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Indians no longer feel safe in Ireland after a series of alleged racist attacks on them, a community leader has warned.
Businessman and former election candidate Roopesh Panicker, who has lived in Ireland for 15 years, told us he won’t even allow his young girl to get a bus to school over fears she could be attacked. He said: “Even I am worried. My daughter wanted to go to school this year on a bus. I said, ‘No, I’m not sending you in a bus’.
“She has to walk from here, from home to the bus stop, and then again, from the stop to the school.” And Mr Panicker said he now regrets staying here – when he had a chance for a new life in America.
He added: “It’s not a safe country. I also sometimes feel regret, because my wife had a US Green Card approved and that was three or four years back. We said, ‘No, we don’t want to go. We want to live in Ireland, it is our home’. But now I regret that.”
He was speaking after a litany of alleged racial attacks on Indian people in Ireland. That includes an incident in Waterford City last week where the family of six-year-old Nia Naveen say she was assaulted by a gang of kids and called a “dirty Indian” – before being told to go back to that country.
Her mother Anupa Achuthan said: “I do not feel safe here, even in front of our own house we believe she can’t play safely. I feel so sad for her. I could not protect her. I never expected that such an incident would happen. I thought she would be safe here.”
Gardai say they are investigating an alleged assault in relation to that incident. And on Wednesday, Indian Laxman Das, a father of two and a sous chef at the Anantara restaurant at The Marker hotel in Dublin was targeted by a gang of three males.
After wrestling him off his bike at Charlemont Place in south Dublin, the gang, in Mr Das’ words, were “relentless” and started beating him, causing his helmet to break. Mr Das, who has lived in Ireland for 22 years and is an Irish citizen, said that his phone, cash and electric bike were stolen.
He was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital following the assault and was discharged at approximately 9pm on August 6. And in July another Indian suffered a brutal gang attack in Tallaght in south Dublin – that left him bloodied and terrified.
Now, Mr Panicker – who ran in the local elections in south Dublin last year – says more and more Indians are worried they will also be targeted here. He said: ” I used to go to Dublin City at one o’clock and in the night. But now I’m scared. Nobody wants to leave their kids alone anywhere. Everyone is watching their back. What is happening? People are too scared.
“This will not stop until and unless the government acts on it. We know that it is teenagers involved and the law is weak. There is no punishment.
“That doesn’t mean put them in jail. There has to be some kind of this rehabilitation program. You need to educate those kids.”
He also said that he has noticed an increase in racism in Ireland in the last few years. He added: “For the first 10 years [in Ireland] I have not felt anything. But in the past two to three years things have changed very dramatically.”
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