Who can end a months-long anti-immigrant blockade in Coolock?

About three weeks ago, Yazia Smyth was going to Beaumont Hospital to interpret for a friend who spoke Persian and Pashto. “He had an appointment,” she said.

She started the journey by bus. But she got off earlier than planned and called a cab, so that she wouldn’t have to walk by an anti-immigrant camp on Malahide Road in Coolock.

Smyth is Muslim and chooses to wear a hijab and a niqab, which covers all of her face but her eyes.

She had seen videos of people getting stopped outside the Coolock camp, questioned and filmed. She didn’t want that, she says.

“I’d seen on social media that they can be a little feisty with foreign people, Muslim people, Black people,” said Smyth on Saturday, sitting on the steps outside Fresh supermarket on Smithfield Square.

On the morning of Tuesday 2 July, the blockade outside a warehouse had wooden shacks, tents, a worn red couch, and tricolours. Anti-immigrant banners were hung all around.

On one of the shacks’ wooden doors, someone has written in black “420”, “appointment only”, “No Media”, “Knock”, “Beware dog inside”, and “Irish only”.

A poster for Kevin Coyle, who stood in the local election last month but didn’t win a seat was propped beside the old sofa. A “Coolock Says No” sticker was stuck on a traffic cone.

There was no one around. But it is often manned.

The activity started here in late March with a protest against housing asylum seekers in an empty warehouse. It drew in members of the National Party.

More than three months later, no one sounds certain about a solution that could end the stand-off. Meanwhile, people like Smyth try to avoid the area, and the government continues to struggle to find space to shelter those who come seeking asylum.

A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Equality said its community-engagement team held a meeting with local councillors and community leaders, after which it published a briefing document for local reps. They didn’t say when or mention any follow-up meetings.

“The Department condemns all acts of intimidation and criminality,” said the spokesperson. But that’s up to the Gardaí to deal with, they said.

A spokesperson for An Garda Síochána said it is aware of the situation but as it is mostly on private land, it can’t do much. “Occupancy of privately owned land is a civil matter,” they said.

A co-director for Genvest Unlimited Company, which owns the site, did not respond to a query sent on Friday and a text message sent on Monday about whether it planned to take any action against the blockade.

A spokesperson for Coolock Says No did not respond to queries sent on Thursday, including one asking if it was meeting with local reps or staff at the International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS) to work towards a solution for standing down the protest.

Active protest

In 2018, Genvest Unlimited applied for planning permission to knock down the Crown Paints warehouse on Malahide Road and build apartments, hotels, offices, retail units and a crèche.

An Bord Pleanála turned down the application because it was zoned for enterprise and jobs, according to the planning report.

The Coolock Says No group sometimes posts videos on social media of its members camping out on the property, cooking, eating and posing for photos. Sometimes, campaigners from outside Dublin join.

On 15 May, the group posted a picture of a man in a camouflage jacket and trousers with two dogs, saying he treks over from Carlow for “round-the-clock” shifts.

Later that month, the man, David Noonan, appeared in court along with eight others, charged for public-order offences for his role in a protest outside an asylum shelter in Ballyogan, leaving an elderly woman staffer stuck inside her car and unable to leave, and refusing to leave when Gardaí asked them.

Stephen Kavanagh, a litter enforcement manager at Dublin City Council (DCC), said the election poster on the Malahide Road camp is littering.

But “I am apprehensive in sending any Wardens to this area at the moment due to health and safety concerns”, he said. It’s the site of an active protest and not safe for his staff, said Kavanagh.

A spokesperson for Dublin City Council did not respond to a query sent last Wednesday asking about its policy about the other banners on site, especially those attached to traffic signage.

A banner at the encampment says the empty warehouse is going to be used to accommodate “over 1000 male migrants” and that the community is concerned about that.

A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Equality said it’s considering sheltering around 550 people in the building.

“The proposal is for modular units placed inside the warehouse, providing mixed use accommodation for families, couples, single adult males and single adult females,” they said.

But the blockade means it can’t access the site to prepare the space, the spokesperson said. “An estimated timeframe for opening cannot be provided because of ongoing blockades.”

Banners around the camp rail against how some asylum seekers turn up at the border without valid passports.

Yet those forced to migrate can face visa barriers. Authoritarian regimes can bar political activists from leaving their countries of birth by confiscating their passports, forcing them to take irregular routes to travel.

Other banners imply that the presence of asylum-seeking men will increase crime, a narrative debunked by study after study.

No easy solutions

Staff from Northside Partnership, a local community group, attended a briefing session with IPAS officials about the accommodation of asylum seekers in the area in April, says its CEO Paul Rogers.

It wasn’t a consultation meeting, he says, more a rundown of the status of different projects.

Rogers says he hasn’t heard much back since. He is unsure who is leading efforts to unblock the site, he said.

Northside Partnership can help integrate newcomers but isn’t really equipped to de-escalate a situation like the one on Malahide Road, he said.

He’s not going to send staff to the site, he said, because it’s tough to have a conversation with someone who may film it and upload it on social media with degrading commentary.

“I can’t have a rational conversation with someone in that context. It’s antagonistic,” said Rogers.

In April, anti-immigration accounts on Telegram and elsewhere posted a video of  BBC journalist and filmmaker Mobeen Azhar –  who was chatting to members of the Coolock Says No group – with a caption mocking his appearance.

Rogers said that going over to the camp and throwing facts at people would also not work because facts can rarely change made-up minds.

He says that the government should do better in educating, taking accountability and connecting with disenfranchised people, showing them that it’s not asylum seekers that have pushed them to the margins, but years and years of failed policies.

“The far-right are offering a very simplistic worldview for very complex issues, and you know, a lot of people are angry in relation to the housing crisis and growing poverty and inequality,” he said.

Of the area politicians, Sinn Féin Councillor Edel Moran and Fine Gael TD Richard Bruton responded to queries about what can be done to end the blockade.

Bruton said he knows there’s been some engagement with members of the local community about accommodating asylum seekers on Malahide Road.

“However, I do not know if engagement has extended to those who are holding the protest,” he said in an email.

Moran, the local Sinn Féin councillor, said in a text message that there’s no strategy to stop the blockade for now.

Her party is dusting itself off and organising post-election, she said. “Hopefully the Government will take positive steps ASAP to resolve this issue.”

Jesslyn Henry, the Social Democrats councillor for the area, wrote to a local resident in an email that only the owners can end the blockade through a court injunction.

She sees that as something that will happen but she is unsure when, she wrote, adding “for the moment at least, they seem to be there to stay”.

Rogers, the CEO of Northside Partnership, doesn’t see a court injunction as the solution. “That would obviously escalate things,” he said.

Smyth, the Muslim woman who recently got a cab to avoid the blockade, says the government is quick to haul away tents of homeless asylum seekers but not those serving as anti-immigrant camps.

“If they’re going around taking tents, you know, they should be going around in them places and taken them up as well,” she said.