Reported abuse against Muslims in Leicestershire rises (UK)

Muslims in Leicestershire are facing increasing abuse, according to figures from the police.

Between April 2008 and March 2009, officers recorded 25 offences against Muslims but in the following 12 months, the figure rose to 42.

Most incidents involved verbal abuse but there was a small number of cases in which veils were pulled off.

Police said they treated all types of hate crime as a priority and urged victims to report any problems.


'More confidence'
Insp Bill Knopp said that while the number of offences was relatively low, they took the upward trend seriously.
"We have a very good track record in detecting racial and religiously motivated crimes.

"I would encourage anyone with information to come forward and there is a good chance we will find the offenders and bring them to book."

Rehana Sidat, from Leicester, who wears the niqab, said: "I think there are two things going on. There is more Islamophobia, people are becoming more intolerant.

"But also more people are reporting this sort of thing, having more confidence to bring it to the police."

BBC News

Mel Gibson accused of wanting 'Jew blood on my hands,' claims ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva

Oh Mel, when does it end?

Mel Gibson, whose alleged rants against baby mama Oksana Grigorieva have been leaked on several recordings, has been accused of spewing some anti-Semitic comments – and this time it's threatening.

According to RadarOnline.com, Gibson's baby mama Oksana Grigorieva told authorities who are investigating the actor for domestic abuse that he once said, "I want Jew blood on my hands."

The foul-mouthed actor's alleged slur was reportedly made in reference to a high-profile Jewish figure in Hollywood whom he believed had "publicly humiliated" him.

Grigorieva, 40, claimed the hot-tempered actor "wanted the person taken to the desert, stripped naked, knee capped and left in the heat," according to Radar.

Gibson, 54, is also accused of hiring someone to surveil this person. The reported threats were never carried out.
This is the latest explosive claim against the "Mad Max" actor, who is heard making racist slurs against African Americans and Latinos in previous tapes.

In 2006, Gibson famously launched into an anti-Semitic tirade during his DUI arrest in Malibu.

"F--- Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?" the actor said to his arresting officer, who is Jewish.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the California Department of Children and Family Services are both investigating the actor after Grigorieva claimed he hit her during a heated fight in January.

According to Radar, Gibson also supposedly choked and punched the Russian beauty twice in the head, all while she was clutching their baby girl, Lucia. Pictures of Grigorieva with broken front teeth – allegedly a result of Gibson's punch – have also surfaced.

NY Daily

NOW SPAIN FLOATS A BURQA BAN

Spain’s parliament has joined an ever-lengthening list of European legislatures considering banning the burqa and niqab. No decision on whether to outlaw the veil in Spain will be made until later this year, but the fact that the congressional debate came just one week after France’s lower house overwhelmingly approved a ban is worrying many Muslims in Europe and beyond. There have been demonstrations as far away as Pakistan over the French decision, even though only around 2,000 of France’s five million Muslims – most of them French converts to Islam – cover their faces. Even though the Spanish justice minister, Francisco Caamano, said last week that garments like the burqa were “hardly compatible with human dignity”, the ruling Socialist Party was expected yesterday to vote against a plan to bar women from wearing a veil in public. The proposal was put forward by the opposition Popular Party, but analysts saw it as a political ploy to win support. No one has actually been able to cite a public place where women typically wear such veils in Spain.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, described the moves in Europe as thinly disguised attempts to discriminate against Muslims. “It’s really a new type of law targeting a particular minority faith based on the prejudices of the majority. And my religious rights should not be dependent on a majority vote,” he told Voice of America radio. Apart from France and Spain, the lower house of Belgium’s parliament has passed a bill to ban clothing that hides a person’s identity in any public place. Dutch attempts to impose a similar ban were dropped in 2006 over fears it would be unconstitutional. The government said it would legislate instead to ban burqas in schools and state buildings. Austria and Switzerland have both vowed to consider bans if burqas were to become widespread. Denmark and several German states have imposed bans on headscarves for various professions. And in northern Italy, local authorities have passed by-laws or resurrected old public order laws against the wearing of masks.

