Organisers of vigils in NY call for a tourism boycott

Organisers of two candlelit vigils in New York City over the past two evenings have called for a boycott of travel to Ireland in light of Savita Halappanavar’s death.

Two of Ireland’s foremost novelists were set to lead the second vigil outside the Irish consulate in Manhattan last night. On Monday night, Belinda McKeon gathered together students and faculty members at Columbia University’s Barnard College to show solidarity with similar events in Ireland. She was due to be joined by fellow New York resident Colum McCann on Park Avenue yesterday evening.

“What we’re hoping to achieve is to make the Irish Government realise the world is watching,” McKeon told reporters on Monday.

“This is not just a matter for Irish Americans. As we’ve been putting the vigils together, we haven’t been thinking in those times. It’s a human rights issue.

“Political pressure should come to bear, but also pressure from people who want to see the rights of Irish women respected.”

Fellow organiser, Irish journalist Max McGuinness, also sought Irish Government action.

“Change in Ireland has always happened as a result of international pressure, whether that be with the peace process in Northern Ireland or the rights of homosexuals,” he said.

In a stirring speech given on both evenings, McKeon called for a boycott of travel to Ireland.

“Those of you who are not Irish, let me ask you something, and I ask you this with a heavy heart, because I do love my country, and I would love you to go there, and to love it too: I ask you to revise the positive impressions you may have had of the country up to now. Or, rather, park them; put those impressions aside.

“Until this government does what the people are calling on it to do, and legislates for the 20-year-old X case ruling, I cannot in good conscience ask you to think well of my country, or to travel there.”