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Our intention is to inform people of racist, homophobic, religious extreme hate speech perpetrators across social networking internet sites. And we also aim to be a focal point for people to access information and resources to report such perpetrators to appropriate web sites, governmental departments and law enforcement agencies around the world.

We will also post relevant news worthy items and information on Human rights issues, racism, extremist individuals and groups and far right political parties from around the world although predominantly Britain.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Muslim community leader claims Enoch Powell helped bring faith communities closer together in Wolverhampton (UK)

A controversial anti-immigration speech by a leading Midland politician had the unlikely effect of strengthening inter-faith relations in his home city, a Muslim leader has claimed.

Wolverhampton South West MP Enoch Powell was sacked as Shadow Defence Secretary by party leader Edward Heath after his notorious Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 for heightening racial tensions.

But strong bonds of friendship were forged in the city in reaction to the speech, said Harun Rashid, chairman of the Wolverhampton Inter Faith and Regeneration Network.

He said: “Many people in Wolverhampton felt very uncomfortable when he made that speech and were not happy with what he said. They decided they would create an inter-faith group. This is how the Wolverhampton Inter Faith Group came into being.

“I think Wolverhampton is one of the most harmonious cities in the country and we are very proud of that. We understand each other and there is no ignorance. Where there is ignorance there is prejudice; and prejudice creates fear. I think to a very large extent we have removed that prejudice because we have removed the ignorance and as a result communities have come together. This has made a big contribution to the city’s life.”

Mr Rashid was speaking at a gathering of faith leaders from the north west Midlands hosted by Bishop of Lichfield the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill.

The discussion in Lichfield was followed by a Black Country celebration of faith three days later at Darlaston Town Hall in which leaders and representatives from Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Ravidassi communities explained their faith.

Darlaston Muslim leader Mohammed Rafiq said: “We are determined to show that people of different faiths can live together as good neighbours and grow together in spirit.

“Perhaps this is all the more urgent in view of the aggressive relationships we hear of elsewhere in the world.”

Brimingham Mail

ITALY CLOSES THE DOOR ON GYPSIES (UK)

This venerable city, long known for savory saffron risotto and the leggy models of Fashion Week, is moving to establish itself as something else: a zero-tolerance zone for Gypsies. Anti-Gypsy campaigns in neighboring France have sparked international criticism, with officials there in recent months deporting more than 1,000 ethnic Roma - a clannish people migrating west in large numbers from Eastern Europe. But with great bravado, Milan is taking the lead in responding to Italy's own "Gypsy Emergency." Blaming rising crime on the new waves of Roma immigrants, authorities are moving to dismantle Milan's largest authorized Gypsy camp, Triboniano, a teeming shantytown of street musicians and day laborers that officials decry as a den of thieves. At the same time, Milan is bulldozing hundreds of small, impromptu camps inhabited by newer arrivals and issuing mass eviction notices to Roma families living in another long-established camp in the city's largest immigrant neighborhood. "These are dark-skinned people, not Europeans like you and me," said Riccardo De Corato, who is Milan's vice mayor from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling party and who is in charge of handling the camps. He later added: "Our final goal is to have zero Gypsy camps in Milan." The campaign underway here is part of what observers are calling the most intense wave of anti-immigration sentiment to wash over Western Europe in years.

The immigration debate in Europe, just as in the United States, has dramatically intensified in the wake of the Great Recession, with voters increasingly blaming immigrants such as the Roma for taking away jobs, driving up crime rates and disturbing time-honored traditions. Across the continent, governments are boldly throwing up new barriers to immigration, increasing enforcement and targeting groups such as the Roma, who are also known as Gypsies. Even in some of the most progressive nations in the region, such as Sweden, voters are showing new support for ultra-right politicians whose platforms center on a tougher line on immigration. In Britain, the new Conservative-led coalition government has slapped a temporary cap on immigration from non-European Union nations, limiting the ability of companies to hire foreign nationals in a bid to drive down the unemployment rate. A permanent cap set to go into effect next year is expected to make it more difficult for even Americans to get long-term work visas there. In France, a proposed law could strip citizenship from foreigners naturalized for less than 10 years if they commit violent crimes against the police or a government official. New detention centers would be set up to make it easier to deport illegal immigrants. Citizens of other European Union countries - who theoretically enjoy freedom of movement across the 27-nation zone - would find it harder to stay in France if they are not law-abiding and gainfully employed.

