Anti-immigration protests paralyze central Dublin

May 8, 2024 Vaseline stjohnson 0

The past year has seen growing tensions on the island of Ireland over how to accommodate migrants as the issue is increasingly exploited by the far right.

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Hundreds of protesters marched through central Dublin with signs against immigration to Ireland.

They were greeted by a small counter-protest, with police officers blocking the two groups as they exchanged chants.

The march, which began shortly after 2.30pm, was made up of protesters carrying Irish flags and chanting “our streets”.

The demonstration took 45 minutes to travel through the streets of the Irish capital, causing traffic disruptions.

The protest is the latest in a series of increasingly high-profile anti-immigration demonstrations in Ireland, whose migration and integration policies have come under intense strain over the past year.

In the summer of 2023, a group of migrants sleeping in tents in Dublin city center were chased by a mob who set fire to their camp.

A few months later, a major riot broke out nearby when a man of Algerian descent – ​​who has been in Ireland for 20 years – stabbed several people outside a school in the capital. The resulting violence was blamed on far-right instigators who have sought to exploit the country’s chronic housing shortage to stoke grievance against non-Irish residents, particularly Muslims and newcomers.

Irish police last week cleared a “tent city” of asylum seekers and unhoused migrants on a Dublin street, but another has already sprung up along the city’s Grand Canal.

Meanwhile, Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee has said there has been a significant increase in the number of asylum seekers crossing into Ireland from Northern Ireland in recent months.

Many of those arriving apparently fear being sent to Rwanda under a new British government plan to process asylum claims in the African country before allowing entry to any successful applicants.

The Irish government has proposed sending some of those arriving across the UK-Ireland land border back to confront British authorities, but the UK government has refused to discuss the proposal, saying it does not will accept immigrants from any EU country, including Ireland.