The ‘ever-widening hellhole, from the sound of Bow Bells eastwards, all the way to Essex’

Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking, having migrated from Islington to this east London constituency, has for some time now trained her fire on immigrants. Barking is a Labour stronghold, even though the racist British National Party won some seats there in last year’s council elections.

I am unable to offer any answer to the question as to why Hodge made an anti-immigrant outburst in a recent article of hers for the Observer, entitled “A message to my fellow immigrants”. She attempts to place us on the defensive in her first paragraph. “In our open, tolerant country,” she writes, “there are, thankfully, few issues that remain taboo. But, motivated by the fear of both legitimising racism and encouraging the extreme right, migration is one.”

This is absolute nonsense. Not a week passes in which immigration is not central to the news and current affairs agenda. Statistics and opinions abound. Predictions of numbers that will arrive in the UK are plastered across the pages of the press, adorned by commentators who, in large measure, tempt white people to vent their collective spleen against immigrants.

Hodge is the latest in a long line to encourage this tendency. With one sweep of the pen, she suggests that only white families in her constituency, and others nearby, “have lived in the area for three generations”. She is wrong. Over three generations, black people have settled in the East End of London, in Tiger Bay in Cardiff, and in Bristol and Liverpool, too. As long as we have been here we have been the target of white racism, pointing fingers of blame at us for the misfortunes to which others are prey.

Thousands of seafaring men signed off at these English ports to settle and raise three generations. Ramadhan Hassan was one of them. He arrived from Zanzibar, married into one of the largest clans in Canning Town – the Watsons – and begat one Leila Ramadhan Hassan, who happens to be my wife.

Racism, as we know, is a disease that has deformed political thinking and social behaviour in the East End and beyond. Leila’s mother talked until the last hours of her life about how badly she had been treated at Whitechapel Hospital, where she gave birth to her beautiful, bouncing baby girl. She was treated like the shit that was smeared on the blanket given to her when she and Leila were discharged.

She talked bitterly about the abuse thrown at her and her newborn daughter on public transport, in shops and along the East End streets. It was not the idea that we were taking “their” housing, Margaret, but “their” women. “They came to defile our women,” is the cry that Margaret invites us to repeat. Racial assaults added to the misery heaped on black men, their women and their offspring. “Half-caste” was a term of racial abuse first coined in the East End of London.

Then Enoch Powell issued the clarion call for the repatriation of all immigrants. Workers at the East End docks where every male member of the Watson clan was employed took to the streets under the slogan “Send them back”.

And there is more, much more, Margaret. The term “Paki-bashing” – describing the favourite sport of white, male workers – was invented in your constituency and its surrounds. The game was played after pub closing time, with the heads of Asians used as footballs. Next door to Barking, where the Ford production plant flowered, white workers managed to rename part of the plant “South Africa” because they kept the blacks and Asians confined to the assembly line.

That racist stench of decay that plagued so many white workers drove Mrs Howe and others to leave the East End for ever. We go back for funerals and family celebrations, though aware at all times that we are entering and leaving an ever-widening hellhole, from the sound of Bow Bells eastwards, all the way to Essex.

The housing issue has returned with a bang as whites move further east as a sign of upward mobility, and Asians follow in the same direction. Stories abound of whites getting together to prevent their kith and kin from selling to Asians.

Margaret Hodge avoids these proven examples, opting instead for the fables spread by the BNP. She is supping from a poisoned chalice.

