Pregnant women targeted by racists

RACIST attacks on pregnant black women are on the increase in Dublin city centre, a support group for African women reported yesterday.

“I actually tried to hide my pregnancy - and yet I wanted to be proud of my child,” said Salome Mbugua of the African Women’s Network of her daily ordeal in Dublin two years ago.

“Because of what the media were saying at the time - that African women are getting pregnant to stay - I was attacked,” she told delegates to a conference on developing anti-racism awareness at local level. “I was a victim. I wasn’t a refugee at that time but I experienced the racism because of my colour every day, because of some of the stereotyping going on that every African person is a refugee or asylum seeker.”

Ms Mbugua, who now lives in the Midlands, said she thought racism was getting worse in Dublin City. It was coming from Irish people, both young and middle aged. “As far as I know, women going to hotels and other places are asked ‘where do you get money to buy drinks, you refugees and asylum seekers’.”

“We had a case of a woman last month who was thrown out of a hotel in Dublin. I don’t want to name the hotel because the case is still being assessed. She reported the issued to the gardaí and the gardaí have taken it up.”

Opening the conference, Justice Minister Michael McDowell said people should reject urban myths which foster a racist attitude towards asylum seekers and other non-nationals living here. He warned that failure by sensible people to reject such myths out of hand carried the real risk of promoting racist behaviour and attitudes.

It was wrong that asylum seekers became the focus of public discourse on racism and racist-related issues, he said. It was also wrong to blame shortcomings in our social services or the availability of housing on the arrival of asylum seekers. Mr McDowell said four out of every five non-nationals we might meet on the streets, in shops or in the country generally were not asylum seekers but health service workers, service industry workers, IT professionals, students and visitors.

Philip Watt, director of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI), condemned an Irish tabloid newspaper’s recent report “that someone swears they saw an asylum seeker buying a car with a cheque from social welfare”. To illustrate the point, the tabloid provided a picture of someone else’s BMW.