For a region that prides itself as a bastion of progressive thought, the campaigns in Europe have nevertheless taken on a decidedly ethnic and religious bent similar to the debates in the United States over the proposed Islamic center in Manhattan and the Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants. A new law in France will ban Muslim women from wearing full-face Islamic veils in public, with similar laws pending in the Netherlands and Spain. Switzerland has prohibited the construction of mosque minarets. But the campaigns against the Roma in France and Italy have stoked accusations that politicians are targeting unpopular immigrant groups to shore up flagging support. "There is a worrying trend in Europe in which we are seeing the embrace of populist policies," said Benjamin Ward, the Europe deputy director for Human Rights Watch in London. "They are creating a new climate of intolerance in Europe with movements in some countries now openly hostile to ethnic minorities and migrants." Few nations, though, have gone as far as Italy, where the number of immigrants has more than doubled over the past decade, to more than 5 million. Since Berlusconi was reelected in 2008, his fragile conservative coalition has made immigration and domestic security priorities, passing a law that imposes a fine of up to $13,600 on illegal immigrants and increasing salary and housing requirements for legal immigrants trying to bring in family members.

Last year, Italy virtually stopped issuing new work permits for non-European Union immigrants and set up a policy aimed at preventing refugees from entering the country by sea from North Africa. The result, according to the U.N. refugee agency, has been a dramatic drop in boat lifts across the Mediterranean from Libya, which had become a major transit route not only for thousands of economic migrants but also for asylum seekers from Somalia, Sudan and other African nations. "It would be difficult now for immigration policy to get any more restrictive in Italy, unless we started to build walls," said Oliviero Forti, immigration director for the Catholic charity Caritas in Rome.

'Packing our things'

Inside the ramshackle Triboniano camp in northern Milan, Vladimiro Ilie, a Roma from Romania, stared at boxes brimming with clothes, pots and pans in the two-room trailer he shares with his wife and two children. "My family has been packing our things over the last few days," said Ilie, 41. "We have been warned by the city that at any moment, they will show up and tell us to leave." The clearing of Triboniano, an encampment of 600 established in 2001, is at the center of the city's plan to expel Roma. The effort underscores the stresses tearing at the E.U. over the flow of Eastern European immigrants into the West, even as it aspires to be a unified and nearly borderless region. Although the citizens of E.U. nations largely have access to the labor markets in other nations, countries may still use legal loopholes to expel those who commit crimes, are considered a threat to public security or go without a job for lengthy periods.

Originally a nomadic people who came to Europe from South Asia centuries ago, Roma were persecuted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. They have lived in Italy for generations, but their numbers soared after their traditional homeland of Romania was admitted into the E.U. in 2007. Since then, the number of Romanians in Italy - a substantial portion of them Roma - has almost tripled, to 800,000. Famously insular, the Roma have tended to cluster in caravan camps, preserving their language and music and often earning hardscrabble livelihoods on the streets. They have been long associated with crime. After the rape and murder of an Italian woman by a Roma man, the national government declared a "Gypsy Emergency" in 2008 - long before France's campaign this summer - granting extraordinary powers to cities to address the influx. Nowhere has that campaign been as sharp and swift as in Milan, Italy's center of industrial wealth, which is dominated by Berlusconi's party and the ultra-nationalist Northern League. Over the past two years, Milanese officials have expelled 7,000 Roma, leveling 346 illegal settlements. Now the city is targeting several formerly authorized camps. Although officials initially said Triboniano must go to make room for a new highway, De Corato described the move as more of a social decision. "Many of them are criminals," the vice mayor said in an interview. "They prostitute their own women and children." He later said that "there is no reason for the camp to stay."

