Ireland: Afghan asylum seekers removed from cathedral
01 May 2006
On 14 May 38 Afghan men and youths who are seeking refugee status in Ireland occupied St Patrick's cathedral in Dublin city centre and began a hunger strike in despair at the asylum application process. The group, which included seven minors, staged the action to protest against moves to return them to Afghanistan which has become a "land of warlords and payees of foreign powers", according to Mehmooda Sheikibam, an activist with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in the country. She continued:
All of the fundamentalist bands, including Taliban, were created, funded and trained by the CIA, turning a blind eye to the higher interests of the Afghan people and to the consequences of such sinister support to the fate of freedom and democracy in our country...Afghans will not see as their "liberators" those who drove the Taliban wolves through one door and unchained the rabid dogs of the Northern Alliance through another.
In a recent statement (16 May) Amnesty International stated that it believed:
conditions in Afghanistan are generally adverse to the return of rejected asylum-seekers as there are no sufficient guarantees ensuring that such returns are safe and dignified"
Nonetheless, after a week long impasse at the cathedral, during which the asylum seekers had threatened to kill themselves rather than be forced to return, a large force from the Irish police's (
Garda Siochana) Public Order Unit arrived and removed the protestors. The Church of Ireland said that it had been instructed by the Department of Justice to desist from all negotiations with the asylum seekers, and that the department had rejected a series of proposals agreed between church officials and the hunger-strikers. The minors, who had earlier been made wards of court, were the first to leave the building and were taken away by ambulance. It took several hours of negotiation before the men came out and they were taken to a special sitting of the Bridewell court. The men said did not leave voluntarily, but did not resist. All of the men were remanded on bail until their court hearings.
Irish Anti War Movement "Irish anti War Movement supports the Afghan asylum seekers on hunger strike in St Patrick's Cathedral", 15.5.06, IAWM, PO Box 9260, Dublin 1, Ireland, Amnesty International "AI Requests Irish Government Not to Return Afghan Asylum Seekers, Public Statement", 16.5.04; Indymedia Ireland, http://www.indymedia.ie