New film to tackle homophobic bullying is sent to schools (UK)

Copies of a new film designed to tackle homophobic bullying are to be sent to every school in Scotland this week.
FIT, which tells the story of six young people trying to come to terms with their sexuality, is being distributed to the schools by Stonewall Scotland, which campaigns for gay equality.
The film will be launched in Scotland at a premiere in Edinburgh tonight attended by pupils, teachers and campaigners. It will then be sent to every school in the country over the next few days with the help of Teaching and Learning Scotland.

Carl Watt, the director of Stonewall Scotland, said yesterday that he hoped the film would begin to reverse the problem of gay bullying in Scotland, which he said was still serious.

“The research that we’ve conducted shows that two-thirds of lesbian, gay and bisexual people are bullied at school,” said Watt. “Those young people are more likely to skip classes and drop out of education and then there’s the impact it has on their own self-esteem and confidence.”

FIT has been described as a gritty take on Glee, and Watt said he hoped the film’s direct approach would speak directly to young people. “It’s a different way of getting across the message of the damage homophobic bullying is causing in schools. It looks at it from the young person’s perspective in a medium that they are used to in that style of something like Skins.

“Because of the legacy of Section 28, there’s maybe a generation of teachers who don’t have the confidence, or haven’t been trained or given the resources to tackle homophobic bullying in schools. There’s not a lack of will, it’s just a lack of confidence and the appropriate resources.

“I would hope that all schools will look at this. I would hope that it’s going to be seen in the vast majority of Scotland’s schools.”

FIT was funded by a number of organisations across the UK, including the Scottish Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission Scotland.

It is an adaptation of Stonewall’s play for schools, which was seen on tour at eight schools in Scotland in 2007-2008 and was written by the actor and performer Rikki Beadle-Blair.

Beadle-Blair said yesterday: “All bullying is rife and shocking and it stuns me that we seem to kind of accept it as if we’re still in Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Homophobia of any kind is archaic.”

Beadle-Blair said homophobic bullying also happened to people who aren’t gay. “People are attacked for not being enough of a boy, enough of a lad, and girls for not being the right kind of girl. It’s constant. The word ‘gay’ is in the hands of all these teenagers and young people and older people who thoughtlessly using it as a casual put-down for almost anything.”

Beadle-Blair said he was reluctant to criticise schools, but that more needed to be done. “I don’t want to criticise schools. I just want them to be better now. Yes, I think schools have been too slow to deal with it but I think we’ve all been too slow to deal with it.”
herald Scotland

BNP plans to vet would-be members at their homes

Party's revised constitution would require all applicants to submit to a two-hour home visit, court is told

The British National party plans to send officials to vet all would-be members in their homes, a court heard today.
A clause in the far right group's revised constitution would require all applicants to submit to a two-hour home visit by two party officials, Central London county court was told.
That could operate as a form of indirect discrimination against non-whites, said Robin Allen QC, representing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is challenging the party's membership rules. "One way the provisions could operate would be to intimidate someone who wanted to join the party," he said, adding: "Of course, it could simply be a greeting."
BNP members last month voted to scrap the whites-only membership criteria after it was warned it faced legal action under equality laws.
The EHRC is arguing that the new constitution remains indirectly racist, even though the colour bar has been removed. That is rejected by the BNP, which argues that ever since it officially opened its doors to all ethnic groups it has acquired a "waiting list" of black and Asian would-be members.

The party's new constitution, which has yet to be published, remains prejudicial because it requires members to agree to clauses including that they are "implacably opposed to the promotion, by any means, of the integration or assimilation" of the UK's indigenous white population, Allen said.
"It would be jolly difficult for a mixed-race person to join the BNP without effectively denying themselves," he argued.

Gwyn Price Rowlands, representing the BNP, described the EHRC argument as nonsense and claimed the party already had a "significant number" of non-white members, all of whom were "welcome".

"I am informed that there is a waiting list of black, Asian and Chinese people to join," he said.

Judge Paul Collins is to rule on whether the new BNP constitution is indirectly racist on Friday.
An internal BNP memo seen by the Guardian tells members: "We don't expect any more than a handful of people of ethnic minority origin to apply to join the party nationally, and we will not let this deflect us from our political objectives of saving Britain and restoring the primacy of the indigenous British people."