The UK, however, is bucking the trend, firmly ruling out any ban, even though a recent opinion poll showed that 67 per cent of Britons favoured one. A Conservative backbench MP introduced a private bill in parliament last week that calls for face coverings to be outlawed in public places. But his bill stands no chance of becoming law as all three major parties oppose the move. Damian Green, the immigration minister, described any such ban as “un-British”, while Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, said wearing the burqa could be “empowering” for some women. Welcoming these declarations yesterday, Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a London-based organisation dedicated to inter-faith dialogue, said: “The right of Muslim women to wear the veil should be protected by this government and I welcome their commitment to freedom.”

The move towards bans could see a series of legal challenges in the European Court of Human Rights. John Dalhuisen of Amnesty International, an expert on discrimination in Europe, said he was concerned that the tendency towards bans could lead to restrictions on women’s rights. “Some of those who are currently being forced to wear veils won’t necessarily see their situation improve,” he said. “They will see access to services, goods and perhaps even the assistance that they might want to reach out to, taken away from them. “There’s obviously a risk of a double punishment – they are punished in the home and then they go out in the street and they are punished again.”

The National

NATIONAL RACISM REPORT UNDER FIRE (Denmark)

A leading anti-racism organisation has criticised the government’s latest progress report to the UN, saying that it is both incomplete and that the number of cases included in the document is too low. The report was sent as a precursor to the UN’s Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which will assess the situation in Denmark in August. But according to the Documentation and Advisory Centre on Racism, the report leaves out a slew of incidents that the police and other investigators have deemed possibly race-related. ‘For example, the report doesn’t mention that [national intelligence agency] PET has identified 560 cases with possible racial/religious overtones, including violence, harassment, vandalism and attempted murder,’ said Niels-Erik Hansen, head of the advisory centre. He also pointed out that the government’s assessment indicated that over the past five years there have been 123 reports of violations adhering to anti-racism laws. But according to the National Police, the figure is 190 cases in all. Hansen said the government report painted a far too ‘rosy’ picture of the situation in Denmark. ‘If you cover your ears and close your eyes then it's easy to pretend there’s no racism,’ said Hansen. Frank Mathiesen, a Justice Ministry advisor, said that if the UN asked for specific information about possible racially or religiously motivated incidents, then the government would not hesitate in providing it. Both the Social Liberals and the Red Green Alliance have also criticised the report as inadequate.


The Copenhagen Post

Neo-nazi Movement Only 100 Signatures Away from Becoming Political Party

The Patria Nueva Sociedad (PNS), or Homeland New Society, neo-nazi movement only needs 100 signatures to become a constitutionally recognized political party. In August they will table in downtown Santiago to gather the necessary signatures as the Constitutional Court rejected the motion to declare the movement unconstitutional.

“We are planning to go downtown, to Paseo Ahumada, so we’ve made a request to the municipality,” PNS leader told online magazine Acción Chilena.

Alexis López, president of PNS said they already have about 40 of the 100 signatures they lack. Apart from these, the group already has seven thousand members.

The 2006 appeal to the Constitutional Court to outlaw this group was unsuccessful, according to a a ruling issued last month. In that appeal parliamentarians, the Homosexual Liberation Movement (Movilh) as well as the Jewish Youth group accused this movement of various neo-nazi attacks from 2002 to 2006.

But the group hopes to be a regional party before going national. They hope to focus in Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta, Araucanía, Valdivia, Osorno and Aysén. The minimum number of signatures required by region is at least 0.5 percent of the electorate who cast ballots in the last deputy election. In Santiago, for example, that would total about 12 thousand signatures.

If they do become a party, it would most probably be marginalized since National Socialist groups around the world are usually cut from the electoral map. But with regards to criticism López does not worry much and calls them prejudice. “To have people who oppose… is part of the democratic game,” he said. He also distances himself from other Nazi groups who are known for violent attacks. “We don’t want to be related to them. They have even attacked us for being traitors.”

The Pulse