TACKLING UNFOUNDED FEARS TO KILL RACISM IN MALTA

A man and woman at Valletta's City Gate were seen 'arguing' over the topic of African immigrants yesterday, amid accusations that "the blacks" are taking Maltese jobs and invading Malta. The woman said that the number of immigrants in Malta totalled less than one per cent of the population. In the meantime, she said, nobody ever complained about the 9,000 Russian immigrants in Malta "because they are blonde". The two were actors who role played common misconceptions to raise awareness. Refugees shared their experiences with a curious crowd that gathered during an activity organised by the Migrant Solidarity Movement and Graffitti to mark World Refugee Day today. A group of people wore white masks and stood in front of a banner in remembrance of the thousands of migrants who die in the Mediterranean Sea in search of a new life.

Racist feelings were best fought by addressing people's unfounded fears brought about because of a lack of information, Andre Callus from Moviment Graffitti said. Sudanese Hassan Mohammed Saleban explained how he chose to leave his country after his father died during the war, in search of a better life and to earn money to send home to his sick mother. During his travels, he said he had to endure four days of "punishment" in Libya by being left out in the scorching sun during the day and out in the cold at night. After that he and his friends were taken to a prison where they spent 18 months living in a small crammed cell with a hole for a toilet. Reflecting on his experience, Mr Callus appealed to the authorities not to send immigrants back to Libya. Libyan Fawzi Sadegh, who was listening to the stories, objected to the statement and explained his country did not have a prison just for black people, as had been suggested. In fact, he said, many black people worked there legally.

A Nigerian refugee said that during the years he spent in Malta he learnt the plastering trade. However, he was sometimes turned away because of his skin colour. Somali Jon Low explained his frustration when he overheard people assuming he was living off government charity because he owned a mobile phone. He explained he had bought his phone with the money he earned while working legally and paying taxes. In a statement issued yesterday, the Nationalist Party called on all Maltese to show solidarity towards refugees who left their country in search of a place to call home. While Malta was small and there was a limit to its resources and the number of refugees it could accommodate, it would be wrong to use this as an excuse to close the door to people in need, the PN said.

Times of Malta

Udo Voigt fights for rights of German far-right

A court in eastern Germany is due to decide on Tuesday whether a local hotel was within its rights to ban the  leader of the German far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) from taking a room.
It is easy to see why people love to come to the Hotel and Spa Esplanade.

With its softly bubbling pools and tranquil massage rooms, it sits right on the shore of Lake Scharmuetzelsee in the idyllic small town of Bad Saarow, just 45 minutes' drive south-east from Berlin.

In the roaring 1920s Berliners came out to lush green Saarow to summer by the lake, and today the recently built Esplanade boasts high-profile guests like Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But when Udo Voigt, leader of the far-right NPD, tried to book a holiday there last November, the hotel said "no".
The NPD is a legal party, but has known links with neo-Nazi groups, and stands accused of racism and inciting hatred.

"Given his political opinions, and what he and his party represent, we could not guarantee the well-being of our guests should he stay with us," explains Heinz Baumeister, general manager of the Hotel Esplanade.

Voigt would not take no for an answer, hosever, and sued the hotel for discrimination. The irony is not lost on Mr Baumeister.
After all, a few years back the NPD leader was found guilty of inciting racial hatred himself.

"There is a debate to be had," Mr Baumeister admits. "Should you discriminate against those who are guilty of discrimination? It's an interesting subject, but in the end decisions have to be made."

'Misunderstood'
The hotel manager can rely on the support of most of his guests, like Anne-Dore Krohn, who is here for the first time.

"For me it would definitely be a strange atmosphere to swim in the same pool as Mr Voigt, or to sit in the sauna next to him," she says.

Just 70km away, in Koepenick, a slightly run-down area in Berlin's east, I find Udo Voigt at party headquarters.

It is a rather unimpressive looking, small two-storey building with no party sign, but with double steel doors and a police car parked outside.


"It's scandalous and a violation of my basic rights," Mr Voigt says about the hotel ban.