New Statesman

Hatewatch – for the week of May 30th 2007

Skinheads Sentenced For Stomping Murder
Samuel Compton, 27, and Christopher Whitley, 25, were sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for stomping a man to death outside a Phoenix pool hall in 2002…

Child Porn Charges Against Neo-Nazi Leader Detailed
A new court filing reveals sordid details of the federal government’s child pornography case against disgraced National Vanguard leader Kevin Strom…

Idaho Shooter Was Aryan Nations Member
Jason Kenneth Hamilton, a card-carrying member of Aryan Nations, killed his wife, a church sexton and a police officer in a shooting spree that wounded three others…

KKK Group Holds Anti-Immigration Rally
More than 150 people gathered to hear a dozen robed members of the Alabama Order of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan hurl racial slurs and epithets at Mexican immigrants…

Anne Frank Memorial Vandalized
A memorial to Holocaust victim Anne Frank was toppled and damaged by vandals two months after being plastered with neo-Nazi stickers…

SPLC

Back from the dead and facing life – trial recalls horrors of the Klan

• Ex-policeman, 71, accused of 1964 race killings
• Victim’s brother traced suspect said to be dead

Thomas Moore is looking forward to finally coming face-to-face with James Ford Seale, a Ku Klux Klansman who came back from the dead. “I want to look at him,” he said. “I want to tell him about the pain he caused me and my family.”

Mr Moore, 63, a retired sergeant-major, recalled the day he found out that Mr Seale was still alive. “I was so happy. We thought he was dead – and so did everyone else.”

The trial opens here today of Mr Seale, 71, a former worker in a paper plant, crop-duster and policeman, accused of kidnapping and conspiracy in relation to the murder of two black teenagers in 1964, one of them Mr Moore’s brother. According to the indictment, the two 19-year-olds, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, were kidnapped by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, tortured and dumped in the Mississippi, Moore tied to a jeep engine block, and, according to an FBI informant at the time, still breathing.

The killings marked the beginning of a summer of madness, as the KKK responded to the civil rights movement with the fiery crosses, church bombings and murders depicted in Alan Parker’s 1989 film Mississippi Burning.

The Seale prosecution could be among the last of the KKK trials. Although the justice department has promised to re-open cases, witnesses are dying off and files have been lost.

Now living in Colorado, Mr Moore had been brought up in Franklin County, one of the strongholds of the White Knights. He returned in 2005 with a Canadian film-maker, David Ridgen, to investigate the murders. Pulling up at a petrol station for an egg and sausage sandwich, he met by chance a distant cousin, Kenny Byrd.

Mr Moore explained why they were there and said it was a pity that Mr Seale, who had been one of the main suspects, was dead. His family had been saying so since 2000. The local Clarion-Ledger had reported it as fact: so too had the Los Angeles Times. Mr Byrd replied: “Hell no, he lives over there.”

Mr Moore traced lost files, spoke to potential witnesses, harassed former Klansmen, mobilised the African-American community and successfully campaigned to have the FBI re-open the case.

Mr Seale is expected to plead not guilty in a trial expected to last about a fortnight. If found guilty, he faces life sentences.

Mississippi is different these days, at least on the surface. It is evident to anyone arriving at the airport at Jackson, now called Jackson-Evers International in recognition of the civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in 1963. It is evident, too, in the fact that the judge who will try the case is African-American, Henry Wingate.

But Heidi Beirich, deputy director of intelligence at a Jackson-based civil rights group, the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which investigates hate crimes, cautioned that although the KKK and institutionalised racism is mainly a thing of the past, Mississippi still has problems. She noted that when the state voted in 2002 to retain the Confederate flag, a symbol of hate for African-Americans, the divide was on racial grounds. African-Americans in the state continue to live in the poorest areas, with the worst schools.

“As far as the Klan is concerned, its heyday is definitely in the past. It hit its peak in the 1920s at 4 million. The number of Klansmen is way down: we estimate 5,000-6,000. It is not a cohesive organisation any longer: it is fragmented. They are no longer capable of the kind of terror they rained down on the South in the 1950s and 1960s,” Ms Beirich said.

But the sense of dread inspired by the KKK has not gone completely. Ridgen, who put together a documentary Mississippi Cold Case, said: “The psychological threat was always there. There was fear every time in Franklin County. We never took the same route. We never told anyone in advance about coming.”

