‘I work all night if I need to be at a protest next day’
“He said: ‘Hello Rosanna, we’re in St Patrick’s Cathedral and we’re on hunger strike’. I nearly drowned. I asked had he told St Patrick’s and he said: ‘No, but we paid our money to get in’. It all sounded a bit surreal.”
For the next week Rosanna was at the Cathedral from early to late, organising support for the 33 men and youths inside, acting as their spokesperson when needed and speaking to the growing gathering of media as the story gained momentum.
She is adamant, however, that she did not have any role in organising the sit-in.
“Last November, we were approached by a group of Afghans who had applied for asylum and had been waiting for ages for a decision. They wanted to organise a demonstration and asked us to help.
“So they marched from the Dáil to the Department of Justice, handed in a letter and that was it. They occasionally rang us to let us know what was happening and we knew they weren’t getting anywhere. Then suddenly this phone call.”
Feelings ran high throughout the week as opposing protesters chanted outside the Cathedral and the condition of some of the younger and weaker hunger-strikers deteriorated inside. All the while politicians argued and commentators opined. For the men and Rosanna, it was an exhausting experience.
“Obviously a hunger strike is a very drastic step to take but we didn’t have time to think is this going to end in disaster. We were certainly very concerned when some of the young guys put a rope around their neck and said they would jump from the roof.
“It was distressing to see some of the racism outside but there were also very good ordinary people there. For every one who was antagonistic, there was one who was very good. And some of the people complaining outside were drunk and had their own problems so you feel sad for them.”
Rosanna didn’t ever intend becoming the public face of an often contentious campaign, although if she appears comfortable in front of the cameras in her role as spokesperson for Residents Against Racism, it’s because she spent a lot of time there in her early career.
Born in Southampton in the south of England with an Irish grandfather on one side and an Irish great-grandmother on the other, she followed an unlikely path for the daughter of a railway ganger and became an actress and glamour model.
She was always politically minded and the left was her natural home — a legacy of her socialist Welsh grandfather rather than her conservative councillor Irish grandfather.
But early on she was more interested in her social life than socialism. “I was the type who would sit around in expensive restaurants speaking about politics but doing nothing about it,” she says.
After modelling she turned to the antiques business and now works as a restorer which frees her from the constraints of an office hours job.
“I can work all night on a piece if I need to be at a protest the next day,” she says.
Her first foray into activism came after she moved to Ireland when she got involved in the pro-choice movement during the abortion debates. It was the case of Belmondo Wantete, however, that switched her firmly into campaigning mode.
Mr Wantete, a Congolese refugee, was asleep with his wife and young children in their Dublin home one night in 1998 when gardaí came banging on the door at 3.30am. He had fled Congo’s brutal wars after seeing family members slain in front of him and had no trust in uniformed forces so he refused to let the officers in.
When they gained entrance, Mr Wantete, who had little English, was arrested, charged with assault, obstruction and resisting arrest and held in custody without access to an interpreter.
It would emerge that the gardaí were not looking for Mr Wantete at all. They had a warrant to search the house next door on the belief that it was occupied by a Nigerian gang they were investigating for a stolen credit card racket. That house turned out to be home to an innocent white person so when the officers heard a black man lived next door, they turned their attentions to the adjacent dwelling.
As word of Mr Wantete’s detention got out, some concerned residents who knew his history began trying to intervene on his behalf. Rosanna lived in the general area and knew some of the people involved. They viewed the garda action as racist and began protesting under the banner Residents Against Racism.
The charges hung over Mr Wantete for two and a half years until his trial came up and he was cleared of all but the obstruction offence, for which he received a six-month suspended sentence.
“It was supposed to be a one-off case but over the two and a half years that it was progressing, other people approached us, mostly asylum seekers, and asked for help because of the way they were being treated by the authorities. Residents Against Racism sort of grew from there.”
The group has a core of five people and operates from two mobile phones, which between them provide a 24-hour contact service used mainly by asylum seekers who have exhausted the appeals system and are facing deportation.
A handful of lawyer friends help out with advice but there are no funds to pay legal fees, so if a judicial review is required, the asylum seeker has to come up with the money. On average a judicial review costs several thousand euro — an impossible sum for a person denied the right to work.
Asylum seekers accommodated under the direct provision scheme, get food and lodgings free of charge but receive just e19.10 per week to meet all other needs. The wider immigrant community and their churches often arrange collections to help with individual cases but there are few solicitors working on immigration cases who haven’t, by accident or agreement, given their time at a discount rate.
As well as lobbying, Rosanna and her co-members visit asylum seekers in prison while they await deportation, helping them to tie up loose ends with other family members or friends in Ireland.
Occasionally, and only with the individual’s consent, they will run a publicity campaign and try to arouse some media interest.
“Some cases are not the kind of thing you can make public because of the very personal nature of some of the details but we find often it’s helpful.”
The group runs an information stall at the Bank of Ireland on Westmoreland Street in Dublin every Saturday lunch time and from time to time they stage demonstrations outside the Garda National Immigration Bureau, especially if a mass deportation is imminent.
These tend to go off without incident, although Rosanna has twice been removed from the building after attempting to accompany individuals ordered to attend for questioning about the status of their case.
The only time she was arrested was during a picket at Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s constituency office. The case took two years to come to court and one of the arresting officers became confused as to which of the 11 protesters he had arrested so they were all bound to the peace.
“That was a relief,” Rosanna admits. “We didn’t think we would be jailed but we had decided that if we were fined, we were not going to pay up and I suppose we would have been jailed eventually.”
It is probably the calm way that Rosanna talks of physical ejection by the gardaí, and about arrest and jail, that has helped earn her the description of a “loony” in some web blogs and online chat rooms, but she laughs it off.
“I have been called a prostitute. I am supposed to be wanted by police in England for child abuse. I’m not going to worry about being called a loony.”
On a more serious note, she has received threats. “One text I got said we’re going to burn down your house and I did have police watching the place at that time but if somebody is going to kill you, they are not going to text you and tell you — it’s just trying to scare you,” she says.
The only thing that frightens her is the thoughts of what has become of some of the asylum seekers she has known who went into hiding to avoid deportation and have disappeared off the face of the earth — that and the appearance of the white supremacist British National Party who she believes were represented at the protests outside St Patrick’s Cathedral.
Rosanna was once involved in party politics, being a member of the Socialist Workers Party until her expulsion over assorted disagreements. She is resolutely independent now but other members of Residents Against Racism and their regular supporters are in a variety of parties. “We even have one in Fianna Fáil,” she says.
The group has a manifesto which supports an open border policy but Rosanna says support also comes from people who favour controlled — but fairer — immigration and supporters don’t get turned away just because their opinion isn’t radical enough.
She smiles a restrained compliment to her arch-enemy, Justice Minister Michael McDowell. “You would never faze McDowell,” she says.
If she could turn the minister to her point of view, she would have him lift the work ban on asylum seekers.
“It’s a deliberate tactic to prevent integration because people integrate through the workplace. I feel it would make a big difference if they were allowed work. It would stop this notion that you hear so often that they are ‘sponging off the State’. That’s the kind of perception that feeds racism.”
Rosanna would like to see a time when circumstances would allow Residents Against Racism to disband and she could get back to doing her restoration work in the daytime rather than the dead of night but she doesn’t see that happening any time soon.
“Asylum seekers have absolutely no voice. We have to be their voice.”
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