Thread by @MixedRaceIrish

Dear friends and supporters
It is with sadness, but great pride, that I step back from the role of Chairperson of the Association of Mixed Race Irish. Please find my full letter regarding my resignation below.
Thank you for all of your support and collaboration.
Rosemary Adaser

More than 6 years of campaigning with an amazing and growing community has been a period of my life which has been so rich and rewarding but exhausting too. In the interests of my health, and to allow others to step forward and provide the energetic leadership needed to keep

focus on the issues affecting our community, I have decided to resign from that role.
I left Dublin at the age of 20 after a childhood mostly spent in Mother and Baby homes and industrial schools, in which my mother had been persuaded that my twin brother and I should live.

We were just 3 months old when we were institutionalised. My own child was taken from me when I was 17, despite support from the baby’s father and family, and lost to me for over 40 years. When I left Dublin, I had no pride in my Irishness, only a desire to survive. I got a few

chances and I took them. I raised a family in London, grew a career in public housing, put myself through a Masters Degree at the London School of Economics, facing homelessness and poverty at various stages, and dealing with the legacy of what I had been through.

Surviving in London took perseverance, and I had no idea that there were so many others like me from Mother and Baby Homes and Industrial Schools also trying to escape Ireland and the racism we encountered there daily – verbal, physical, sexual abuse – all of which we have

described to government in the last 6 years in an attempt to have institutional racism included in official enquiries and to access personal documents for members of our community whose identities were stolen from them.
In 2013, I started to look at the erasure of the mixed-race

survivors of institutional abuse from mother and baby "homes', industrial schools, and Magdalene Laundries. These children had been mentioned just briefly in the Ryan Report of 2009, but the report did not address the racism experienced by our community. The same year, having

found 20 mixed-race survivors of these institutions (many in the UK), but on the basis of our stories believing there were many more, we founded the Call to Action Mixed Race Irish campaign.
This was the first time that our community had come together, and many of us were

surprised at the number of us, and the similarity of the brutal forms of racism we had experienced, regardless of what type of institution we had been in, or its location. The systemic racism was not surprising to us, but for the first time, we had confirmation that

we were not alone in these experiences. We founded the Association of Mixed Race Irish in 2014.
A lot of us had fled to England, but we had 20 years of Irish culture, language, history, and the Catholic faith. We didn’t lose that overnight.

We needed acknowledgement that we were Irish citizens, not just ‘aliens’ as we were described. Our early experiences had a profound and continuing effect on many of us - there are a lot higher levels of suicide among our group, serious mental health issues.

Mixed-race Irish children were not considered fit for adoption, and many were abused even in the foster homes they were sent to as well as in the institutions we lived in. Acknowledgement of our experiences mattered to us.

By October 2014, AMRI members numbered 71, based in Ireland, the UK, US, and China. TD Anne Ferris called for our experiences to be part of the upcoming inquiry. We made a submission to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, setting out how our community

were abused mentally, physically, emotionally and sexually and deprived of food, clothing and care more than their white peers. We presented a survey of the group, which showed that 44 per cent had been sexually abused, more than a third suffered severe mental and physical

health problems and seven died by suicide. All reported suffering trauma and emotional and psychological problems. Some said their true names were withheld from them, some that they were used to boost income for unassessed foster parents or put to work unpaid for local farmers.

We asked the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes to consider the policy of no adoptions for Mixed-race children as part of a larger question of institutional racism. The commission had decided to examine the issue of race in a module alongside disability, religion, and Traveller

identity, to see the extent to which residents may have been treated differently on any of these grounds. Our fear was that the commission would simply record our stories and catalogue instances of racist abuse without adequately acknowledging the way that uniquely systemic

racism affected us. We lobbied with all party TDs to get our case to be included as a specific part of the Terms of Reference of the new Mother and Baby Homes commission. Our success was a huge boost to us, and to me.

I was so proud to lead a group able to do this, despite our experiences.
We believed that institutional racism should have its own module, with a separate entry in the final report, and that the commission should define racism as a type of discrimination in the way that the

Equal Status Acts do. We believed that experts on racism and psychologists specialising in the impact of racism on individuals should also be called.
I encouraged our community to provide written statements to the Commission – it was important for that so that we could

manage the experience in very difficult circumstances. The telling of our stories to the Commission was harrowing. There was no counselling provided. Many of our members weren’t strong enough to travel, let alone relive their experiences.

But our strategy of using written statements helped us to manage for those of us who were able to appear before the Commission.
In 2017, I worked with TD Maureen O’Sullivan to address the question again to the Government.

From 2018, we took part in the consultations and later the Collaborative Forum established by Katherine Zappone TD to assist the Commission, and I travelled regularly from London to Dublin to participate in meetings on behalf of AMRI.

Last summer, we recognised that we needed international accountability for the ongoing delays and to address our fears that the recommendations would not be implemented, and that there would be no justice for our community.

We started fundraising with gusto to bring a small delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination hearing in Geneva. Raising the money, preparing our submissions, was hard work, but worth it. We made a written submission to CERD, and

we had the chance to put our case in the full meeting, and we were heard. CERD agreed that Ireland had a case to answer.
The Committee set out very clearly what we wanted to see – the Irish government should ensure that the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes

and Certain Related Matters carry out thorough, effective and timely investigations and fully implement the recommendations of the Commission, once published, with a view to bringing perpetrators to justice, providing victims with adequate remedies and preventing the reoccurrence

In January 2020, almost 5 years after it was established, it was announced that publication of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation’s final report could be delayed due to its exceptional length. A confidential report by the Collaborative Forum on Mother and Baby

Homes leaked in February to RTE News found that was systematic discrimination against women and children of mixed-race families. It said that children confined in such institutions "were stripped of their identity, culture and in significant cases even of their ethnicity and

language as a result of their family destruction based on their status at birth."
In June, the Commission requested a revision of the timeframe for submitting its final report until 30 October 2020 which has been agreed by the Government. We are still waiting.

Meanwhile, members of our community have passed on, due to ill health and old age, unable to see their experiences acknowledged formally by the Irish government.
The huge amount of energy, time and resources dedicated to this struggle for justice and acknowledgement from across

our whole community of Mixed Race Irish has been an incredible experience, and it has been an enormous privilege to lead that. There have been once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like appearing on the Late Late Show with my foster father and making a video with the Guardian.

I know that each of those things have contributed to the insertion of our place in Irish history and raised public awareness about our existence. I hope that the upcoming generations of Mixed-Race Irish will benefit from our struggles for recognition too.

Ours is not a historic battle, but a current one, and the outcome will affect many generations of family connected to those survivors.
I will continue to support AMRI as an active member, particularly in respect of the forthcoming Commission report, and I wish the next leaders

of this community strength and courage to keep our struggle for justice alive and vibrant.
I want to give particular thanks to the organisation Irish in Britain, to Maureen O’Sullivan TD, Anne Ferris TD, Henrietta Norton, Dr David Keane, solicitor Pearse Meighan,

Ruaidhri Dowling at the Irish Embassy, Ambassador Adrian O’Neill, and Ambassador Daniel Mulhall. It’s also been wonderful to work alongside projects like #IAmIrish sharing our pride in our community.

Thank you to all of the members of the AMRI board and our many members and supporters over the last 7 years.
Rosemary Adaser