Below we reproduce the statement by Clara Reilly of the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets from the North of Ireland who addressed a press conference on how the ‘use of plastic bullets will fuel racial tensions’. ‘In situations of conflict, security forces around the world have developed various methods of controlling and suppressing legitimate political
Freedom of speech and laws prohibiting incitement to racial, religious and other forms of hatred are not incompatible if we move away from absolutist definitions. When the so-called racism paragraph (§ 135 (a) in the Norwegian General Civil Penal Code) was first introduced in 1970, it was as a direct result of Norway’s adoption of
The fall-out from Breivik’s attacks finds yet more victims. It is nearly three months since the Oslo massacre. Politicians have focused on the need to modify their language, with the extreme-Right Progress Party (FrP, which scored its worst result in twenty years in the September local elections) indicating that it will modify its stance.(The message
Screenings of Mickey B followed by a panel discussion and a Q&A session. Friday 30 September 2011, 1pm-3pm (school screening); 8pm (evening screening) Playhouse Theatre, 5-7 Artillery Street, Derry BT48 6RG Q&A discussion following school screening: Tom Magill – Writer/director Sam McClean – Duncan in Mickey B Panel discussion following evening screening: Professor Phil Scraton
Larne House, the first detention centre in Northern Ireland, has opened. The opening of the first purpose-built immigration detention centre in Northern Ireland this month, is a sad day as it will expand the detention estate once again. But we can resist the simultaneous expansion of our own mental barriers against human equality and freedom,
IRR has, since 1989, been recording the deaths of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants – two of the most vulnerable sections of our society – as a result of attempting to enter the UK, self-harm, denial of medical treatment, destitution, hazardous working conditions or racist attacks. Forced by circumstances beyond their control to seek a
A new book on Irish racism explains how racial violence in the North cannot be combated without dismantling state racism. Anyone who reads IRR News will be aware of the serious level of racial violence in the North of Ireland. In fact it was Bill Rolston writing for IRR News who first explained how to
A letter from an anti-racist worker in Oslo warns of the dangerous anti-Muslim climate in Norway in the context of the Danish cartoon debate. Dear IRR News, We are experiencing extreme times here at the moment. After a Christian fundamentalist paper printed the drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, things have been on the far side
What lies behind the recent spate of racist attacks on Africans and Asians in the Village, a Unionist stronghold in south Belfast? On 6 February 2004 the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) announced that it had stood down its commander in the Village area of South Belfast. Such a move is rare among the North’s loyalist
Cathal Hannan, aged 12, and Connor Scullion, 16, two young journalists from the Children’s Express group in Belfast, write about the experiences of their Muslim friends in the city after September 11: The ‘war on terror’ is now well under way, yet those signs that are presented to us in the West as positive, are
