Database records 97 racist incidents in 2½ months

A black African teenager was hit with a hurley and verbally abused in her garden in one of 97 racist incidents reported to an online database in the first 2½ months after it went live.

A complaint made to iReport, an online database managed by the European Network Against Racism, said the girl and her family had been racially abused by a neighbour on several occasions and that the family was threatened with arson if the children played outside.

Of the 97 racist incidents reported between July 11th, 2013, when the iReport database went live, and September 30th, 2013, almost two-thirds involved physical threat (52 per cent) or physical assault (13.5 per cent).

Other recorded incidents reported to the network included:

A Muslim man who required medical attention after teenagers threw beer bottles at him while shouting racist abuse, including slurs on his religion, in an attack which occurred in Limerick;

A group of Muslims attending a prayer service in Cork who were severely beaten with sticks by a group of men who had travelled by car to the area to carry out the attack;

Six people reported being spat at, including a victim who experienced being spat at on several occasions in Galway city.

The highest proportion of racist incidents were perpetrated against people of black African backgrounds, followed by people of Asian or Chinese ethnicity.

Around half of the reported incidents occurred in the Greater Dublin Area, while 12 incidents occurred in Limerick.

Almost three-quarters of the reported incidents occurred in the first nine months of the year: 57 per cent occurred in the 2½ months after the database first went online on July 11th.

Just over a quarter of the reported cases related to incidents which occurred prior to 2013, something the report pointed to as being “important . . . (as) it points to the severe impact of such incidents on victims and witnesses, which can last for years, and the absence of other appropriate reporting systems”.

The iReport website is managed by the network which co-ordinates 30 anti-racism organisations in Ireland. As well as capturing incidents reported to these agencies, individuals can also report racist incidents online at ireport.ie