The legal wrangling comes amid claims of a renewed challenge to the BNP from other extreme rightwing groups. The National Front says it has seen an upsurge in membership enquiries in recent months – mainly from BNP supporters who feel the party is "selling out".
National Front's spokesman, Tom Linden, said there had been a 70% increase in inquiries since Griffin appeared on BBC Question Time and the NF is expected to stand around 25 candidates at the general election.

"The British National party is no longer a white racist party, it is becoming a multi-racial party by giving into the race industry," he said.
guardian

SLOVAKIA SAYS ROMA KIDS 'MUST BE TAKEN' FROM HOMES FOR 'INTEGRATION'

Slovakia's prime minister said on Monday children of the European Union member's large Roma minority "must be taken" from their impoverished settlements and put into boarding schools to hasten integration. Robert Fico's comments follow last week's criticism from U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who rapped the Slovaks and their Czech neighbours for a worsening situation in the treatment of their Roma, sometimes known as gypsies. With his SMER party leading opinion polls ahead of a June general election, the leftist prime minister said the schools were the only way to break a cycle of exclusion in which most Roma grow up without any hope of joining mainstream society. "The (next) government's agenda must include a programme designed to gradually put as many Roma children as possible into boarding schools and gradually separate them from the life they live in their settlements," Fico said. "It seems that there is no other system. Many things have been tried... If we don't do it, we will raise another generation of Roma which will not be able to integrate." Slovak deputy Prime Minister for minority issues Dusan Caplovic said the plan had received preliminary approval from top Roma officials and children would only attend boarding schools if their parents agree.
The financial crisis has raised concern over a potential rise in intolerance and discrimination across Europe as economic hardship increases social tension and could embolden radical groups such as Hungary's anti-Roma, far-right Jobbik party. Up to around 10 percent of Slovakia's 5.4 million people are Roma. Most live on the margins of society in squalid settlements with limited access to education, electricity and running water. In many communities, unemployment runs at well over 50 percent. Violence is also a problem. Last year, Slovakia faced criticism after a video showed police abusing a group of Roma boys, while in 2008 a court sentenced two officers for beating a Roma man to death at a police station in 2001. Fico said he expected the proposal to draw criticism from human rights groups and Ivan Ivanov, Executive Director of the European Roma Information Office in Brussels reacted cautiously to the plan. But Ivanov said if it meant Roma children would attend Roma-exclusive boarding schools, and not regular Slovak schools, it went against the principles of the European Union. "If this is what they say, this is a very bad development," Ivanov said. "This is against all principles of the European Union because we are talking about desegregation, about the integration of this Roma community."
reuters

DUTCH FAR-RIGHT MP TO TAKE COUNCIL SEAT IN THE HAGUE

Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders will take a seat on the municipal council of The Hague where his party came second in municipal polls last week, the city said Monday. "I can confirm that Mr Wilders will take a seat on the council," a spokeswoman for the municipality, Tina Ehrami, told AFP. Wilders had listed himself in the 20th and last spot of his Party for Freedom's (PVV) list of candidates for elections in The Hague, where it took 16.8 percent of the vote and eight seats out of 45 on the municipal council. The PVV had contested only two cities: The Hague, the seat of government, and Almere near Amsterdam where it came first with 21.6 percent of the vote in a show of strength ahead of June general elections. Wilders, whose party is said by polls to now be the most popular nationally with its campaign to "stop the Islamisation of the Netherlands", won 13,636 votes for himself in The Hague while the head of his PVV list in the city, Sietse Fritsma, got 16,229 votes. The candidate in third place received 612 votes. "I didn't initially want to do it (sit on the council), but I realised Friday that I received quite a few preferential votes," in his own name, Wilders was quoted as saying Monday by Dutch news agency ANP. "For that reason, I will do it." He will remain a member of the Dutch lower house of parliament. The new municipal council of The Hague, where the Labour party PvdA came first with 21.2 percent of the vote and 10 seats, will be inaugurated on Thursday. Negotiations to form a coalition government in the city were well underway, said Ehrami. Wilders, who faces hate speech charges for calling Islam a fascist religion, campaigns for a ban on headscarves for public servants, a halt to immigration from Muslim countries and a moratorium on the erection of mosques. His party currently has nine out of 150 seats in the Dutch parliament.