Asked about the matter of his own, well-documented discrimination against others, he claims he has always been misunderstood.

"We have nothing against foreigners," he says.

"We do welcome guests in Germany and don't discriminate against them. We just don't want them to stay indefinitely. I didn't intend to stay indefinitely at Mr Baumeister's hotel."
The problem for Mr Voigt is that German anti-discrimination law does not regard political persuasion as something that deserves protection.

The NPD wants to change that, and sees the case against the Hotel Esplanade as a welcome opportunity.

"German legislators specifically excluded the element of political belief when they implemented European anti-discrimination law, because they didn't want to give any legal protection to the far-right," says Klaus Michael Alenfelder, law professor and president of the German Society for Anti-discrimination Law.

"So, when a private contractor decides not to do business with someone whose political opinion he doesn't like, he's perfectly free to do so."

Even though the NPD is represented in two regional parliaments, its share of the national vote is just over 1%.
And given Germany's past, neither politicians nor the courts are interested in changing that, Professor Alenfelder believes.

Even so, the case has prompted many Germans to ask themselves how intolerant they are prepared to be in order to protect a tolerant society.

BBC News

Two jailed over Panorama Southmead race abuse probe (UK)

Two men who racially abused two Asian reporters working undercover for a BBC Panorama programme have been jailed.

Sean Ganderton, 23, and Martin Durnell, 18, admitted racially-aggravated harassment during various incidents in Southmead, Bristol, last year.

Bristol Crown Court was shown footage which revealed Ganderton verbally and physically abusing the men.

Sentencing them Judge Michael Roach said their behaviour was "cowardly and not to be tolerated".

The programme featured the two undercover Asian reporters posing as a couple living in the Southmead area of Bristol.
Tamanna Rahman and Amil Khan spent two months living on an estate to find out if racism was still an issue in 2009.

The programme was broadcast on BBC One in October 2009.

BBC News

The organizer of an international neo-Nazi meeting in Tortosa Arrested

Police have arrested the alleged organizer of an international neo-Nazi meeting held last weekend in Tortosa (Tarragona), where Nazism lectures and exposed objects of the Third Reich regime.

As reported by the regional police force, the meeting held on 11 and 13 last June, also included a concert of music called RAC (Anti Rock), which entailed the performance of groups from all over Spain and other countries.
The Catalan police arrested VA Henry, 29 and a resident of Tortosa, on June 12 , as the alleged organizer of the neo-Nazi meeting, however he was released after payment of a bond, but he was charged with crime against fundamental rights and against the international community.

The regional police identified the 76 attending the meeting, of different nationalities, and seized numerous neo-Nazi symbols and xenophobic material, as well as original objects of the Third Reich.


Barcelona Reporter

AMSTERDAM MAYOR CONSIDERS USING 'DECOY JEWS' TO COMBAT ANTI-SEMITISM (Netherlands)

Acting Amsterdam mayor Lodewijk Asscher is considering using police offcers posing as Jews in an attempt to stamp out anti-semitic violence, the Parool reports on Monday. A spokesman said the suggestion, made last week by Labour MP Ahmed Marcouch, fits in with Asscher's decision to take unorthodox measures to try to reduce verbal and physical attacks on Jews in the capital. Secret tv recordings by the Jewish broadcasting company Joodse Omroep broadcast on Sunday showed young men shouting and making Nazi salutes at a rabbi when he visited different areas of the city. The city's police already use people posing as pensioners and gay men in an effort to catch muggers and gay-bashers.


Dutch News

THOUSANDS CELEBRATE GAY PRIDE IN BERLIN (Germany)

An estimated 600,000 people partied in the streets of Berlin on Saturday, celebrating gay pride and marking the annual Christopher Street Day. The festivities included a colorful parade through the heart of the city.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched and danced through the streets of Berlin on Saturday, taking part in the annual Christopher Street Day and this year's theme, 'Normal is Different.' More than 50 floats traveled through the streets of the capital, ending at the Brandenburg Gate. Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit, who is openly gay, said that homosexuals are still fighting for equality. "There is still today daily attacks and discrimination against homosexuals," Wowereit told the German news agency dpa. As soccer fever grabs Germany, the World Cup theme found its way into the parade, with participants on the German Football Association float handing out pink cards, instead of football's red and yellow cards. The 32nd annual gay pride event in Berlin commemorates the start of the gay rights movement in New York's Greenwich Village in 1969. On June 28 of that year, customers at the Stonewall Inn on New York's Christopher Street - who were mostly drag queens and young prostitutes - rebelled against a police raid.