At the trial, the key witness is likely to be a former Klansman, Charles Edwards, a suspect at the time, who is expected to give evidence against Mr Seale in return for immunity. Former FBI agents who carried out a fairly thorough investigation at the time are also scheduled to testify. After their investigation in 1964, they handed the case over to the local justice department who, as was not unusual at the time, quickly dropped it.

No real explanation has been given for the killings. Klansmen at the time told the FBI that Mr Dee had been peeping at one of their wives while others alleged gun smuggling into a black church. The indictment suggests otherwise: “The White Knights … targeted for violence African-Americans they believed were involved in civil rights activity in order to intimidate and retaliate against such individuals.”

Mr Dee’s sister, Thelma Collins, who now lives in Louisiana, said yesterday she could not remember him being involved in any civil rights activity. “He was quiet, never said much,” she recalled. She is saddened that the case has taken 43 years to come to court: “It is pitiful that those boys were killed and no one did anything about it.”

Like Mrs Collins, Mr Moore will be given his chance to make a victim’s statement in court. He said: “I want to tell how it is to go without a brother, my son without an uncle, how Charles never had the opportunity to make mistakes, to live his life.”

Backstory

The reopening of racist murder cases from the 1960s in the South began in 1990 when a white supremacist, Byron La Beckwith, was indicted and eventually jailed for the assassination in 1963 of Medgar Evers, then chairman in Mississippi of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This encouraged the FBI and local justice departments to look again at unsolved cases. Since then, there have been six prosecutions in Mississippi, including Mr Seale’s today. Authorities in seven states have re-examined a total of 29 killings and made 29 arrests, leading to 22 convictions.

One of the most prominent was the trial and jailing in 2001 of Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls. The revulsion created by the bombing helped turn public opinion behind the civil rights movement. In 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, 80, was jailed for the murder of the three civil rights activists depicted in Mississippi Burning. But the reality is that there may not be many more cases brought to court: elderly witnesses are dying off and records of crimes have been lost.

Guardian

‘Japanese Schindler’ who saved Lithuanian Jews is honoured

When Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited the monument of Chiune Sugihara in Lithuania last weekend, many television programmes back in Japan had to run stories explaining who this obscure diplomat was.

It’s obvious why the Emperor would be in London yesterday to dine with the Queen but who was Chiune Sugihara?

For years, few Japanese knew the incredible story of how the man dubbed “Japan’s Schindler” saved about 6,000 Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War despite working for an ally of Germany. Unlike Oscar Schindler, the German industrialist who turned against the Nazis and rescued almost 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust, Sugihara had to wait until just seven years ago for his bravery to be officially recognised.

Sugihara was the acting consul in Lithuania’s temporary wartime capital when he was ordered to abandon his post as the Germans advanced in 1940. A fourth of the city’s population was Jewish, mostly prosperous and well integrated, and few were ready to believe the horror stories from nearby Poland until it was too late to flee. By an accident of history the mild-mannered diplomat – one of just two left in the city – became their last hope for survival.

The crossroads in Sugihara’s life came one night in July 1940 when he woke up to find a group of desperate refugees outside his window demanding visas to the Soviet Union. He decided to help but his repeated requests to Tokyo for permission to issue the visas were denied. Despite facing disgrace or worse for his family, Sugihara decided to follow his conscience and sign as many visas as he could, in defiance of his government.

Sugihara’s courageous decision was all the more remarkable given his background. From solid middle-class stock, he graduated from Tokyo’s elite Waseda University and served under the Foreign Ministry in Japan’s puppet state of Manchuria, one of the more brutal military occupations of the war. A gifted linguist, he was once tipped for an ambassador’s post.

Yet this is the man who sat for almost a month from 31 July to 28 August 1940 painstakingly writing out 10-day transit visas by hand, even enlisting his wife, Yukiko, to help him. By the time they boarded a Berlin-bound train on 1 September 1940, still scribbling out the last visa, they had saved about 6,000 people, including hundreds of children. Sugihara’s final act in the besieged city was to hand his consular stamp to a refugee, who went on issuing passes.

