Volunteers supporting homeless male asylum seekers sleeping rough in Dublin are remaining with them overnight amid concerns about further violent attacks and rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the city.
Though rough-sleeping international protection applicants (IPAs) have faced intimidation, including verbal abuse and being filmed and photographed without their consent, since the current accommodation crisis for male IPAs began last December, there is concern at the growing level of threat.
While some volunteers are now staying into the morning, others feel they cannot and should not take on the responsibility of guarding them.
On Thursday night, following a spate of incidents including tents being slashed and thrown into the river Liffey, volunteers remained at the latest encampment, in Dublin 4, until early Friday morning.
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“I was there until after 3am,” a volunteer who gave her name only as Claire told The Irish Times. “There was some verbal abuse at about 1.30am and the guys were so scared. There were about 20 men camped there and some didn’t sleep all night.
“We feel it’s important to be a presence there, in solidarity with the men so they feel there are Irish people who want them to feel welcome and safe, and who will stand with them.”
The one-night encampment followed another on nearby St Mary’s Road on Wednesday night, one on City Quay on Tuesday and others in the Phoenix Park, Phibsborough and at Charlemont Place near Ranelagh.
On Tuesday the tents of 15 men on City Quay were allegedly attacked by men with knives and pipes. Some men’s tents and bags were thrown into the Liffey after the men ran for safety to nearby Pearse Street Garda station.
The previous night, in Phibsborough, at about the same time as serious disturbances were unfolding at the site of a former factory building earmarked for asylum seeker accommodation in Coolock, a group of men, some of whom were masked, targeted tents occupied by about 15 asylum seekers. Members of the group reportedly shouted abuse at the men who had set up tents in Shandon Gardens park near the Royal Canal.
Anticipating heightened tension in Dublin on Friday night as the Garda Public Order Unit prepares for further anti-immigrant disturbances in Coolock, volunteers were advising men to find less visible locations to camp.
“The abuse and intimidation has always been there, wherever the men camp, but it has been slowly building and is getting worse,” said volunteer Olivia Headon. “Since February people have been coming up to the camps, verbally abusing men, but they haven’t come into the camps.
“That increased to people throwing potatoes and eggs, and urinating on the tents. Now there is more violence. There is a sense that when people see what’s going in Coolock, that that somehow gives permission to be more extreme – to slash tents, use hurls and pipes, throw tents in the river.”
The latest data from the Department of Children and Integration show there were 2,399 male asylum seekers “awaiting offer of accommodation” on Friday – one less than on Tuesday.
Since December 4th, when the department announced it would no longer offer accommodation to this cohort, 4,401 have presented to apply for asylum, of whom 421 were offered accommodation following a “vulnerability triage”; 1,581 have “subsequently” been offered accommodation and 3,980 have received a “contingency payment in lieu of accommodation” of €113.80 per week.
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