at these attacks?”
According to one group, my fear as a mother and my anger toward our Government are not real or legitimate emotions at all but fuelled by nothing more than racism. Living in Ireland today is like switching between two alternate universes. One is inhabited by those who still cling to the official narrative on immigration, the other inhabited by those alive to the visceral consequences of allowing a sixfold increase in asylum seekers and the subsequent housing of these unscreened male migrants en masse, in residential areas.
The media, Government and commentariat tell us that immigration is good for Ireland and all dissent is racist. But despite the framing of the media and politicians, why do so many Irish people feel such outrage at these attacks? It is because this violence is preventable, because taxpayers are subsidising these men and because we were not given a choice.
Despite admitting that 80% of our asylum seekers come from Britian, with whom we share an unmanned border, our Government has inexplicably discarded our cherished and hard-won ‘opt-out’ and instead opted into the EU Migration pact and therefore EU-wide burden sharing.
Seven new supersized IPAS centres are planned and they will be built. They are likely to house single males from the Middle East and Africa. To those who describe concern as racist, I have a thought experiment: If you were in Morrocco, or Nigeria on holiday, would you allow your teenage daughter to wander the market on her own? If not, why not?
Laoise de Brún is a barrister and the founder of The Women’s Coalition on Immigration. This month, An Garda Síochána issued a statement stating that they agreed with the demands of the group; the recording of ethnicity and country of origin of all suspects charged on the Pulse System.