expatica

INHUMANE PUSHING OF GYPSY FAMILIES BETWEEN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES CONTINUES

Roma migrants are returned by force to places where they are at risk of human rights violations, according to Thomas Hammarberg, European Commissioner for Human Rights. Roma reportedly migrated mostly from Indian subcontinent to Europe many centuries ago. In his viewpoint published on his official website, Hammarberg says: European migration policies discriminate against Roma people. Of particular concern is the fact that some Roma who have been forcibly returned have ended up in the lead-contaminated camps of esmin Lug and Osterode in northern Mitrovica, inhabited for a decade now by Roma families, including children, with deeply serious effects on their health. Expulsions of Roma have been carried out in contravention of European Union law. In other cases destruction of Roma dwellings has been used as a method to persuade Roma to leave voluntarily. Discrimination of Roma in migration policies has met with little or no opposition in almost every country. This may not be surprising in view of the lingering anti-Gypsyism in large parts of Europe, Hammarberg adds. To push Roma families between countries, as now happens, is inhumane. It victimizes children many of whom were born and grown up in the host countries before they were deported,Human Rights Commissioner points out. Acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that it was shocking to see how inhumanely Europe was treating its about 15 million Roma brothers and sisters. It was clearly reprehensible, hazardous and immoral and a blatant failure of Europe to meet its international obligations. When it came toRoma, Europe frequently failed to implement its own laws distinctly mentioned in its own books. Rajan Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, further said that besides the absence of any serious efforts at their inclusion,Roma were being used as punch bag and blamed for the social ills of Europe. European neglect was trapping Roma in cycles of persecution and poverty. Roma issue should be one of the highest priorities of human rights agenda of Europe and world, thus reversing the history of persecution, Zed stressed.
aniin

FEARFUL IN MOSCOW (Russia)

In just three weeks, one Korean student lost his life and another nearly did so presumably by ultranationalists in Russia. Going further back, an average of one Korean has been killed or injured by Russian neo-Nazis and other thugs every year since 2005, showing foreigners' security in the former leader of the socialist bloc has reached an intolerable state. Diplomats may be tempted to think the six Koreans are just part of the hundreds of victims stabbed, strangled or beaten to death by more than 70,000 skinheads belonging to about 20 ultra-right organizations in the socially and economically unstable country over the years. Sunday's incident shows, however, it might not be entirely incidental. Various circumstantial evidences seem to indicate that the two assaulters carefully planned the crime, considering the victim, a 29-year-old cinema-student-cum-TV-cameraman, had taken part in producing a program on neo-Nazi skinheads not long ago. It also means Koreans have emerged as a group noticeable enough to become targets of premeditated attacks. This should be a rude awakener to both Korean and Russian diplomats in a country where up to 15 percent of local youths are sympathetic with the xenophobic, racist groups, which believe everything bad in their country is ascribable to foreigners, as these aliens are exploiting Russia's wealth and resources while taking away local people's jobs. Regretful are the reports that Moscow appears not very eager to crack down on these anti-social, anti-human elements ¯ even if one acknowledges this is neither a problem peculiar to Russia nor an easy one to root out ¯ not least because such xenophobic trends would drive foreign investors and tourists further away, which will in turn lead to even greater economic difficulties and a wider income gap among the Russians in a vicious circle.


None other than Korean residents in Russia are reportedly expressing not just shock and anger but fear, raising questions whether Russia is a law-abiding, civilized state where law enforcement authorities are operating normally. These ethnic Koreans have already been suffering enough from inconveniences with visas and other consular problems there. The foreign ministry is considering issuing a travel warning for more regions of Russia, while telling Koreans to avoid pleasure quarters especially after dark as well as to travel in groups. This ``take-good-care-of-yourself" advice may be better than nothing, but Koreans in Russia are asking, ``Does it mean we'll have to personally hire bodyguards?" Seoul must go way further from this and call for Moscow to thoroughly investigate these incidents, punish the criminals and promise to do its best to prevent their recurrences ¯ not just in words but in deeds. If these requirements are unmet, there is no reason President Lee Myung-bak shouldn't make a personal call to either Russian President Dmitri Medvedev or Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and show them what summit diplomacy is supposed to be. Concerns about possible diplomatic frictions must give place to the safety of his own people, which is the foremost duty of any government.
The Korean Times