A few families, including Ilie's, were to be granted public housing to show Milan's willingness to embrace Roma prepared to integrate into Italian life. But two weeks ago, officials rescinded the offer after an outcry from local residents and the national government. Officials say camp dwellers who do not leave voluntarily will be taken to the city limits; those with criminal records or no jobs could be deported. Privately, even some in Triboniano say the camp maintains an unemployment rate of more than 60 percent and is home to some engaging in criminal activity. But Ilie, a carpenter who left Romania for Italy with his family in 1999, said Roma are being painted with a broad brush and that many, like him, are eager to integrate. His children - Ana Maria, 16, and Luigi, 11 - no longer speak their native dialect. Both go to Italian schools and have Italian friends. "I don't care what happens to this camp anymore; what I care about is my family," he said. "We want to integrate, but they won't give us the chance." The hard-line approach in Milan contrasts sharply with one in Rome. There, the local government is relocating Gypsies to camps with tighter security and constant video surveillance but also with better sanitary conditions, including running water and electricity. Gypsy immigrants from Eastern Europe will be given four years to find jobs and educate their children. Those who do will be allowed access to public housing. Those who don't, officials say, will face deportation. "Italy," said Giuseppe Pecoraro, Rome's special representative on Gypsy issues, "is still a tolerant country."

Washington Post

German social networks wage virtual war on rightists

A group of web 2.0 communities in Germany has launched a campaign called "Social Networks against Nazis" in a bid to fight right-wing extremism on the Internet.

The campaign's organizers, who were backed at the launch on Monday by Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner, say right-wing extremists have used social networking sites to air racist and anti-Semitic views, call for violence, reach audiences otherwise unacquainted with neo-Nazi ideas and to test acceptance thresholds.

Their campaign calls for user involvement in clamping down on such activities. Banners and buttons on participating sites encourage users to report racist posts, videos and profiles so that they can then be deleted, sending neo-Nazis a clear signal.

"There's too much data uploaded to these networks every day for everything to be monitored, but sites can react quickly to tip-offs from other users," the campaign's website (www.netz-gegen-nazis.de) says.

The list of 20 participating networks includes MySpace and the video sharing platform YouTube.

Users are also called upon to support victims in discussion groups and to contradict any racist and anti-Semitic viewpoints. They can also join groups related to the campaign.

The campaign comes after the revelation this summer that neo-Nazi activity on the internet in Germany has reached an all-time high. There were 1,872 known neo-Nazi websites in Germany last year, according to German media reports.

Aigner encouraged social networks to exercise their "domestic authority" to ban Nazis.

Far-right extremism has plagued parts of Germany, where there are about 26,000 right-wing extremists, according to the online portal "www.netz-gegen-nazis."

A group of suspected neo-Nazis tried to remove the sign for a street named "Jews' Alley" in the northwestern German city of Aachen this weekend, according to local police, while neo-Nazis in the town of Kleinmachnow near Berlin sprayed swastikas and other Nazi symbols onto a Soviet memorial.

Reuters

Such a contrast between the two groups (UK)

The events in Leicester on Saturday afternoon demonstrated the complete contrast between supporters of the EDL and Unite Against Fascism (UAF).

The EDL attacked the police, journalists and local people with bottles, cans, coins, smoke and stun grenades. They broke a window at the Market Tavern where the police had arranged for them to drink. They also threw missiles and broke a second floor window of the International Arts Centre on Humberstone Gate.

This was after they had stopped off in Market Harborough and intimidated local people on their way to Leicester.

In contrast, UAF organised a peaceful and good-natured protest against the presence of the EDL in Leicester. The rally was addressed by three local councillors, representatives from the Muslim community, the Indian Workers' Association, local Kurdish people and a number of local trade unionists.

