White lives matter’ was sprayed on a wall in the Lenadoon area of West Belfast in recent days with a woman’s name in small letters below it. That woman was Iryna Zarutska, who was brutally stabbed to death on a train in the US by a man.
“Almost 70 women have been violently killed across Ireland since 2020,” said Lasair Dhearg’s Amy Margaret, “This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with misogyny, which is systemic in our society.”
Amy continued, “It is no coincidence that the name ‘Vanessa Whyte’ or ‘Sarah Montgomery’ was not spray painted on that wall, because these people do not care about women. They only care about using the brutality we face to further their own agenda.”
“The pathetic individual who carried out this action previously sprayed it with Combat-18 and other slogans related to the Loyalist group. They do not represent us, and they certainly do not protect us.”
Amy added, “In the words of James Connolly ‘the worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave’.”
“Our fight is against misogyny; our fight is against the capitalist system that feeds and grows on misogyny; and our fight is against facism.
“I don’t care what colour a murderer is. I don’t care for the colour of the woman who was murdered. I care that a woman was once again murdered by a man, and while we remain in a society that treats us as Connolly described, it will continue to happen.”
Lasair Dhearg has once again tidied the wall, and replaced the racist content with a more fitting tribute to all those women across Ireland and beyond who have suffered violent deaths at the hands of men in our society:
‘Ní Saoirse go Saoirse na mBan’.
