FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

Irish Cops Have Been Accused of Political Policing

They arrested eight anti-austerity activists who blockaded a minister's car.

Police at an anti-austerity protest in Dublin last year. Photo by Crispin Rodwell.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Accusations of "political policing" are flying in Ireland after four protesters were arrested yesterday. A further four were taken into custody today.

Paul Murphy, a Socialist Party TD (MP) for Dublin South-West, two anti-austerity Councillors, and a community activist were detained yesterday on suspicion of false imprisonment of Ireland's Labor Party leader, Joan Burton. The Minister for Social Protection had her car blocked for three hours last November during an anti-water charges protest in Jobstown, Tallaght—one of Dublin's most deprived areas.

Advertisement

Shortly after he was released without charge from a police station, Paul Murphy said, "It's very worrying. Especially when it involves a group of elected politicians. I plan on getting to the bottom of this. Questions need to be asked as to whether this was a political act." Joe Higgins, leader of the Irish Socialist Party, agreed, saying, "This is completely over the top political policing. The government should answer for it. The Labor Party should answer for it."

But on the face of it, keeping someone stuck in their car for hours sounds like something you might get arrested for whether it was part of a protest or not, so why are people getting so upset?

Firstly, there are the details of the investigation. According to a Garda source, the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) was drafted in to investigate the protest. Four full time police officers spent over two months monitoring more than 280 hours of CCTV, which had been collected from the Jobstown area. That seems like an awful lot of time and effort.

The first arrests resulting from that investigation included Murphy. He is one of the protests' main media faces, so that didn't do anything to calm any conspiracy theorists down. The other three arrested activists were fairly well known, too.

Then there's the wider background: the widening schism between the country's growing protest movement and established political parties.

Advertisement

In the last four months, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets under the umbrella of an anti-water charge movement. After years of Irish people accepting austerity with a resigned shrug, the sloppily handled privatization of Irish water, the increased charges, and the lack of transparency surrounding government tenders was a step too far. Deemed "sell outs" in Ireland's working class communities, Labor ministers have become the targets of small protests, mushrooming around the country. The Labour Party declined to issue any statement on the arrests, which fueled speculation about their political nature.

The Irish police force has also come in for criticism. By disrupting protests, it has helped implement the instillation of the unpopular water-meters. And when they erected barriers outside parliament at a recent anti-austerity protest, it seemed emblematic of a police force that defends a crappy government against unrest. I guess that's their job, but that's the context the recent arrests are part of.

And in a bitterly poetic piece of timing, the arrests of the Anti-Austerity Alliance Councillors and Murphy came hours after the Irish Times reported 20 Irish clients of HSBC's private bank in Switzerland made settlements with the Revenue Commission totalling €4.5 million ($5.09 million) in the Swiss Leaks tax-dodging scandal. The Commission was advised that it didn't have enough evidence to press criminal charges for tax-dodging in those cases, so the millionaires are still happily living in their mansions, despite a mammoth investigation. The irony cannot be lost on the Irish water charge protesters, struggling under cuts and tax hikes dished out by the Troika, and being hassled by the cops when they demonstrate.

I spoke to Addy Dillon, a 28-year-old protester, and he summed up the feelings of helplessness many young Irish people are now experiencing as politicians and police continue to disappoint. "The weakest I've ever felt in Ireland was on December 10 when the current government tried to deny my right to protest. The home of our parliament was completely blocked off by massive white barriers. Our elected representatives had walled themselves in with the help of the largest Garda (police) presence I've ever seen in the city center. [Yesterday], I felt just as powerless when I heard that Paul Murphy was detained for protesting the Tánaiste at Jobstown late last year," he said.

Murphy plans to go head to head with Labor leader Joan Burton this week in the Dail (Parliament) over his arrest. "I'm going to confront Joan Burton directly in leaders questions this week," he said. "I want to get the bottom of this. We need to find out if there was any interaction between the gardai and members of the government. We know that top ranking gardai knew I was going to be arrested but who were they in communication with? This has to be clarified and answers need to be provided."

Follow Norma on Twitter.