As the afternoon progressed entertainment was provided by a number of local bands and the Red Choir. People were free to join the UAF rally on Humberstone Gate, almost all the time (except when an occasional EDL supporter tried to provoke the gathering). Many people dropped by for a few minutes or longer to show their support and others left for a coffee or bite to eat only to return later. So more people attended the UAF rally than were there at any one time.

The Unite Against Fascism rally was organised and supported by local people who ensured all who attended had a peaceful and enjoyable afternoon.

This is Leicestershire

Islamic center members say they're victims of a hate crime (USA)

Someone defaced the Florence Islamic Center on North Edisto Drive in Florence Sunday afternoon.

The culprit used slices of bacon to spell out the words "PIG CHOPS" on the brick walkway of the mosque. The parishoners are Muslim and don't eat pork.

Florence Police are investigating.

Members of the center tell NewsChannel 15 this is the second time in a few months that someone has vandalized their house of worship. Earlier this year, vandals broke new windows in the facility.

The Florence Islamic Center has been on North Edisto Drive for nearly three years. Parishoners say it's a work in progress, as they are renovating the facility bit by bit.

About 30 families worship at the mosque. They believe the person who defaced their property doesn't understand what the Muslim religion is all about.

The facility is also used during the week as a school to study their religion.

Members say police have indicated they will step up patrols around the center. We're waiting to hear from Florence Police Chief Anson Shells to get more details.

Coming up tonight at 6:00 on NewsChannel 15, you'll hear from the parishoners about why this incident is so disturbing to them.

Carolina Live

Plan for new 'hate crime' policy in Northampton (UK)

A new policy to improve the way Northampton Borough Council deals with hate crimes is to go before councillors.

The council's cabinet is being asked to back the new policy which would see training given to staff in how to recognise and deal with hate crimes.

The policy would see officers from council departments monitoring and recording hate crimes.
The proposals go before the cabinet committee on Wednesday.

Borough council officer Bill Edwards, who is recommending the council adopts the new policy, said: "The problem of hate related crime is widespread and there is significant under-reporting.

"The county's target is to increase the level of reporting by 20% from the 2009/2010 baseline figure of 1,519. As at 31 July this year, the number of reports had decreased by 3.1%."

BBC News

City Leaders Claim Voting Billboard Ads Racist (USA)

Milwaukee leaders are demanding that billboards featuring voting ads be taken down because they said the ads are racist.

The billboards read "Voter Fraud is a Felony" and feature African-American and Hispanic people behind bars.Critics said they believe the ads are an attempt to discourage minorities from voting in November.They are demanding the company that owns the board take the ads down and disclose who paid for them."We're tired, and we're fed up. We're not intimidated. We're not afraid and come Nov. 2. we will show up to the polls," said Jayme Montgomery-Baker, state director of League of Young Voters Education Fund."We find it offensive, as a woman, as a minority, as a veteran, as a union member and as a registered voter. And we want this sign down," said Angie Bucio of Voced de la Frontera.Late Tuesday afternoon, the owner of the billboard, Clear Channel, told 12 News that a private individual paid for the advertising.The ad is not the opinion of the Clear Channel but rather that of a private person, the company said.

 WISN.Com

Barrow AFC boss won’t tolerate racist abuse (UK)

The Bluebird’s operations manager, Barry Fitzgerald, said Mr Kuipers told him after the match that supporters had verbally abused him and his family and directed monkey chants at him.

Mr Fitzgerald said match stewards and supporters in that vicinity agreed Mr Kuipers was being booed for slowing the play at goalkicks but none had heard any racist remarks.

Mr Keen said: “This incident is being handled with due care by the police and Barry Fitzgerald.

“We as a club cannot tolerate this sort of behaviour.

“It is now in the hands of our legal people and will be attended to for the good of the club.”

Before the match kicked off, Cumbria County Council neighbourhood development officer Derek Brook handed out about 800 anti-racism leaflets to fans.

He said he had seen some sort of incident at the goal but not heard anything personally. Mr Brook said he and his team worked hard to promote the Kick Racism Out message at local football, rugby and cricket matches.

