In a shocking incident in Waterford, Ireland, a 6 year-old girl of Indian origin was brutally assaulted by a group of boys. The attackers allegedly hit her in the private parts while shouting, “Go back to India.” This marks the first reported racist assault on a child of Indian origin in Ireland, though similar unprovoked attacks have previously been reported against other Indians.
The attack took place on Monday evening when she was playing outside her home along with her friends. According to the mother, the gang included a girl aged around eight and several boys between 12 and 14.
Her mother said she was watching her daughter play with other kids right outside her home when she had to go and feed her toddler son, who is just 10-months-old. The mother also said how she was keeping an eye on her daughter from inside, but when her youngest child started crying she went to feed him.
“I told her I would be back in a second after feeding the baby,” the mother told The Irish Mirror, a Dublin-based news outlet.
But she said the girl-child came back into the house upset after around a minute. The mother said: “She was very upset, she started crying. She couldn’t even talk, she was so scared.”
One of her friends told her mother that a gang of boys older than them hit her on the private parts with a cycle and five of them punched her in her face, The Irish Mirror reported.
“She told me five of them punched her in the face. One of the boys pushed the bicycle wheel onto her private parts and it was really sore. They said the F word and ‘Dirty Indian, go back to India. She told me today (Wednesday) they punched her neck and twisted her hair,” the woman, who has been a nurse and living in Ireland for eight years and recently became an Irish citizen, told The Irish Mirror.
The family moved to the Kilbarry area of Waterford City in January this year.
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The mother said her daughter cried in bed after the attack and is now too afraid to play outside.
“We no longer feel safe here, even right in front of our own home. It doesn’t feel like she can play without fear,” she said.
Expressing her anguish, the mother added: “I feel so sad for her. I could not protect her. I never expected such an incident would happen. I thought she would be safe here.”
She later spotted the group of boys involved in the assault, who, she said, stared at her in a confrontational manner.
“I saw the gang afterward. They were staring at me, laughing. They know I am her parent. The boys were maybe 12 or 14, and they were still roaming around here,” she told The Irish Mirror.
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Although the mother has reported the incident to the Garda, she said she is not seeking punishment for the boys. Instead, she hopes they are given counselling and proper guidance.
“I don’t know how the government will address this. We came here to fill a labour gap, we are professionals, we have all the certificates,” she said.
“It is a struggle to come here. We don’t come without qualifications. We are well trained, and the government needs us,” she added, according to The Irish Mirror.
The surge in racist attacks against Indians in Ireland has raised security concerns within the Indian community.
Last month, a 40-year-old Indian man was brutally assaulted and stripped in public by a teenage gang in Tallaght, a suburb of Dublin.
So far, three attacks on Indian-origin people have come to light in Dublin in the past two weeks.
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