BNP 'blocked' Asian man's application to join party

THE BNP have told an Asian businessman that his application to join the party will be blocked, he said today.

Mo Chaudry, 49, had wanted to join the far-right party to "fight them from the inside".
The businessman, from Newcastle-Under-Lyme in Staffordshire, said he was seeking to take advantage of the enforced change to the party’s constitution to expose them.
BNP members voted to admit black and Asian people last month when the party was threatened with an injunction by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
Pakistan-born Mr Chaudry, who is worth £60 million, runs a string of businesses around Stoke-on-Trent, which has eight BNP members on the city council. He is a star of the Channel 4 programme The Secret Millionaire, in which rich benefactors go undercover to find good ways of using their money.

He said today: "I debated with the BNP’s deputy leader Simon Darby on BBC Radio 5 Live and he told me that my application would be blocked. How can you be more discriminatory than that?"
He added: "People are not racist in Stoke-on-Trent and I have never experienced racism in my time here but the city council has eight BNP members. The good people that don’t vote need to get off their backside and change things."
The EHRC is considering the changes the BNP have made to their membership rules and will be back in court on March 9.
EHRC has threatened legal action if the rules are still considered discriminatory.

Huddersfield Examiner

BNP party activist Mark Walker has lost his case for unfair dismissal

A BRITISH National Party activist and former North-East teacher who was sacked for absenteeism has lost his case for unfair dismissal.
A judgement against former Sunnydale Community College teacher Mark Walker was issued by an employment tribunal last month.
Mr Walker, 39, was suspended from the school, in Shildon, County Durham, in March 2007, and claimed he was the subject of a political witch hunt.
Twenty months later, he was officially sacked over his sickness record and took the school’s governing body to an employment tribunal.
The Newcastle tribunal, which was met in January, unanimously dismissed Mr Walker’s case, but has not yet published its reasons.
Patrick Harrington, a spokesman for Mr Walker’s union, Solidarity, said there could be further action against his employers, Durham County Council.
Mr Harrington said he would be studying the tribunal’s reasons with a view to a potential appeal, but an appeal was not the only option.
He said: “What we would point out is that Mr Walker’s ill health was largely contributed to by the employer and, in particular, the way they handled the disciplinary process.

“There may be a personal injury claim for the stress caused.”
Mr Harrington also cited an NSPCC report about Mr Walker, who is from Rievaulx, Spennymoor, County Durham, that was leaked to The Northern Echo.
The report reveals the disciplinary inquiry uncovered a large number of emails indicating a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old former pupil.
It makes it clear that no illegal content was found on Mr Walker’s school laptop or desktop computers.
It concludes: “There is sufficient evidence from the emails, and from previous matters concerning his professional conduct, to conclude that Mr Walker’s behaviour has resulted in his conduct being less than one would expect of a teacher placed in a position of trust.”
Mr Harrington said: “This report was very damaging to Mr Walker and there is a duty of confidentiality and a question of damages for the breach. The report was in the hands of the county council and the NSPCC and has to have been leaked by staff.”
Durham County Council declined to comment because of legal reasons.

■A tribunal into the case of Mr Walker’s brother, Adam Walker, also a BNP activist, has been adjourned until the end of May.
The General Teaching Council, in Birmingham, is considering allegations he posted inappropriate comments on the internet

The Northern Echo

BNP leader Nick Griffin to be given TV platform by BBC again

The BNP's Nick Griffin is to be given a new TV platform by the BBC, it was revealed yesterday.
Despite the row in the wake of Griffin's appearance on Question Time last year, he will appear again at the height of the general election campaign in the spring.
The BBC said "alongside" the TV debate between leaders Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, they are to hold a "minor parties debate".
The corporation's website said: "There will be arrangements in the programming around the BBC debate, a week before polling day, to ensure other parties which have demonstrated they have some electoral support - UKIP, the Green Party and the BNP - will have their say."
Bnp activists hailed it as a victory for the far-right group. Deputy leader Simon Darby said it was a "good idea to go head to head with the Greens and UKIP".

