Dean Swift visiting Newry talked about the “proud people”.
I am from such stock. But reading in both the Newry Reporter and The Irish News about the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of 46-year-old Anu Okusanya, I felt a little less proud.
Ms Okusanya was a mum. She had an only child, Olaitain.
Like so many other migrants in the North, she was working in the health and social care system. On the day of her death, Anu had just completed a 12-hour shift. That’s right - 12 gruelling hours.
Having left Nigeria, she chose Newry as her home.
Within the south Down area, she built a life in Damolly village. In truth, it’s more of a hamlet.
I know it well as my paternal grandmother, her parents and, indeed, my mother in law were from the same long winding row of small stone cladded houses which make up Damolly.
It was a tight knit and mixed community.
The mill, which was its backdrop for over two centuries is long gone. Generations of families worked there and names like McGuigan, O’Gorman, Taylor, O’Neill, McKeown, Henry, Warner and Graham are now strewn throughout the Newry area. Many were related to each other by blood or marriage.
Despite, the hard work and the poverty, it was a place of relative harmony. It didn’t escape the inevitable sectarianism that bedevils the North but most former residents speak of happier times.
Certainly Damolly was a tranquil and scenic setting overlooking the lush banks of the Clanrye.
Anu Okusanya chose well. Her son would have loved it. But-times have also changed.
Irrational xenophobia, intolerance and ignorance has crept into every aspect of society whether amongst the rarified chattering classes in golf clubs and tearooms or soccer terraces and shebeens. It’s a global phenomenon.
Being steeped in centuries of sectarianism, the North is a fertile field for sowing the seeds of hatred and distrust towards new communities who have come to live here.
The full truth about the fear Anu lived under has yet to be wholly revealed but according to her family she was a victim of vile racism and prejudice.
Hatred always has a home when it goes unchallenged. Hatred spreads like a rancid disease and has taken hold in Belfast, Antrim, Derry, Bangor and now, Newry.
Unfortunately Anu’s experience isn’t unique. Across the North, migrant families have been subjected to a torrent of racial and anti-migrant abuse.
European colonialism has played its part in providing the backdrop for the formation of racist attitudes but race-baiting isn’t the preserve of any single nationality or ethnic group.
If sectarianism is like chicken pox, racism is shingles causing both pain and scarring.
Antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, religious intolerance and racial discrimination are all toxic streams from the same sewer.
Sometimes racism stems from an unfounded fear but mostly it’s a result of ignorance and bigotry. Rarely is it spontaneous. There are always those only too ready to narrate falsehoods, manipulate malleable minds and exacerbate tensions about migrants for political gain. The delinquent hooligans who carry out physical attacks are often too stupid to know the differences between the ethnic groups they are targeting.
Former Presbyterian Moderator, John Dunlop said of his home-place “Newry is where everyone is welcome, and no-one is a stranger”. An epitaph worthy of pride, but sadly too late for Anu.