DPA

NEO-NAZI LEADER EJECTED FROM SAXON LEGISLATURE (Germany)

Right-wing extremist NPD parliamentarian Holger Apfel has been banned for six months from the Saxony  state parliament following an anti-Semitic outburst on Thursday. He was removed from the building in Dresden by several police officers.

The politician will now be barred from attending the next ten plenary sessions and committee meetings due to the “particular gravity of the rebuke,” parliamentary president Matthias Rößler said. This means he will only be able to attend one session in December before the end of the year. The executive committee interrupted the floor debate to hold a special meeting about Apfel’s comments, which were given under the context of an NPD motion entitled “No cooperation with rogue states – end the Saxon-Israeli partnership.” The neo-Nazi garnered several calls to order with references to the “Jewish rogue state,” the “blooming Holocaust industry” and the “Jewish terror state” until his microphone was finally turned off. Rößler called an end to the debate, but Apfel refused to leave the plenum, forcing police to escort him from the building. The parliamentary leadership had already distanced itself from the debate ahead of time, encouraging the NPD to change the title for fear that the topic would damage Saxony’s reputation.


The Local Germany

CZECH REPUBLIC OFFICIALLY OPENS MEMORIAL TO ROMANI VICTIMS IN LETY

The memorial to the Romany victims of wartime Nazi persecution, which the Czech state arranged in Lety near the site of a former Romany internment camp, was ceremonially opened Friday in the presence of the culture minister and the government human rights commissioner. An open-air amphitheatre has been built at the memorial site in the past four months, along with two replicas of the original wooden dormitories with an exhibition commemorating the Romany victims. The memorial has been arranged close to the site where the camp used to stand and where a pig farm has been built in the meantime. The Lety camp was opened as a disciplinary labour camp in August 1940, designed for the men who failed to prove how they earned their livings. It was also designed for travellers. The same camp was opened in Hodonin near Kunstat, south Moravia. In 1942 both camps were transformed into interment camps for Romanies. A total of 1308 Romanies were gradually interned in the Lety camp by May 1943. Out of them, 327 perished there and more than 500 were transported to Oswiecim. Experts estimate that the Nazis killed 90 percent of the Czech Romany population.


"We've built a complex that the Czech Republic need not feel ashamed of and where we can invite anyone," Culture Minister Vaclav Riedlbauch told journalists. The next task is the removal of the pig farm standing at the former camp site, he said, adding that the problem rests in gaining the necessary money as the state would have to buy the pig farm from its owner, Riedlbauch said. He praised Michael Kocab, former minister in charge of human rights and minorities, and now government human rights commissioner, for largely contributing to the Lety memorial project. Kocab said he is happy at having fulfilled his plan. It has turned out, he said, that people are not indifferent to the fate of Romanies in World War Two. Kocab, too, said the next task is to have the pig farm pulled down. Last year the government earmarked 21.4 million crowns for arranging the memorial. Before, the site was maintained by the town of Lety, but not systematically. Since last year it has been managed by the Lidice Memorial, a state-subsidised organisation seated in Lidice, central Bohemian village that the Nazis razed to the ground in 1942. Lidice Memorial director Milous Cervencl Friday said another task is to present the Lety commemorative site to Czech students and teachers so that they start visiting it. It is interesting that foreigners know about the memorial and have been visiting Lety, Cervencl said.

Prague Monitor

Soldier backs BNP and hails 'legends' who shot 14 dead on Bloody Sunday

A soldier has been carpeted by top brass after a foulmouthed internet rant claiming soldiers were right to open fire on the Bloody Sunday marchers.

