‘You’re not Irish by blood’: Cork City Council candidate says racist abuse has gotten worse

Lekha Menon Margassery was returning from hanging election posters in Cork city just after 10pm on May 21st last.

As she waited to cross the street on Patrick’s Road she and her two friends were accosted by a man who wanted to know what they were doing.

“We’re just putting up posters,” replied Margassery who was running as a Labour candidate for Cork City Council. Margassery, a scientist and UCC graduate, previously ran as an independent in 2019.

The man became increasingly upset as he questioned why Margassery, who is originally from India, was allowed to run in the election. She explained that she is an Irish citizen and that, in any event, anyone resident in Ireland can vote and run in local elections. This explanation did little to calm him.

“You’re not Irish by blood. What are you going to do in the Irish government. We want Ireland to be Catholic. You’ll bring in your religion,” Margassery recalled him saying.

He shouted across to two passersby not to vote for her because “she’s an immigrant”. These people later came back to make sure Margassery was okay.

Margassery was left shaken by the incident and put up a brief social media post the next day. Almost 700 comments were left underneath, the majority of them racist, abusive or dismissive of her experience.

“It’s definitely become worse,” she said, comparing her experience during the 2019 election. “I have been feeling that Cork has changed since Covid. Maybe it was the isolation. I don’t know.”

Margassery was one of over 100 candidates of an immigrant background who ran in the local and European elections this year, a new record.

Research from anti-extremist organisations the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Hope and Courage Collective shows that many of these candidates faced racist abuse during the campaign. This was part of an overall trend of increased abuse, harassment and violence being directed at electoral candidates here and across Europe.

The targets for abuse came from all walks of life and all political hues. But those of a migrant background suffered disproportionately. Thirteen of the 36 incidents tracked by researchers targeted candidates from migrant backgrounds, “with all of these cases featuring racially-charged abuse”.

The abuse occurred both in the street and online. In Limerick city, the election team of Fianna Fáil candidate Suzzie O’Deniyi was targeted with racist and sexist abuse while handing out flyers. A video of Fine Gael candidate Ejiro O’Hare-Stratton was edited by a far-right social media account and overdubbed with monkey noises.

These incidents, the report states, “are a sign of a sea change in Irish politics, where confrontational and aggressive tactics are used to attempt to silence political opposition”.