He said: “Every now and then you think it is dying out and then something happens.

“In the 1970s and 1980s racism was widespread among football crowds, but it’s not like that now.

“It would be very sad if it had happened again in this day and age.

Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said: “It’s good that Barrow AFC is taking these complaints seriously.

“Groups like the English Defence League have been targeting football games recently trying to whip up race hatred among fans.

“We must not let them take us back to the 1970s when racist taunts were commonplace in football grounds.”

A spokeswoman for Cumbria police was unable to comment.

North West Evening Mail

'Good Samaritan' in racist Edinburgh street attack (UK)

An Indian man who came to the aid of a woman seen arguing with two men in the street, had his jaw broken in a racist assault, police have said.

The 21-year-old was walking with a friend on Edinburgh's Waverly Bridge in the early hours of Saturday when the attack happened.

He was punched by one of the men before the second struck him on the head, knocking him to the ground.
Lothian Police described the attack as "an appalling assault".

They said that after the victim intervened on the woman's behalf, three other men became involved in the dispute.

After being struck and knocked to the ground, all five men and the woman left the man and ran off towards Princes Street.

The victim was taken to St John's Hospital in the city where he was found to have broken jaw.

A police spokesman said: "This has been an appalling assault levied against the victim for no reason other than his race and his efforts to come to a young woman's assistance."

BBC News

Residents' disgust at Far Right meeting (UK)

Residents have expressed their disgust after a Far Right group held a secret meeting in a Royston pub.

More than 30 people, claiming to be from the white power group The British Movement, met at The North Star in Kneesworth Street on Saturday evening before handing out leaflets and plastering lampposts and town notice boards with stickers showing their emblem.

Officers from Royston police force were alerted to the gathering and visited the group shortly after it arrived.

Pub manager Dave Thake said he was “deeply shocked” and that the room had been booked by a regular customer for “a party.”

He said: “If I had known who they were beforehand I would never have allowed it.

“A regular customer asked me if he could book the room for a party, so I said yes.

“I am deeply shocked.”

A Royston resident, who did not wish to be named, said he had talked to members of the group as they distributed flyers.

He said: “They were putting up stickers with racist slogans on them.

“I couldn’t believe that a small town like Royston had attracted people like that, it is disgraceful and I was disgusted.”

A spokeswoman from North Herts Police said: “Officers from Royston Neighbourhood Team as a matter of course checked on the meeting as part of their routine patrols. It was a peaceful meeting and no offences were committed.”

MP Oliver Heald added: “I would be very upset to hear that rightwing groups are meeting in Royston. We have always been a very friendly and welcoming town.”







Herefordshire Mercury

Racism row in New Zealand with beauty queen accused of 'not looking Indian enough'

A blonde, blue-eyed beauty queen is the latest focus of a racism row in New Zealand after she was accused of "not looking Indian enough" following her victory in the Miss IndiaNZ beauty title.

The 21-year-old, Jacinta Lal, who has a Fiji Indian father and a New Zealand mother, was booed by spectators when she won the Wellington pageant in April - and the case recently came to light in the wake of the resignation of a television presenter embroiled in allegations of racism, the New Zealand Herald said.

Award organiser Dharmesh Parikh told the newspaper he had received complaints questioning Lal's eligibility to be in the pageant - and there were also "raised eyebrows" when she competed for the national title in August.

Miss Lal said she had heard people saying that she "wasn't Indian-looking enough to win the pageant".

Mr Parikh said the case highlighted that racism cut both ways, in the wake of the resignation of TVNZ broadcaster Paul Henry over comments about Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand not "looking like a New Zealander" and his mocking of Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit's name.

Miss Lal said there was no difference between what Mr Henry said and the members of the Indian community who criticised her win.

"They are all wrong and should not say things like that," she said.

The Henry case, along with reports of an Australian inquiry into racist emails being circulated by police officers, have made headlines in major Indian newspapers and inflamed diplomatic tensions.

Herald Sun