Sugihara’s reward for his heroism was dismissal from the Foreign Ministry immediately after the war. Disgraced in Japan, he was forced to eke out a living as a part-time translator and ended his life working for a trading company with connections to Russia. He died in 1986 and his family had to wait until 14 years later for the then Foreign Minister Yohei Kono to formally apologise.

A year before he passed away, he was honoured for his work in rescuing the Lithuanian refugees by the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Israel. The award stunned those who heard about it in Japan, where Sugihara had lived in obscurity for years.

Historians and journalists have searched through Sugihara’s background to discover what made him take his momentous decision. There were hints in his past that the man who once planned to study medicine was plagued with a conscience. While stationed in Manchuria, for example, he resigned from his post after witnessing the brutality meted out by Japanese troops to the local Chinese.

But many suspect that the key to his change of heart may have been a Jewish refugee called Zalke Jenkins, whose family had fled to Lithuania from the Russian revolution. Sugihara met the 11-year-old in a shop and gave him some money, an act of kindness rewarded with an invitation to visit Jenkins’ family. The diplomat spoke afterward at how moved he was by the strength of family bonds in Jewish life, which reminded him of home.

The Emperor’s seal of approval is for many of his family the highest honour that Japan can bestow for Sugihara’s bravery. “The visit by the imperial couple makes me feel as though his actions have again been rewarded,” one of his surviving family members told the Asahi newspaper.

Independent

BNP wastes police time with complaint about Muslim demo

(Click on image to enlarge)

A few days ago, the British National Party’s West Midlands Organiser, Simon Darby, made a formal complaint to the West Midlands Police about the posters for the planned ‘Muslims Rise Against British Oppression’ demo outside 10 Downing Street on June 15th. In his letter, Darby took particular exception to the word ‘rise’. He states:

‘To encourage members of the Muslim community to “rise” is clearly either an incitement to violence or to open rebellion.’

If he had taken a couple of seconds to go to the website which is prominently advertised on the poster, he would soon have found the following statement:

‘Insha-Allah, on Friday the 15th of June, Muslims all over the country will be gathering together united as ‘One Block’ outside 10 Downing Street. They will Rise against the British oppression and demonstrate peacefully against the government!’

Of course, the well-known BNP double-standards are ever-active. Following all the fuss about the prophet cartoons a few months back, the BNP were more than happy to use them on their next anti-Muslim election leaflets, thus deliberately encouraging, inciting and indeed hoping for, a breach of the peace that the party could exploit for its own ends.

Darby goes on:

‘I am attaching both posters, drawing your attention in particular to the colour version which, together with inflammatory wording, contains irresponsible images of violence which could easily and very dangerously be misconstrued.’

Well, no. The poster is clearly meant to advertise a demonstration against the oppression of Muslims and it only shows images of the oppression of Muslims. The fact that these images are violent in nature is simply a reflection of the fact that oppression is a violent business.

Darby again:

‘If the British National Party distributed posters encouraging the British community to “rise” against their Islamic oppressors together with graphic images of Islamic violence against non-Muslims one needs little imagination to predict what the reaction of the police would be.’

Yes, nothing at all – as we saw when the BNP attempted to exploit the July 2005 London bombings by reprinting images of the destroyed bus (along with images of the prophet with a bomb in his turban), trying desperately to make everyone believe that every Muslim was a lunatic preparing to blow up his neighbour. Funny how the BNP objects to the very things it does itself.

In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if far more people linked to the BNP had been in court for explosives-related crimes than Muslims over the past few years – Robert Cottage, David Jackson, Mark Bulman, David Tovey, David Copeland and Tony Lecomber spring to mind without much effort – making Darby’s complaint hypocrisy of the highest order.

For the benefit of Simon Darby, we’ll reprint the information that appears on the web page for the demonstration:

‘Insha-Allah, on Friday the 15th of June, Muslims all over the country will be gathering together united as ‘One Block’ outside 10 Downing Street. They will Rise against the British oppression and demonstrate peacefully against the government!

