TEN DAYS after the killing of two Polish men in Dublin, Ireland's sizeable Polish community is still trying to comes to terms with the attack, a meeting of Polish, Slovak, Latvian and Irish community leaders and journalists heard yesterday.
The Polish community in Ireland was confused about the questioning and subsequent release of people after the killings of Pawel Kalite and Marius Szwajkos in Drimnagh, said Lukasz Rynkowski, a journalist with the Polska Gazeta, who chaired yesterday's meeting at the newspaper's Dublin offices.
Mr Kalite and Mr Szwajkos died after being attacked with a screwdriver.
To date, no one has been charged over their deaths.
"We're trying to figure out what really happened out there," said Mr Rynkowski, who said he had fielded calls from people who claimed to have information about the attack.
Insp Colm Healey, a community relations officer based at Harcourt Street Garda station who attended the meeting, urged those people to contact the Garda.
He said it was important for the Polish community to understand that it was normal for people to be released and briefs to be forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions before any charges were laid.
Polish community members may be reluctant to speak to the Garda because of an "understandable" lack of trust in authority based on their experiences with police in Poland, said a statement from the Dublin-based Polish Information and Culture Centre.
Insp Healey said migrants need have no such fears in Ireland.
"We are an unarmed police force and very proud of it," he said. "We are community-based . . . come forward to us and we'll deal with it," he said.
Philip Watt, director of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Integration, said there was nothing so far to suggest that the killings were racially motivated. Nevertheless, the Irish and Polish communities in areas like Drimnagh and Ballymun needed help to learn to live together, said Mr Rynkowski.
He said that most Polish people living in Ireland had experienced racism.
It was common in areas like Ballymun, he said. Magdalena Czenczek, a board member with the Polish Information and Culture Centre, said the media could portray the Polish community in Ireland as humans rather than just workers.
"The media uses the term 'workers' to describe Polish people," she said. "It's always 'two Polish workers'. Don't you think it's not really relevant? It's not two workers who died - it's two people," she said.
The Polish embassy in Dublin yesterday said there were 200,000 - 250,000 Poles living in Ireland.