Row as French mayor puts up official picture honouring Nazi collaborator Petain in town liberated by Britain in World War II

French mayor has insulted the memory of hundreds of British soldiers who died liberating his village by displaying a portrait of a notorious Nazi collaborator.

Bernard Hoye, civic leader of Gonneville-sur-Mer, in Normandy, insists on honouring Philippe Petain, the Vichy leader who brought shame on his country during the Second World War.

This is despite the fact that British commandoes including the Royal Marines and SAS spent days fighting off the town's German garrison in the weeks after D-Day.

Now Christian Leyrit, the Lower Normandy prefect - or government representative - has written to Mr Hoye 'in the strongest possible terms' telling him to remove Petain's picture 'immediately'.

'This portrait cannot be placed alongside the official portraits hung in a town hall, which is a highly symbolic place for the French Republic,' Mr Leyrit wrote.

Mr Leyrit's words reflect growing disgust at an attempt by some French people to try and rehabilitate the memory of Petain, who was a Gallic hero during the First World War.

Petain was imprisoned after the 1944 liberation of France after setting up a pro-Nazi regime in the spa town of Vichy, effectively abolishing the French Republic to become a German slave state, collaborating in everything including the persecution of the Jews. Petain died in disgrace in 1951.
Daily Mail

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In 2006 Sky news did a feature on Racism and the BNP. Here's a section of that report

Russian Race-Hate News

Neo-Nazi Gang on Trial in Nizhny Novgorod

A gang of seven neo-Nazi university and high school students face multiple murder and assault charges, according to a January 19, 2010 report by the news web site Newsru.com. The gang came to the police's attention after one of its members shot his professor dead in a dispute over his behavior in class. The gang allegedly killed four other people, mostly from the Caucasus, and also committed four assaults and several robberies, targeting either minorities or anti-fascist activists. According to police, the gang met in an extremist Internet forum.

Series of Attacks on Africans in Moscow
Two neo-Nazis killed a man in a village near Kaliningrad, Russia, according to a January 12, 2010 article in the Kaliningrad edition of the national daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda." The suspects allegedly hit their victim with metal pipes and then kicked him in the head repeatedly with heavy boots in Kosmodemyanskoe. The suspects reportedly confessed to the killing, stating that their motivation was that the victim was a drug addict and that they had decided "to cleanse the earth of that sub-human." Russian neo-Nazis usually attack ethnic and religious minorities, but have also gone after ethnic Russian homeless people and drug addicts.

Tver Prosecutors Charge Neo-Nazi Gang With Extremism
 Prosecutors in Tver, Russia have completed their investigation into a neo-Nazi gang and sent charging documents to a court, according to a January 11, 2010 report by the RIA-Novosti news service. Five members of the "Nordic Front" face extremism charges after being accused of pasting neo-Nazi leaflets and painting graffiti on buildings around the city. All the suspects are minors from prosperous families, an increasingly common phenomenon in Russia.

St. Petersburg Police Detain Neo-Nazi
Police in St. Petersburg, Russia detained a 17 year old neo-Nazi on unspecified charges, according to a January 11, 2010 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. While it is not clear what motivated the police to search the suspect's apartment initially, investigators found a variety of weapons in the apartment.

No Charges for Members of Antisemitic Mob in Moldova
Prosecutors in Moldova have refused to bring charges against members of an antisemitic mob that tore down a menorah in the capital Chisinau and put up a cross in its place while chanting antisemitic slogans, according to a January 6, 2009 report by Jewish.ru. Despite video clips seen all over the world on Youtube and other sites that show clear violations of Moldova's laws against inciting ethnic and religious hatred, as well as the faces of those who tore down the menorah, the prosecutor's office claims that it has found no evidence that a crime was committed. The incident generated widespread criticism from the international Jewish community, as well as the condemnation of the Moldovan government.

RACISM AND SCHOOL EXCLUSION

As the telephone interrupts us for the umpteenth time, Gerry German says he had planned to keep busy in old age, but not like this. Luckily, after years of ill health, he has a fair spring in his step for a man of 82. No time to slow down, he says, laughing as the phone goes again. A cluttered boxroom in east London – but for him, the eye of the storm. One wonders how such an amiable, softly spoken figure, a white man with a ready smile and a soft Welsh lilt, can excite such strong emotions, but the electricity is generated by the work. Schools – reeling, they say, from disruptive pupils – take the nuclear option and jettison their "trouble- makers" with permanant exclusions. In step German and the Communities Empowerment Network to champion those discarded pupils against the system and, in quite a few cases, get them back in. He's king of the appeals. It doesn't make him popular. "I've quite a few informants in the schools and they tell me stuff. My favourite was the head who would theatrically throw himself to the floor on learning we had taken on a case. We took that as quite a compliment."


There are no winners in this – think 8,000 permanent exclusions a year in England; 380,000 fixed-term exclusions. And there is, says German, a cultural ­dimension. White, working-class pupils have serious problems in terms of ­underachievement, but black pupils ­remain three times more likely to be ­excluded than white, he says, and face stiffer sanctions. These cases bring him 90% of his workload: 60 referrals a month, through word of mouth. "For the most part, I think the problem is race," German tells me. "Unwitting racism: a combination of negative ­prejudice, destructive stereo-typing and low expectations. We go shoulder-to-shoulder with the parents. Generally, they are single mothers." An incongruous sight they are – the mothers, the ­children, and their genial elderly representative, who says he is rescuing the ­discarded from the scrapheap. "I always ask them if they will permit me to act on their behalf," German says. "I never presume. That's crucial. I say we are the only ones left to fight for you. From where we sit, it's the truth."

The Guardian