The Lord Mayor said that one person shouted at her: “When you turn into a shapeshifting dragon, we will catch it on camera.”
Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu has said that she was subjected to racist abuse from a crowd gathered outside her home in the Mansion House in Dublin on Thursday.
Speaking to Today with Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio One on Friday, the Lord Mayor said the abuse occurred during a protest by far-right groups outside the Mansion House.
Describing the incident, Chu said: “I went outside to talk to the Gardaí and when I was coming back into the house, they started loudly, asking particular things and stating particular things.”
“One of them held out her hand and I said, ‘I can’t shake it as we’re under Covid guidelines, that we should adhere to guidelines’,” she added.
“Her first reaction was, ‘these are just guidelines are not law’, and I said ‘well we’re trying to keep everyone safe’.”
Chu said that one person shouted at her: “When you turn into a shapeshifting dragon, we will catch it on camera.”
The Lord Mayor said that she recognised some of the people involved in the protest who had subjected her to racist abuse in the past.
“Some of them I had seen before, who have provided very direct, more racist abuse at me, on other occasions,” she said.
Chu said that she did not object to people’s right to protest, but that it “can’t be just because that they don’t like the look of me because I can’t change that,” adding that she feared for the safety of her three-year-old daughter as her home doubles as her place of work.
"I think we tend to be… a set of people that are very welcoming and inclusive, but saying that there is a minority that always… it's like the basket of eggs and there's always one or two that's rotten!"
Hazel Chu on Ireland's racism problem:pic.twitter.com/HojWRw6NuC
— JOE.ie (@JOEdotie) August 17, 2020
She added that she had been accused of playing “the victim card” for speaking up about her experiences of racism in Ireland, but felt it important to call it out in an effort to raise awareness of the issue and to combat it.
“These things don’t just die down, they build up to the point where, if you don’t challenge groups like this, if you don’t call it out, what will inevitably happen is this boiling point or something happens, and we all say, ‘why didn’t we do something about it’,” she said.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
