Thursday 9:45am:

Anti-Racism activist, Rosanna Flynn of Residents Against Racism, tells the stories of Asylum Seekers awaiting their fate at the Burgh Quay Garda National Immigration Bureau in Dublin....

I went to the GNIB at Burgh Quay Dublin to meet three people told to be there at 10am. First met Latafia from Nigeria and her husband A. They married in Ireland three years ago and A. has had a deportation order. Latafia has to have an operation soon and she is unable to conceive. Naturally she wants her husband with her. As she said, he is a good man who has stood by her through her health problems and what is the use of her being able to conceive. Without him she can't anyway.

P. is also Nigerian and has two children born in Nigeria. One year ago her Irish-citizen baby died shortly after birth. The immigration officer questioned her about this, within the hearing of 6 or 7 people. The place was crowded. The officer did this in a most insensitive way. Because the baby died, she has no case as the mother of an Irish child. Her dead baby doesn't count. It is as if he never lived.

On The Run In Paris...

''...After exploring the Eiffel Tower we walked back to the Metro and found them again. Being a connoisseur of kitsch I had to buy a mini-Tower. I asked one of the men for the 1€ replica and then asked if I could take his picture. In a blink of an eye the ten men were running away from us down the street. Soon we witnessed Paris Police in a van on the scene as the men zig-zagged across the busy street to avoid capture.....'' Read More & Photo Series...

Listening to this reduced our next Nigerian mother, V., to tears. She said: 'If she has 6 children, they will not replace the one who has died. She will think of that child everyday for the rest of her life.'

V. herself has two children, one born in Ireland. She was due to be deported before the new ruling and has been in hiding, helped by good friends, also Nigerian asylum seekers, who met her for the first time in Ireland. Now she has applied for her own residency status because she has an Irish child. Her children are not with her all the time, there is no room - another good asylum seeker takes care of of them. She sees them often and when she must leave, the older one asks 'When are you coming back?'

So many in the afternoon, I almost lose count. Two other Residents Against Racism members come down to Burgh Quay. One Irish and one a Nigerian father of Irish children. One woman, C. who walks with a stick and looks frail, has two lovely daughters, one in primary and one in secondary school, they are with her. The younger girl tells me she loves playing gaelic football. Both have been in school for years and do very well. They are like the typical Irish schoolgirls. This family are so well integrated the school support for them and many people in the town in back where they live have petitioned the government for them to stay. They would be a credit to any community....

On Wednesday March 1st at 11 a.m. Shell again attempted to access the lands of farmers in Rossport, north-west Co. Mayo. They were refused access, told that they did not have proper consent to work on the land. The land in question is on the route of a high pressure up stream pipeline which is to bring untreated gas from the Corrib Gas field to a massive on-shore refinery at Ballinaboy. This is a repeat of Shell’s earlier attempt to access the lands in January.

The previous Saturday there was an NUIG Ecology Society fact finding mission to the Erris area to see what Shell propose to do. Here follows a photo story of the development and the text of an interview we made with Maura Harrington, a local campaigner.

Related Links:

On the cushy deals multinationals are getting:
Gas Lads | The Great Oil and Gas Rip-Off | The Biggest Scandal of Them All | Some History: The environmental and social costs of living with Shell

Previous Indymedia Stories
Shell in Mayo: An Update | Corrib Gas Go Ahead Granted to Shell

A Tourist Guide to the Area
Erris and Belmullet, Co.Mayo

Over two hundred residents from the Beechmount - Falls Road area mobilised last night in protest at the recent racist attack on the home of four Lithuanians. Addressing the crowd Sara Boyce {ARN steering group and West Belfast ARN} stated that:

'Only last week, a German magazine claimed Belfast was the most racist city in the world. What happened here at the weekend does little to dispel this claim. Ethic minorities throughout Belfast are being routinely victimised, whether it is through having their homes attacked or being called names when walking the streets'.

Local Sinn Fein Councillor Tom Hartley called on the local community not to allow a gang of thugs to destroy its good name:

'We need to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Lithuanians forced from their homes and show them that what happened is despised by the wider community. People of all ethnic minorities are welcome in West Belfast. This area is not a cold house for anyone. The group that carried out the attack are not just racist - they have also continually attacked members of their own community.'

Continue reading about the work of the Anti-Racist Network and about their upcoming 'Love Music Hate Racism' March 6th concert in Belfast at the 'feature continued' link below.

British anti-war activists occupied the Irish Embassy in London today to protest the possible ten year jail sentence facing Ireland's Pitstop Ploughshares defendants when they go on trial in an Irish court on March 7th.

The criminal charges facing the Irish peace activists (Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Damien Moran & Ciaron O'Reilly) arise out of their non-violently disarming a US Navy Plane at Shannon Airport on Feb 3rd 2003.

This highly popular action had an immediate positive effect in reducing Ireland's complicity in war crimes as it led to a withdrawal (at that time) from Ireland of three of the four companies contracted to freight US troops and weapons through Shannon airport.

The Irish Government continues to facilitate the US Military at Shannon Airport with thousands of US troops transiting through Shannon to and from Iraq each month.

Does the introduction of PPP schemes into prison building also signal the introduction of private prisons? Security companies like Wackenhut and Group4 operate prisons in the UK and USA. Private prisons are routinely condemned by human rights groups. But what are the alternatives to building a new superprison in north Co. Dublin? What other options are open to the Minister for Justice?

In this short film, Joe Costello from the Labour Party (a regular commentator on prison issues and prisoners rights), Rick Lines from the Irish Penal Reform Trust, and Seanie Lambe from ICON (Inner City Organisations Network, a community organisation based in the Summerhill area) give their opinions on the closure of Mountjoy. Issues discussed include the implications of private companies' involvement in the construction of the new prison, what will probably happen with the existing site, and different initiatives that could be put forward to combat crime at its source, rather than continually incarcerating people & building bigger prisons.

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