Fusilier John Allison, 20, is also facing disciplinary action for drumming up support for the BNP.

The dog handler serves with Fusiliers 2 Scots Battalion and has toured Afghanistan's Helmand province.

But he's been hauled over the coals after launching a tirade on his Facebook page after the Saville Inquiry last week condemned troops for killing 14 people during a civil rights demo in 1972.

But in a message peppered with swear words, Allison wrote: "The Saville Report is a lot of s****. The soldiers were right to shoot the ***** on Bloody Sunday. Rule Britannia."

Allison went on to describe 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment, who were responsible for killing the marchers, as "legends".

Army bosses also discovered that Allison had tried to canvas votes for the BNP on his web page the day before last month's general election.

Allison, of Paisley, Renfrewshire, wrote: "Vote BNP. Keep Britain British."

Serving soldiers are permitted to be members of legal political parties but are forbidden from campaigning.

Lord Saville's report ruled all victims fired on by the Paras were innocent and condemned the troops for opening fire in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland.

An Army spokesperson said: "Neither the Army nor the Armed Forces tolerates inappropriate behaviour in any shape or form.

"Instances of unacceptable social media comments brought to the attention of the Army are investigated, and appropriate action taken."

Daily Record

BNP lecturer behind Muslim heroin leaflet cleared of inciting religious hatred

A politics lecturer who wrote and distributed leaflets which blamed Muslims collectively for the heroin trade was yesterday cleared of intending to incite religious hatred.

Anthony Bamber, 54, a BNP activist, told a jury his intention was to create a debate about the ''crime against humanity'' that was the flow of the drug on to Britain's streets.

He was responsible for heading a campaign which sent up to 30,000 of the leaflets by hand or post to targeted areas and individuals throughout the north of England over a 12-month period.

Entitled The Heroin Trade, the leaflet claimed: ''Before the Islamic invasion it was impossible to find heroin in our land. Muslims are almost exclusively responsible for its production, transportation and sale.

''It is a crime against humanity because it has caused far more suffering than slavery ever did. It has led to millions of premature deaths.''
Taxpayers were also victims due to the cost of policing and rehabilitation for which Muslims must compensate, the leaflet added.

Muslims should be held to account with condemnation heaped upon them so that it would lead to the abolition of the trade, it concluded.

Bamber, of Greenbank Street, Preston, Lancashire, pleaded not guilty to seven counts of distributing threatening written material intended to stir up religious hatred between March and November 2008.

He was cleared by a jury at Preston Crown Court of all seven counts.

Representing himself, Bamber said there had been ''no unpleasant incidents or social unrest'' following the sending of the leaflets.

Giving evidence last week, he explained they were targeted at educated professionals such as teachers, doctors, lawyers and clerics who were unlikely to take physical retribution against Muslims upon reading the literature.

His aim was to create curiosity and interest which would then lead to a debate, he said.

''If I wanted to stir up religious hatred I would have aimed at a different group,'' said the former part-time lecturer of politics and economics at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.

He said: ''It was a desire to protest at what I say is a monstrous abomination. I believe I have the right to protest about the heroin trade.

''There are 400,000 heroin users in this country which is the equivalent of the size of a city like Liverpool. Half of these people are going to die.

''I wanted to scream out, I wanted society to pay much more attention to the heroin trade. It is ignored.''

He added: ''I do not want religious war, I do not want people to hate.

''I intended to do something about the heroin trade. I was not a monster stirring up religious hatred.

''I think it should be discussed and debated, and it will come (round) to my opinion that it is a crime against humanity.

''I believe I was doing a good thing.''

Following the verdict, Detective Supt Neil Hunter, of Lancashire Constabulary's Force Major Investigation Team, said: ''While we are disappointed with today's decision, we accept the decision of the court.

''We have worked very closely with the Crown Prosecution Service throughout this inquiry and careful consideration was given before any decision to charge was made.

''That decision was based upon both the nature of the leaflets and the persistent nature of their distribution."

The Telegraph