We urge all the Muslims including families that have lost a family member to the crusaders, and the communities to take part in this demonstration. This demonstration is for YOU! You need to take part and let the people here your sufferings!

What we will achieve from the demonstration!

Put pressure on the government for the release of Muslim captives. As families and communities if we make a stand and demand for the release of Muslims held as captives, we can create public opinion to put pressure on the government for their release. It will make the oppressors think twice before they do anything!

To show a clear message to the oppressors that they will not silence the Muslim community, no matter how many terror laws they introduce and raids they do.

Fulfil our obligation to support the Muslims that have been oppressed. It is to show support to all those who have been arrested and to show support to all those families that have been left devastated because of the raids, arrests and incarcerations.

Fulfil our obligation of commanding good and forbidding evil.

Fulfil our obligation to speakout against the oppressors and the tyrants.’

Which all sounds pretty reasonable to us. In fact we rather feel that if anyone should be reported to the police, it should be the BNP – for wasting police time.

Sharing the hate

Video-sharing websites become extremist venue

Los Angeles blacks are destroying property and attacking white people as a soft, pitiful ballad plays in the background. Then, about two minutes into the video, the words “Whose Freedom?” appear as a still frame of a young, smiling German girl at a Third Reich rally suddenly replaces the footage of the 1992 Rodney King riots. A man wearing a swastika armband stands protectively behind her, his head cropped from the frame, while the words, “A paradise lost,” scroll down beneath her chin. Finally, a message, “Save the White Race,” fills the screen before dissolving into a Celtic cross encircled by the phrase, “White Pride World Wide.”

NSM International, a recruiting arm of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, produced this video, probably at a cost of just a few dollars. But despite its amateurish nature, its makers are getting a big bang for their buck, thanks to YouTube, the red-hot video-sharing website that allows anyone with a camera phone or digital camcorder to upload for free their videos. The NSM video is now available to millions of people.

Welcome to the latest medium for the American radical right — one more electronic venue that seems particularly suited for recruitment of the young. Since it was founded in February 2005, YouTube, along with competitors like Flickr and Google Video, has become hugely popular, especially among the young. YouTube alone streams hundreds of millions of clips daily to a global audience, with its users posting more than 65,000 new videos to its swollen archives every day. And while extremist clips like the NSM recruitment video are only a tiny percentage of those posts, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists are close on the heels of the commercial advertisers now rushing to exploit this still-burgeoning medium.

“Increasingly, the Internet is replacing membership groups as the primary way for white supremacists to obtain information and communicate,” asserts a January report on the white supremacist movement by Strategic Forecasting Incorporated, an intelligence analysis think tank. “Adherents regularly establish their presence on popular Web destinations such as MySpace and YouTube.”

As of mid-January, roughly 12,000 white supremacist propaganda videos, hate rock concert highlight reels, and Holocaust denial pseudo-documentaries, many of them posted anonymously, were openly available on video-sharing websites. (This estimate was derived through keyword searches of the three leading sites and an analysis of how many were extremist, rather than merely mentioning extremism.) One of the most popular videos, “Branik White Power,” is a poor-quality depiction of skinheads gone wild, set to roaring hate rock. The high-speed montage depicts Nazi skins dancing violently in the “mosh pit” near the stage, throwing punches, waving “SS” flags, and showing off white-power tattoos. Since it was posted by YouTube user “bulldog88″ in May 2006, it has been downloaded more than 40,000 times.

Some of the most noxious videos are more reserved in their approach, such as “The Real David Duke,” which has the former Klan leader pontificating on race relations for nine minutes and which has been viewed more than 10,000 times since it was posted last October. Another example, is “David Irving on the Holocaust,” a five-and-a-half-minute excerpt of a speech by the notorious Holocaust denier in Britain that’s been downloaded over 4,000 times during the same time period.

