Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Life for the people of Mogadishu continues to be more akin to hell than to, well, normality. A National Reconciliation meeting was due to be held in an attempt to get the various fighters talking around a table rather than shooting one another, but for the residents of Mogadishu life is tough. It is estimated that there are now far more weapons in the country than at any other time in the past seventeen years. It is not unknown for rockets to be fired at places where people gather, such as the main market. It is not uncommon for one of the various rebel groups to take pot-shots at the Ethiopian army, who frequently respond by spraying lethal fire at random, with no regard as to whether they might actually kill innocent civilians, which they often do. Road-blocks manned by various militias and bandits, each one demanding gratuities, are the bane of motorists’ lives. Little wonder then that some residents wish to flee to areas they perceive as safer, but which are often nothing of the sort, without any food or medical facilities.

The problem of refugees is one which is all too common in Africa and throughout the world, but Ireland would be able to provide a solution. Our Gardai Siochana would soon root out the involuntarily destitute and send them packing, especially if they dared come into this country and threaten the smug self-assuredness of racist middle-class mass goers by begging.

Brian Lenihan Jr, current Minister for Justice and former scholar of TCD expressed surprise and disappointment at a recent “passing out” ceremony at police headquarters because of the paucity of people from non-Irish backgrounds who were applying to join the police. Surely he knows that An Gardai Siochana as an institution is a hotbed of racism and prejudice and that anybody whose skin is any tinge of dark or who doesn’t speak with a Leitrim or Kerry accent is about as welcome there as a ”tague” would have been in the ranks of the old B-Specials or UDR.

Not all members of the Gardai are racist blockheads though. Some are involved in the laudable fight against people smuggling which is organised by international criminals whose modus operandi is all too transparent. They bring into the country a group of Roma gypsies or other “black bastards” whose activities absorb the Gardai who have to mount surveillance as well as video monitoring, thus leaving the field open for Irish criminals to indulge in drug-running and the settling of scores.

But I don’t want to pillory the boys in blue too much. Our national broadcasters are guilty not only of racism but of criminal naivety. On the day in which the police served members of the Roma community with deportation papers, they decided to get a comment from a spokesperson for the Romanian community in Ireland, obviously unaware of the fact that there is one hell of a difference between Roma and Romanian, and that the former have been suffering harrassment from the latter for generations. Naturally the spokesperson for the Romanian Community in Ireland was supportive of their expulsion.

If only the weather were better I might believe I was living in a banana republic.