Madam, - I write on behalf of the 2,100 Irish missionaries working abroad, to protest most strenuously at the treatment of a Nigerian parish priest, Fr John Achebe, who was humiliated beyond belief by Irish immigration personnel on his arrival at Dublin airport on September 9th.
At the Irish Missionary Union we have to go back decades to uncover similarly inhumane treatment being meted out to an Irish missionary going into any one of the 83 countries where we minister. Are we now to expect such treatment in Nigeria or elsewhere when we are returning from holiday in Ireland?
With all of his documents in order to visit a friend here in Ireland, Fr John was detained at the airport and taken to Cloverhill prison, where he was publicly stripped and had his clothes swapped for prison apparel. He would have been deported back to Istanbul except for the intervention of the Nigerian ambassador. This violation of the basic human rights of Fr John could have been avoided by simply checking on the internet, where it clearly states that Fr John is the parish priest of Onitsha in Nigeria. With all our overseas civil and religious contacts, even a call to the Irish Missionary Union or to any of the considerable number of Church organisations serving immigrants could have resolved the problem in less than five minutes.
I write to object to the treatment of Fr John, not because he is a priest, but because he is a human being. This incident leads me to ask: how many voiceless immigrants, who do not have the contacts or the support that Fr John has, have been violated and humiliated in this way? I call on the Department of Justice to review its inadequate training for our immigration and prison personnel to ensure that such an incident never takes place again.
Anyone who knows anything about Africa is aware that throughout that continent there is a totally different cultural understanding of family relationships to what we take for granted in the West. It is obvious that the immigration officer involved in this incident had no idea of this reality when Fr John said he was both a "brother" and a "cousin" to the person he was visiting. Also, any of us would be embarrassed at being forced to strip in public; but for an African, such an act goes well beyond embarrassment; you are talking about total humiliation and disdain in forcing an African to strip in front of other Africans, and even more so in front of white people. Why are such basic cultural differences not respected among the employees of the Department of Justice?
I regret that the Ireland of a hundred thousand welcomes took a battering last week at Dublin Airport and in Cloverhill prison. How many more batterings does it have to take before someone addresses these violations of basic human rights? I call on the Minister for Justice to thoroughly investigate this incident, to apologise to Fr John for this treatment and, even more importantly, to put in place systems that will ensure that the basic human rights of all visitors to Ireland - especially the rights of those who have no voice - are valued and respected. - Yours, etc,
Fr EAMON AYLWARD, Executive Secretary, Irish Missionary Union, Mount Argus, Dublin 6W.