We All Live in Each Other’s Shelter
As a child, I remember Catholic refugees, fleeing the burning streets of the Falls in 1969, taking shelter in our local school halls and partially completed mobile homes along the Glen Road in West Belfast. And of course, Belfast has a proud tradition of offering sanctuary to those fleeing persecution — in 1956 when the Russians sent their tanks into Budapest to crush the uprising, hundreds of Hungarian families found succour in Belfast.
This is a time to stay true to our values of compassion and love for our neighbour.
This is the time to prove that the old Irish proverb, ‘Ar Scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine’ (‘We all live in each other’s shelter’) is more than a shibboleth.
The refugee crisis is the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our time. Our response — as was the response of nations to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism in another era — is a defining moment. We must not be found wanting.
The churches in Belfast have a special obligation to help society speak out and up for our refugee brothers and sisters drowning in treacherous seas and suffocating in the back of lorries. Jesus, after all, was a refugee.
Since early 2015, some of us tried to bring in some Syrian refugees under the restricted scheme permitted by London — as refugee admission, unfortunately, is not a devolved matter for the Stormont Executive. But the time for sticking plaster solutions is past.
When our Stormont leaders meet this week to go at it again over the political stand-off, they should take a time-out to tell our civil servants to start preparing to bring in our fair share of refugees. By Monday afternoon, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a task force in place — similar to that being led by Scottish Minister Humza Yousaf — to sort out the logistics around the arrival and relocation of the refugees.
And for those who fear that amidst our great bounty and wealth that we can’t afford to bring in refugees, take heart from the example of the people of Uruguay, a country with far fewer resources than us, which took in 300 refugees at a time when the ‘I’m alright, Jack’ British Government was telling the United Nations Refugee agency that it would take in not even one refugee.
How sad that it took a child, a dead child, to force Mr Cameron’s U-turn.
But it would be sadder still if the people of Belfast didn’t respond on a scale commensurate with the suffering of the refugees. I have no doubt that our response will be as generous and big-hearted as one would expect from the island of welcomes. The first opportunity to demonstrate our determination to help the stricken refugees will come on Monday at 5pm when the Lord Mayor of Belfast will hold a vigil at City Hall in support of the refugees.
Tchífidh mé ansin sibh. See you there.
This week the Assembly’s Finance Committee Inquiry into the sale by NAMA of its Northern assets to hedge fund Cerberus heard explosive evidence from businessman Gareth Graham. At the meeting, I asked who really gained from that sale.
