{"id":481022,"date":"2026-06-03T13:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T13:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/481022\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T13:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T13:58:08","slug":"how-the-death-of-yves-sakila-exposes-irelands-deeply-rooted-racism-problem-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/481022\/","title":{"rendered":"How the death of Yves Sakila exposes Ireland\u2019s deeply rooted racism problem | Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. On a Dublin street two weeks ago, Yves Sakila died. The 35-year-old, who was of Congolese origin, was pinned down<\/a> by security guards for almost five minutes after being accused of shoplifting a bottle of perfume from a department store. When the police arrived, Sakila was dead. I spoke to Dr Ebun Joseph, special rapporteur on racial equality and racism in Ireland, about what is being called Ireland\u2019s \u201cGeorge Floyd moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

The impact of Yves Sakila\u2019s death continues to reverberate across Ireland<\/a>. Joseph was appointed to give an independent evaluation of the government\u2019s National Action Plan Against Racism, days after several protests and a vigil in Dublin. I ask her what the mood is among Black communities in Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The incident] has brought a lot of fear and disappointment. We thought we had come a long way in our activism and challenge of injustice and racism, only to find that we are still in the same place,\u201d she tells me.<\/p>\n

Fear and discourse \u2026 People taking part in a protest outside Leinster House, Dublin. Photograph: Cillian Sherlock\/PA<\/p>\n

Sakila\u2019s death has shaken a widespread assumption that Ireland is to some degree immune to the violent excesses of countries such as the United States. Joseph suggests that there is thought to be a degree of Irish exceptionalism around race, due to its colonisation by the British. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t happen in Ireland,\u201d Joseph says. She also questions the reactions of bystanders, who she describes as \u201cdesensitised\u201d. \u201cI couldn\u2019t hear people say, \u2018No, stop, enough\u2019, over 4 minutes and 44 seconds. That needs to be etched in our memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph expresses frustration and mistrust towards the state\u2019s response to Sakila\u2019s death. The postmortem was inconclusive, and the Garda, Ireland\u2019s police force, repeated claims that Sakila knocked an elderly man to the ground as he ran from security. Joseph feels these claims served as a distraction from Sakila\u2019s death. She and others have been attacked online, she tells me, by people saying: \u201c\u2018You\u2019re talking about someone who was a thief, you\u2019re not asking about the old man who was knocked down.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph feels that there is insufficient evidence to back these claims. \u201cIt would be great if we could believe what we hear,\u201d she tells me. But there is little trust and a lot of controversy. Discouraging speculation, Joseph is focused on what is verifiable from the footage<\/a>: that five security officers restrained Sakila with what appears to be excessive force, leading to his death. Given this, Joseph asks, how can a postmortem be inconclusive?<\/p>\n

False equivocation<\/p>\n

Bad faith discourse \u2026 asylum seekers walk past tents outside the International Protection Office in Dublin. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Joseph says that Irish racism is insidious because it is often couched in concerns about immigration, and housing scarcity \u2013 which immigrants are blamed<\/a> for. There\u2019s a clear dishonesty in conflating these issues. Joseph points out that Ireland\u2019s largest immigrant population comes from the UK, telling me that white immigrants are treated as \u201cmore welcome, more acceptable\u201d than arrivals from majority-Black countries. \u201cIf we\u2019re not complaining about immigration from the UK, then it shows us that immigration is not the problem. It is about a set of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

I tell Joseph that it seems like the mood in Ireland has declined quite rapidly. \u201cTruly,\u201d she agrees, \u201cit has got much worse.\u201d Reporting on racist hate crime in Ireland is scant, however last year a series of attacks<\/a> terrified immigrant communities in Dublin, followed by violent protests outside asylum hotels<\/a>. Joseph tells me that this anti-immigration hostility has led to a generalised sense of \u201cunsafety and insecurity\u201d among Black people. Whether you are an immigrant or not, she points out that hostility chooses you \u201cbased on your skin colour\u201d. At the time of Sakila\u2019s death, he had been living in Ireland for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n

A reckoning on Irish racism?<\/p>\n

Systemic inconsistencies \u2026 the Democratic Republic of Congo foreign minister, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Kayikwamba Wagner, with the Irish president, Catherine Connolly. Photograph: President of Ireland<\/p>\n

Joseph feels that Ireland\u2019s racism problem runs deep<\/a> \u2013 all the way to the heart of the establishment. Yet there is no widespread acknowledgment that there is a serious racism crisis in the country. \u201cYou cannot fix what you don\u2019t accept, what you can\u2019t name, what you don\u2019t identify,\u201d Joseph tells me. \u201cEven in high places, in government offices \u2013 people who should know better \u2013 they still argue,\u201d she says, with some claiming that racism isn\u2019t real. When she has shown peers and colleagues the racist abuse she receives online, some have dismissed them as bots from the US. \u201cDenial is a major problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Might the distressing death of Sakila finally force things out in the open, and trigger a reckoning on Ireland\u2019s racism? Joseph tells me that she hopes that it might serve as a wake-up call. But I can hear the doubt in her voice. Her misgivings soon surface, mainly around the inevitable backlash that Black people would probably face. \u201cThere is a major price to pay for speaking out,\u201d she tells me. \u201cYou are silenced, challenged, you\u2019re accused of not being grateful. Why should we be grateful when racism \u2013 personal and structural \u2013 is still happening in your face?\u201d<\/p>\n

But I hear Joseph\u2019s sense of hope break through when she speaks of the younger generation of Black Irish people. She notices a sense of confidence and ownership when they discuss Irishness and their identities. \u201cA lot of young Black people are speaking up about their experiences of racism. They are not stopping. But resilience should not take the place of accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until that accountability comes, Joseph says, Black Irish people know that what happened to Sakila was not an anomaly. It does happen in Ireland. The country now joins a grim roll call of others that have faced their own watershed deaths. It remains a distressing, repetitive pattern: that societies are only forced to confront their systemic racism once a Black person dies in plain sight.<\/p>\n

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Are you Black and Irish? What is your experience of race in Ireland? Share by emailing us at thelongwave@theguardian.com<\/a> and we may include your response in a future issue.<\/p>\n