Ireland’s Black community opens up about racism after ‘George Floyd moment’

Last month, 40-year-old Emer O’Neill, a Black Irish woman, was racially insulted three times.

Teenagers in her town south of Dublin shouted, “Go back to your country!” at her, she was rudely asked by a man whether she spoke English, and she was called the n-word at a local pub – all in the space of two weeks.

“I don’t have another country to go to. This is my country,” said O’Neill, an activist and broadcaster who in recent years has presented Dublin’s St Patrick’s Day parade for Ireland’s national television channel, RTE.

Days later, she found herself shaking with emotion while singing at an event to remember Yves Sakila, a 35-year-old who was killed on May 15 outside Arnotts, a department store in central Dublin. In video footage by bystanders, the shop’s security guards who restrained him appear to have placed their knees on his neck for more than four minutes.

Sakila, an Irish national, immigrated from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) when he was 13. The death has been dubbed Ireland’s George Floyd moment, reminiscent of the 2020 killing of the 46-year-old Black man in the US state of Minnesota at the hands of white police that set off mass antiracism protests.

Sakila was allegedly suspected of shoplifting and is said to have accidentally knocked down a man when rushing out of the department store. Police arrived and handcuffed him. They performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) when they saw he was unwell, but he was later pronounced dead at Dublin’s Mater Hospital.

As a teenager, he struggled when his adoptive parents separated, and at the time of his death, he had been living on the streets.

“He landed in care services at 16, but he never got back to normal. Even though his adopted mother wanted to bring him home, he wanted freedom,” said Lassane Ouedraogo of Africa Solidarity Centre, who first met him five years ago. Like other homeless people, Sakila was being supported by the diaspora-led organisation.