Just a handful have been prosecuted in recent years for illegally revealing identities of people seeking asylum

Since January 2019, there have been fewer than 10 prosecutions for breaking the law that protects the privacy of asylum seekers, show figures from An Garda Síochána.

Though, anti-immigrant protestors often film asylum seekers outside centres and post the footage online.

Under Section 26 of the International Protection Act 2015, it is illegal to publish anything that causes someone to be identified as an asylum seeker without their consent.

Claire Hamilton, head of criminology in Maynooth University’s School of Law and Criminology – who used to be a criminal barrister – says it might be difficult for gardaí to prosecute someone successfully in these cases without victims’ help.

The offender might claim that they had consent, she says. “The cooperation of the victim would therefore be necessary on a practical level.”

Wariness among asylum seekers about coming onto the radar of Gardaí for any reason – even as the victim of a crime – may be one factor that can hinder that cooperation.

Somebody’s watching me

The exact number of prosecutions for illegally identifying an asylum seeker in the last five and a half years isn’t clear, nor are the penalties that have been issued.

On paper, breaking the law can lead to a fine, or imprisonment of up to 12 months, or both.

But when recorded cases are fewer than 10, Gardaí don’t give an exact figure, said the spokesperson.

A spokesperson for the Courts Service of Ireland said they can’t query the outcomes in the system either, as they enter these cases manually.  “And we cannot query on free text entries,” they said.

In any case, that handful of cases is, going by footage online, just a fraction of the times that people have been recorded illegally.

Ralph Mahlangu, who is seeking asylum here, says he was filmed twice in Dublin.

One time, he was killing time on the Ha’penny Bridge, waiting for a bus. Someone whipped out his phone to film and ask questions: “Where are you from? How did you come here?”

Another time, he’d come to Dublin for a gig. He works in theatre doing set and sound design, he says.

A few men in athleisure wear approached him, filming and asking question after question, Mahlangu says. “You can speak English. Did you stay in the UK?”

Mahlangu doesn’t know if those videos were uploaded online, he says. But at one point, he saw a photo of himself and his friends sitting outside their asylum shelter on Twitter.

That was when they stopped going out for strolls, he says. “They were saying on Twitter that they saw three suspicious men walking around. I knew it was us cause we used to walk.”

Until recently, Mahlangu says he didn’t know publishing his picture without consent was a crime. But he probably wouldn’t bother reporting it, he says.

He doesn’t want to invite any more complications into his life, he says. “In the back of my mind, something says I will be perceived as a troublemaker.”

Ian Marder, an assistant professor of criminology at Maynooth University, says victims might not come forward because they don’t know their faces are on the internet or that it’s a crime.

They may also think that coming forward jeopardises their safety or their asylum claim, he says.

Says Marder: “For every type of offence, there is a ‘dark figure’ of crime.” That’s the label for offences that do happen but are underreported to police, Marder said.

Mahlangu says he doesn’t want his name to crop up on the Gardaí’s crime incident database, even as a victim when the guards search for it during immigration-related vetting processes.

At one point in 2022, after a march in Dublin alongside members of the Movement of Asylum Seekers Ireland (MASI), someone came up to him and pulled out a knife from his pocket, Mahlangu says. “I had to run away.”

That time, Lucky Khambule of MASI encouraged him to report the incident to a hate crime reporting platform online.

But he didn’t go to the guards, fearful it would somehow turn troublesome for him, says Mahlangu. “I don’t even know. It’s just the fear of the unknown.”