Mary Calls for Aid to Somalia
President Mary Robinson reported to the United Nations that she was “shocked and horrified” by what she saw during her late October visit to Somalia, the East African country where more than 1,000 people are dying of famine daily.
The Irish President was at the U.N. in New York as a high-ranking delegate to plead for more international aid for the embattled nation.
“I feel ashamed when I see fellow citizens of this world deprived of any quality of life,” she said in her speech.
“It is not acceptable that in the world of 1992 we have Somalia.”
Along with Irish Foreign Minister David Andrews, as well as her husband Nicholas Robinson, the President spent three days in the country as part of a fact-finding/ mercy mission.
She also visited the neighboring country of Kenya, which has already taken in over 500,000 Somalian refugees.
The UN’s representative in Somalia, Ambassador Mohammed Sahnoun, welcomed the President by saying that the Irish should be proud of their leadership in relief efforts, especially through the relief agency Trocaire (Irish for “compassion”). Robinson thanked him, adding that the Irish generosity, as it was during the Ethiopian crisis, was most likely due to Ireland’s own experiences with famine.
At the U.N., she reported directly to the U.N. Secretary General, Dr. Boutros Ghali, explaining to him the ongoing tribal violence in the region which has hampered U.N. relief efforts. The U.N has already committed 3,500 troops to the region to aid in relief efforts, but Robinson said that more were needed as many aid shipments never make it to the intended victims.
Irish Get Their Visas
The vast majority of Irish natives who applied for U.S. legal status in the form of so-called ‘Morrison visas’ will soon be getting good news in their mailboxes. It is expected that the supply of such visas will far outstrip the demand.
The Morrison visa program, named after the program’s guiding force, former Congressman Bruce Morrison (D-N.Y.), set aside up to 16,000 new visas a year over a three year period which would be available only to the Irish. It seems that that number, at least for now, is sufficient, as the U.S. State Department stated that it believed there would be a glut of several thousand extra Irish set-asides, which would be held over to next year’s application process.
The importance of the set-asides was made obvious with the recent release by the State Department of application information which shows that the Irish would have been swamped if they had to compete for visas against other, larger countries. Poland, for example, led in the number of applications filed; State Department estimates list the Poles as filing almost 70 percent of all applications received.
An important feature of this, the second year of the three-year Morrison program, is that for the first time those born in Northern Ireland will be eligible for the Irish set-asides, due to pressure last year on U.S. legislators.
Irish Troops Attacked in Lebanon
An Irish soldier was killed and another seriously injured in southern Lebanon recently when a group of Islamic extremists ambushed the United Nations checkpoint the two were manning.
The soldiers were two of the many soldiers from the Irish Republic serving with U.N. peacekeeping forces in the region.
U.N. spokespersons say that the men were fired upon by a group of Islamic resistance fighters which had shortly beforehand attacked a compound belonging to the Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army. The Islamic group attacked with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Corporal Peter Ward, 29, was killed in the ambush. A native of Athlone, County Westmeath, he is survived by his wife and four children. Coleman joined the Irish Army in 1980 and had already served two tours in Lebanon, in 1982 and 1988.
Private Neil Coleman, 22, was hospitalized and is is expected to recover fully from the attack. He is a single man from Drimnagh, County Dublin. Irish Army officials said that both men were scheduled to return home from duty just a few weeks after the attack took place.
U.N. and Irish government officials praised the men and their service to the peacekeeping force. The Irish Army has one of the world’s most dedicated records of service in support of U.N. efforts.
Bishop Casey to Work in South America
After spending the past six months in various unknown locations in the United States, the scandal-ridden Bishop Eamonn Casey will reportedly be leaving to work as a missionary in the South American country of Ecuador.
The Bishop, who has been hiding in the U.S. since it was disclosed in May that he was the father of a 17-year-old Connecticut boy, is believed to have been wanting to return to Ireland, where he served as the Bishop of Galway. For many years Casey was one of the most well-known and best-loved leaders in the hierarchy of the Irish Catholic church. However, it was reported by the Dublin media that a convention of Irish bishops has made clear their belief that a return to Ireland would be ill-advised at the time.
The bishops’ decision is most likely based on the fact that the first of at least four “tell-all” books about the Casey controversy is due out very shortly.
The woman with whom Casey has admitted having the son with, Irish American Annie Murphy, has her own book about the case coming out in the spring. Friends of the Bishop told the press that he is looking forward to fulfilling a “life-long dream,” working as a missionary in South America. Casey was highly involved in Third World charities while he was Bishop of Galway, and took a special interest in the various poverty and violence stricken areas of that region.
Casey’s exile began in May when it was revealed that not only did he have a 17-year-old son, Peter, living in Connecticut with the boy’s mother, Annie Murphy, but he had sent money to Murphy and her son from his own Galway diocesan fund. Both mother and son said that they decided to go public after years of Casey’s refusal to meet with the boy.
Ireland’s Cardinal Cahal Daly pleaded with the media to allow Casey “space,” to let him live his new life. Casey continues to draw a pension by the Galway diocese, as dictated by the Church’s canon law.
Sinéad Does It Again
Dublin singer Sinéad O’Connor is certainly no stranger to controversy, but she’s recently topped herself with a live television performance on NBC’s ‘Saturday Night Live? The end result? It seems as if even many of O’Connor’s staunchest defenders, those who stuck with her faithfully in times past, may have decided that, this time, she’s gone just a step too far.
The 25-year-old O’Connor appeared on the top-rated ‘Saturday Night Live’ as the musical guest, promoting her latest album, Am I Not Your Girl? Because the show is broadcast live, even the NBC producers were in shock when, at the end of O’Connor’s performance, she produced a photograph of Pope John Paul Il and proceeded to rip it to shreds, saying into the camera, “Fight the real enemy.”
Apart from the record number of complaints received at NBC’sswitchboard, the gesture produced a reaction so strong that even O’Connor couldn’t have expected. Two weeks after
‘Saturday Night Live,’ O’Connor was vehemently booed off stage at Madison Square Garden when she turned up at a tribute concert for Bob Dylan.
The anger from the public had to be expected, but what had to be a shock was the fact that even prominent members of the music community, some of whom might have been expected to stand by the singer, either ignored or attacked her. The Dylan concert continued on, reportedly without even a word of comfort to the singer from the other artists, including the aging folkie Dylan himself.
The prominent American designer Mary McFadden even disinvited O’Connor from an exhibition which she had been previously invited to. Even Ms. Controversy herself, Madonna, got in the act by saying that O’Connor had gone “too far.”
Seemingly the reason for much of the anger was that O’Connor offered no explanation for her pope-shredding antics. She has previously spoken out against the Church’s policies towards issues such as abortion and womens’ issues, although with ‘Saturday Night Live’ she offered no reason for her protest.
Whatever the long-term effects on the singer’s career will be is unsure, although in the short-term, things seem to be doing all right. Am I Not Your Girl? is selling relatively well despite getting no radio airplay, and O’Connor will get to meet the American audiences she so enrages again in December, when she is planning a concert tour. In fact, one of the current protests might even work for her — a drive started by a New York ethnic group which offered a refund on O’Connor albums which were then to be destroyed has reported a brisk business, collecting several thousand copies.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the November 1992 issue of Irish America. ♦
Leave a Reply