By Donal Devlin
A 35-year-old Congolese man, Yves Sakila, was killed in Dublin City Centre on Friday, 15 May. Suspected of shoplifting, Yves was held down on the ground by five or six men for almost five minutes. One of these men knelt heavily on his neck and head. His cries of distress were ignored before he became motionless and died.
Yves is the second black man in Ireland to have been killed because he was suspected of a crime in the last five years.
Independent inquiry needed
This horrific killing was captured in a chilling video that has obvious similarities to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, an event that sparked the Black Lives Matter revolt. An independent inquiry must be conducted into all aspects that led to this killing. Any inquiry must be open and transparent and reflective of the diversity of the community, and fully accountable.
We send our solidarity and condolences to Yves’s friends and family and to the broader Congolese, African and black community, and to all racialised communities in Ireland. It will only add to an already deep sense of fear and trauma that many face in their daily lives.
The need to build an anti-racist movement in our communities, workplaces and colleges has never been more urgent.
Ahern’s vile comments
Yves’s killing takes place at a time when the far right is on the rise, adding to this climate of fear and the threat of abuse and violence. Shamefully, the parties of Ireland’s political establishment have sought to echo the talking points of the far right on the question of immigration. Days before his killing, a video from a Fianna Fáil canvass was released showing disgraced former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern saying:
“The ones I worry about are the Africans”, and the “next generation” of Muslims, and saying specifically: “We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places. I think there’s too many from those places.”
This canvas was part of a Dublin Central by-election campaign, the same constituency where Yves was killed. The proliferation of such disgusting, racist tropes will inevitably create a climate of further dehumanisation of black people, which was a key factor in this horrific crime.
At a vigil held on Tuesday, members of the Congolese community correctly called out Ahern for his comments and their connection to the circumstances of Yves’s death. Despite a mild rebuke from Micheál Martin, Fianna Fáil has shamefully tried to downplay Ahern’s comments. The day after the vigil, Ahern appeared in a social media video alongside John Stephens, the FF candidate in Dublin Central, endorsing his campaign.
Racism in Ireland
Yves had lived in Ireland since 2004, a state where racism has unfortunately always been widespread. A report from October 2019 found that Ireland was the worst state in the EU for racial violence based on skin colour. Racist violence – both physical and verbal – is something that people from racialised communities face on an almost daily basis. Racial profiling is also something that people of colour experience in their day-to-day lives, including when shopping and more generally.
One source of this discriminatory view is the state. This can be seen with the system of direct provision for asylum seekers, where they are effectively imprisoned by the state. An internal Garda report from August 2020 revealed that 30% of members of the Gardaí have negative views of black Africans. It also found that not a single Garda surveyed had a positive attitude toward Travellers. This was an important context to understand the killing of George Nkencho, a young black man shot dead by Gardaí in December 2020 while going through a mental health crisis.
Justice for Yves
Those responsible for Yves’s death must be held to account. Justice for Yves also must mean more than this. We cannot accept a society where racist violence is tolerated, be it from the far-right, the main capitalist parties, or the state itself. This is, unfortunately, what is occurring at the moment. Noxious hate is spreading, and the forces that propagate it are becoming more emboldened. Ireland is reflecting a worrying global trend.
A capitalist system historically built on racism, white supremacy, inequality and division is creating the fertile soil for these ideas to grow – hence the emergence of Trump, Farage and Milei. These figures, with their ties to the billionaire elite, and their co-thinkers in the far right and fascist movement, would have us look at immigrants and racialised folk as the source of our collective suffering rather than those at the top fuelling the cost of living and housing crises, war, and the underfunding of public services.
If the working class and the oppressed in all of our diversity challenge their rule, we can take the wealth in society and use it to provide for the good of all, rather than the enrichment of a tiny elite who would stoke racism to turn us against each other. The time to act is now; the urgency for a radical socialist alternative is now greater than ever.
