Big Trouble In Little Africa

Following recent reports of racially motivated attacks in both Dublin and Waterford, friends and representatives of the African community on Parnell St. in Dublin city centre have alleged that similar incidents in their area have not been satisfactorily investigated by Gardam.

On the night of Sunday April 30th last, there was a widely reported violent clash between customers in The Blue Lion pub on Parnell Street and staff in the Infinity Ventures shop, owned by Kola Ojewale, a Nigerian man who has lived in Ireland for the past three years. Gardam questioned a number of people about the incident, but no arrests were made.
According to one eyewitness account, the trouble began when a man walked up to a black guy in a car on Parnell St and started roaring insults at him, calling him a monkey and a nigger and saying, Come on and fight with me . When he did not get satisfaction, he walked back into The Blue Lion pub and brought his mates onto the street with several pint glasses and bottles and started throwing them at Infinity Ventures.
As soon as the first glass was thrown, a girl, also a resident of the area, rang the police in O Connell Street, informing them of the trouble. According to her account, the police did not arrive for another 15 minutes, during which time three or four men continued to throw pint glasses at the shop.
Eventually one of the customers coming out of the shop threw a pint glass back across the street in a spirit of self defence, or You can t treat us like this , recounts hotpress source. Then the men retreated into the Blue Lion, got approximately 15 friends and four pool cues, walked across the street, destroyed the shop and assaulted the woman who was serving behind the counter. The men then left the shop and walked back into The Blue Lion. The proprietors of the Blue Lion pulled down and locked all the shutters. The police turned up then and drew their batons and had their dogs, standing in a line against the Africans in this shop, who were just customers, who themselves had been attacked.
In the days after the violence, Mr Gabriel Olu Ohkenla of the Pan African Organisation, which represents African business interests in Ireland, called on the government to take urgent action, and expressed fears that Ireland was following in the steps of countries like Germany, England and America, where racial attacks are commonplace.
For his part, Kola Ojewale told reporters that, I m beginning to wonder if the best thing to do is to close the shop for the safety of my wife and children.
hotpress source maintains that he and some companions visited the police station immediately after the trouble, sought out the highest ranking officer we could find and said, We wish to make a statement: we saw what happened, the guys committed a racist attack and they re in the pub. And the police basically laughed at us and did not take a statement from us. They have never spoken to any of us since.
When contacted by hotpress, a Garda spokesman had this to say:
"We've conducted a very thorough investigation into that incident and interviewed a large number of people in connection with it. The matter's still under investigation, it's an ongoing thing and we're happy that we've talked to anyone that we want to talk about it, but if anyone feels they can add more, they can come forward and talk to us. They [the investigating Gardam] got an awful lot of names out of it and some of the names were actually false, some other people didn't want to get involved and refused to co-operate. They've done a huge job on this and they're expecting it to end up in court at some stage, but they're fairly upset to think that somebody would say that they didn't bother to get onto them."
Meanwhile, according to the Sinn Fiin news website, in the days following the incidents, the landlord of a pub on Parnell Street, known to be supportive of the African businesses in the area, blamed the trouble on Sunday World allegations of a Nigerian-run protection racket.