While Senator Eileen Flynn isn’t exactly famous for her wise choice of words, the comments she made about the death of Yves Sakila are shocking in the extreme.
While speaking to a crowd gathered at Dublin’s Merrion Square yesterday, she made what can only be described as incredibly irresponsible and dangerous comments, which would have been deeply ill-advised coming from just about anyone. Coming from the lips of an elected representative, they are simply disgraceful.
Flynn claimed, without evidence, that Sakila was “murdered”, despite postmortem results being inconclusive as to his cause of death and having found no visible injuries on his body or “any signs of foul play” according to a report in the Irish Mirror this morning.
Incredibly, Flynn claimed that “seven men” had “murdered a black man” before saying that “we have to ask ourselves” if this would have happened were he white.
These deeply irresponsible comments were delivered alongside Flynn boasting about her efforts to introduce “hate crime legislation” while accusing men, whose faces are all over the internet, of murder – outside of the Dáil.
Whoever advises Flynn might want to brief her on what incitement to violence means. She also correctly says that security staff should not be the ones to hand out “justice” in the midst of a tirade that completely compromises our justice system, to which she also makes a direct reference.
Flynn has already tried and found the security men guilty – most likely ordinary working-class men who have no platform to defend themselves from these accusations.
She doesn’t seem to have one single thought for the men, some of whom are understood to be migrants, or their families, although she habitually pontificates about acceptance and understanding from her exalted position in the Seanad while painting herself as the eternal victim of one form of prejudice or another – the irony!
Professional race grievance expert Ebun Joseph was also on the scene, wasting no time in trying to make the incident about race. No evidence required here either.
I find it deeply ironic, and frankly dishonest, that when a black person does something wrong in Ireland, people like Flynn and Joseph are nowhere to be seen, but once there is a whiff of suspected wrongdoing where a black person appears to be the injured party, the brass band swings into action and Irish society is held collectively responsible.
The double standard is very plain to see: nobody should be held collectively responsible for anything, but it seems as though this consideration evaporates depending on the subject.
Sakila had a criminal record dating back to 2011 with over 50 convictions to his name, but none of this seems to warrant consideration here.
Speaking at Buswells Hotel, Fine Gael councillor Yemi Adenuga claimed that “democracy has failed” Sakila before going on to lament the death of George Nkencho, who she says was a “young man with [a] mental health crisis” who died “in an encounter with Gardaí”.
She seems to have forgotten that the “encounter” involved his lunging at the officers, who had made sustained efforts to bring him under control, with a knife, after he seriously injured an innocent man. Memories are short when there is a narrative to be peddled.
There was no public outcry over the death of Romanian father Dan Andrei Alexuc, who died after he was restrained outside Bad Bob’s in Dublin late last year.
As reported, “The opening of an inquest into Mr Alexuc’s death at Dublin District Coroner’s Court today heard the results of a postmortem showed he had died from ‘manual compression of the neck while restrained in a prone position’.”
The coroner, Myra Cullinane, said the postmortem conducted by State pathologist, Sally Anne Collis, had listed acute alcohol intoxication and hypertensive heart disease as contributory factors.”
I don’t seem to remember Micheál Martin demanding a full investigation into Mr Alexuc’s death. I don’t seem to remember it being whipped up into an ethnicity row, and I don’t seem to remember it being discussed on the national airways and compared to the death of violent criminal George Floyd.
There was no special-interest-group-incentivised outpouring of grief at all, seemingly because the victim wasn’t the right colour. There was a video of the incident in question posted online, but remove the ‘critical’ (no pun intended) racial element, and you don’t get much of a story, it seems.
You may remember a case from last year in which a gay Garda Sergeant was restrained on Capel Street after a row broke out when he and two other men were asked to leave the Pennylane bar. There was no national debate about race despite both the bouncers involved being Brazilians. It only ever goes one way.
Both Flynn and Joseph are taxpayer-funded individuals who have a responsibility to act with some modicum of professional restraint, which doesn’t seem to have dawned on either of them.
These two women, who are two of the most privileged people in this country, seem perfectly happy to circumvent the justice system in favour of advancing their pet world views when they should be waiting for the facts to emerge before reaching a conclusion, like anyone with a bit of common sense.
I’m not aware that either one even mentioned poor Jimmy, the 86-year-old man who suffered a broken hip in the midst of Sakila’s attempt to flee from the scene; I’d happily be wrong.
Given that Flynn is a Senator and Joseph is a taxpayer-funded activist, their behaviour is beyond disgraceful.