Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I will raise two specific points, but before I get to them I will make some general remarks. Hate speech, racist speech and the kind of hatred spewed by those on the far right, which must be combated and fought and the best way to do that is by building a mass anti-racist and anti-fascist movement, is connected to the hate policies and state racism of the EU and the Irish Government. They are not two unrelated things. It is not the case that the EU can hypocritically say that it is against hate speech, and so on, over here, but over there treat migrants the way they are treated. I refer to turning the Mediterranean Sea into a graveyard of refugees because of the pursuit of Fortress Europe. Those are related things. They are even politically related because one legitimises the other. Let us consider what is happening now in the French presidential election campaign. The candidate of the supposed centre-right is chasing Le Pen and Zemmour in the race to be the most Islamophobic and anti-migrant, which, in turn, legitimises their discourse and allows them to go further to the right. I refer as well to the scenes we have seen in recent days in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, where a couple of thousand desperate refugees made it over the guard wire only to be mercilessly beaten by the Spanish police. Let us look at the Irish State's racist policies of direct provision, DP, and how people are treated in what are basically open prisons. There is a relationship between the two and it is utterly hypocritical not to see this.

Turning to the two specific points I wish to address, the first concerns an email we received from members of the Russian-speaking community here, which raises concerning points about the racism they are facing. The email made the point that the community is made up of all nationalities, including Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Armenians, Georgians and children of Russian-speaking parents. In the context of Putin's horrific invasion of Ukraine, the email states that these people's children have faced verbal and physical abuse from other pupils, that there has been verbal and physical abuse of members of the Russian-speaking community in workplaces and in public places and that a member of the Orthodox Church in Ireland had received threats and was verbally abused. It is vital that a message goes out that any sort of racism or discrimination directed against Russian-speaking or ethnically-Russian people here is to be condemned. It is, potentially, an unfortunate by-product of treating the Russian people collectively as being in some way responsible for Putin's crimes. The effect of having sanctions aimed at the people, as opposed to simply at the oligarchs, can be to legitimise that kind of behaviour, and a strong statement must be made in that regard.

My second and last point is a worrying one, about which new evidence has just emerged. I have repeatedly raised the issue of the racist discrimination concerning refugees fleeing from Ukraine. There definitely seems to be discrimination based on skin colour and on passports. This has previously been dismissed as a Russian disinformation campaign, despite it having been reported by CNN, Time, Voxand many other outlets. Credible stories have been reported of black people being separated into different queues and of being forced to wait much longer by elements of the Ukrainian military and by Polish border guards. I saw one story about people being forced to wait four days at the border and not being given anything to eat.

Unfortunately, the evidence that this is taking place is much stronger again today based on what Ukraine's envoy to the UK, ambassador Prystaiko, told a select committee at Westminster. What he said was extremely concerning:

Problems arise when young foreigners are prioritised over women and children of Ukrainian citizenship who are trying to get on the same trains. Maybe we will put all foreigners in some other place so they won’t be visible and there won’t be conflict with Ukrainians trying to flee in the same direction. This is something that has to be taken care of and we will be doing it.

It is vital that a strong statement comes from the Irish Government and the EU to say that all refugees are welcome, regardless of their skin colour and passport and that there should be no discrimination by the Ukrainian authorities, Polish border guards or any other EU border guards.

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