After the Question Time bust-up, Darby also claimed the BBC are taking a softer line with the BNP in programmes.
He said an edition of Panorama will feature the far right in the next few months and added: "Unlike some of the previous encounters between the two bodies I think this will be relatively straightforward. But with these guys you never really know."
Anti-fascist group Searchlight called the plan an outrage. A spokesman said: "Executives at the BBC have become obsessed with giving the BNP national publicity at the licence fee payer's expense.
"These are supposed to be serious debates allowing people to make an informed choice. Nick Griffin has no place there." Griffin's BBC Question Time spot turned into a disaster for the Beeb and the BNP.
Riots broke out in front of the corporation's HQ after Griffin boasted it would "propel the BNP into the big time".
But once the cameras began rolling nervous Griffin, 50, squirmed and bizarrely claimed EU laws meant he "could not explain" why he once denied the Holocaust. Justice Minister Jack Straw said: "We've seen that the moment anyone puts an uncomfortable quote to him he wriggles. He wants to wriggle out of it."
Cambridge-educated Griffin was elected as a Euro MP last July.
Mirror

Three men assaulted in Cornwall ‘homophobic’ attack

Police are treating an attack on three men in Padstow, Cornwall, as a hate crime because one of the men was trans.
The friends, who were on holiday from the Plymouth area, had gone out on Saturday night and were attacked as they returned to an address on Broad Street.
It is thought they were followed into the house by two men, one of whom attacked them.
Police were called to the property at just after midnight on Sunday morning and two of the victims required hospital treatment for cuts. One of the two, a man in his fifties, was knocked unconscious.
A police spokesman told the Cornish Guardian: “We have recorded this incident as a hate crime after one of the victims made a claim that the assault could have been a homophobic attack because one of the party was a transsexual.
“We are following all lines of inquiry including checking the local pub’s CCTV camera footage.
“If anyone has any information we would encourage them to please come forward.”
The first suspect is described as white, between 5ft 7in and 5ft 8in tall, in his late 20s, with a bald head and a stocky build. He was wearing a long-sleeved black t-shirt.
The second man was described as white, 5ft 9in, slim, with short tight curly hair and a local accent.

More Attacks on Minorities in Barnaul, Russia

Two more attacks on ethnic minorities have been reported in Barnaul, Russia (Republic of Altay), a city that made international headlines earlier this month after a South Korean exchange student was killed in a racist attack.
According to a February 24, 2010 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center, three of the suspects in the killing of the Korean student are now suspected of attacking a citizen of China and an ethnic Tuvan at the beginning of February. There were no details in the report about the extent of the victims' injuries.
 
UCSJ

Egypt blogger military trial criticised

Egypt has been strongly criticised by Human Rights Watch for trying a blogger, Ahmed Mustafa, before a military court.
The 20-year-old is accused of publishing false information in a blog a year ago, alleging a case of nepotism at Egypt's premier military academy.
Egypt's emergency law, in place since 1981, allows indefinite detention and trials of civilians in military courts.
Egyptian officials have denied that the power is much used.
The only evidence presented at his trial this week is the post on his blog.
The trial has been adjourned to 7 March to give defence lawyers more time to review the evidence.

There has been no investigation into Mr Mustafa's allegation of corruption, namely his claim that a teacher's son was pushed out of the academy, to make way for the son of a more influential individual who could make financial contributions, Christian Fraser, the BBC correspondent in Cairo says.
Under two international human rights accords, both ratified by Egypt, the government is required to protect freedom of expression.
Yet Human Rights Watch draws attention to a growing list of bloggers who remain in detention.
Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison in 2006, for writing about sectarian tensions in Alexandria and criticising President Mubarak.
Another blogger, Hany Nazeer, was detained in October 2008 under the country's emergency law that was designed to fight terrorism for expressing forthright views on Christianity and Islam.
Last year after a visit to Egypt, the United Nation's Special Rapporteur on human rights reiterated that the trial of civilian suspects in military courts raised concerns about the independent administration of justice.
"The Egyptian government says one thing in Geneva and then immediately makes a mockery of the Human Rights Council's review process," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

"No civilian should be tried before a military court, and no government that claims to respect human rights should be prosecuting someone solely for writing about corruption," he added.

BBC News