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	<span style="color: rgb(90, 100, 102); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 17px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 21px;">Women were targets for abuse in almost half of incidents</span></p>
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		A new online system where people can report racist abuse has had 60 responses in just one month.</p>
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		Anti-racist organisation ENAR Ireland said figures from iReport. ie are much higher than they previously thought.</p>
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		Director Shane O&rsquo;Curry said: &ldquo;This is a significantly higher rate than our previous recording system, and a much higher rate than the gardai, who recorded just 19 incidents in the first three months of 2013.&rdquo;</p>
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		The organisation has also reported that in 46 per cent of the incidents recorded, women and girls were the targets of racism, 25 per cent of the incidents recorded racism against people who are black and in 20 per cent of the incidents recorded, children under 14 were targets.</p>
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		Out of the five reports of racism against Muslim women, all were targeted because of their veil and in one case a group of Muslim men wearing their prayer hats were attacked by a gang of men with sticks.</p>
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		A further 49 per cent of the reports were made by witnesses or third parties and 68 per cent of these were made by people who were unrelated in any way to the targets.</p>
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		Mr O&rsquo;Curry said: &ldquo;The reports show that migrants and minority ethnic groups, including Travellers, are being subjected to worrying levels of racism and discrimination. &ldquo;People are reporting all kinds of racism, from subtle forms of discrimination to concerted social exclusion, from shouting and name calling in the street to intimidation, spitting, sexual harassment and organised violent assault with weapons.</p>
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		&ldquo;But these are being perpetrated by a minority, and although there have been some high profile cases of public figures expressing racist sentiments, the majority of the public in Ireland reject racism.</p>
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		&quot;We can see this anti-racist sentiment reflected in the fact that almost half of the reports were logged by witnesses, a majority of whom were unrelated to the people targeted.&rdquo;</p>
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		Mr O&rsquo;Curry said the response from witnesses has been encouraging and one settled family cancelled their own meal when a Traveller family were refused service in an eaterie.</p>
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		He added: &ldquo;In one case an Irish family were horrified when their visiting relatives and other tourists were racially abused in a restaurant, so they reported the incident to iReport. ie.</p>
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		&quot;In the last few days we have seen Oprah Winfrey in the headlines after she was racially profiled in a shop in Zurich, an incident which didn&rsquo;t reflect well on Switzerland. Tolerance for racism could damage our tourism industry. We do not want this kind of reputation for Ireland.&rdquo;</p>
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		<a href="http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/new-online-system-people-can-2153239">http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/new-online-system-people-can-2153239</a></p>
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