[Sinn Fein]

16th September 2002

Ógra Shinn Fein challenges racists

`The ideals of 1916 are being perverted in racist sticker campaign'

Ógra Shinn Fein this morning called for the immediate halting of a racist sticker campaign that began in Dublin city centre. ÓSF activists discovered these stickers, bearing racist slogans and attempting to link the 1916 Easter rising to the immigration issue, on the morning of Sunday 15th September in the north-inner city area of Dublin.

The stickers which were placed on lampposts and street signs bore slogans including `There were no Nigerians, Bosnians, Romanians in the G.P.O in 1916. Now its full of them collecting your money!' and `Free housing, clothes, buggies, hospitals, doctors, maternity, medicine, phones, credit, socialising money! Sorry, no Irish need apply! Just pay for it! Only Nigerians, Bosnians, Romanians!'. No organisational name was placed on the stickers.

Ógra Shinn Fein is calling for those behind these actions to stop immediately and challenge whoever is behind the campaign to a public debate on the issue of immigration.

This type of warped sentiment provides a pretext for racist attacks. Ireland, and Dublin in particular has seen a significant rise in racist attacks, both verbal and physical; these attacks have resulted in the racist murder of a number of peoples of different ethnic backgrounds.

A spokesperson from the Comhairle Náisiúnta of Ógra Shinn Fein stated ` The ideals of 1916 are being perverted in this racist sticker campaign. These racially motivated lies are dangerous and the people behind them need to come out and debate the issue instead of hiding behind xenophobic propaganda'

The cynical attempt to link the Easter rising of 1916 and the subsequent struggle for national liberation, with propaganda that promotes racism, is an intentional distortion of republican ideals. The republicans of 1916 pledged to `cherish all the children of the nation equally' and Ógra Shinn Fein fully supports that vision and the vision of a racially tolerant and accepting Ireland.

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