The Irving video was posted to YouTube last October by “Hadden88″ (“88″ is neo-Nazi code for “Heil Hitler”), who has compiled his own YouTube “channel” of 79 videos, most of them anti-Semitic mini-”documentaries” and speeches by hate peddlers like Irving, National Alliance founder William Pierce, and Adolf Hitler.

Other popular YouTube racist videos include a series of six “White Nationalist News” clips, the earliest episode dated last Sept. 8, some of which have been viewed more than 3,000 times; “Ku Klux Klan – A Secret History,” posted in September, and its accompaniment “Ku Klux Klan 4-Ever,” posted in December, each viewed over 11,000 times; “Nazi KKK,” posted in October and viewed 15,000 times; “Russian skinheads. We are here,” posted in December and viewed over 45,000 times; and “Skinhead” posted in November and viewed 132,000 times.

Video-sharing may be a particularly effective way for extremist groups, which have long sought ways to find new recruits, to connect with young people. You-Tube and its imitators are immensely popular among children, teenagers and young adults, and sometimes a single video will be downloaded literally millions of times. In addition, compared to direct-mail literature or dead-of-night “literature drops” on people’s lawns, posting video footage is vastly less difficult, expensive, risky and time-consuming — and it can be done anonymously with virtually no effort.

Videos can also easily be used to create a false image. While back-country Klan cross-burnings, warehouse hate rock festivals, and neo-Nazi park rallies may draw only a handful of supporters, a crafty amateur filmmaker can edit or exploit camera angles to foster the illusion of a much larger and more dramatic event.

NSM, for example, posted a YouTube video last October depicting their August rally in Madison, Wis. A couple of dozen NSM members, dressed like Nazi storm troopers, seig-heil enthusiastically as the speaker rails: “Pedro go home! White America was founded by white Americans for white Americans! We will not allow our nation to become brown!” The camera lingers lovingly on the snappy accessories and stern gazes of the NSM, creating in the minds of some electronic visitors the impression of a polished, powerful show. But what the footage doesn’t show is hundreds of booing, jeering anti-racist protesters right across the street.

Questioned last December by the Intelligence Report about NSM videos on YouTube, NSM Commander Jeff Schoep claimed: “The effectiveness of the NSM and its growth speaks for itself. We use many tools.” Schoep also complained that civil rights groups were pressuring YouTube to remove “all so-called racist content.”

Actually, YouTube already bans “hate speech,” defined as “slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack or demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or nationality.” But the sheer volume of video files posted to the site each day makes it practically impossible to police all content. As a result, particular videos are normally only removed as a result of a user complaint.

“We remove the offending content and send users a warning notice for violating our terms of use,” says Jennifer Nielsen, marketing manager for YouTube. “Users who repeatedly violate our terms of use have their accounts terminated, all of their videos removed and they are permanently banned from YouTube.”

Racist extremists are hardly likely to be deterred by such mild consequences, particularly because most live in countries with criminal penalties for possession or distribution of such Internet propaganda. By using American video-sharing websites, foreign extremists like Germany’s National Democratic Party (NPD) make it vastly more difficult for legal action to be brought against them in their own countries.

The NPD, a neofascist political party, frequently posts newscasts of Hitler memorials and Holocaust-denying speeches on U.S.-based video sharing sites. Last December, for example, after the NPD posted glowing reports on YouTube of a highly publicized conference of Holocaust deniers hosted by Iran, the British paper The Independent described YouTube as “a favorite neo-Nazi website.”

While YouTube operators now have scrubbed the site for those NPD videos, more than 350 other NPD clips are still available on YouTube, and the party recently announced plans to launch its own video-sharing website, based in America. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, would be proud.

SPLC

Democracy dead In Russia – police and violent neo-Nazis attack Gay Pride march

“I’m not deterred one iota from coming back to protest in Moscow,” Peter Tatchell told PinkNews.co.uk from Moscow, just hours after he was attacked by suspected neo-Nazis and then arrested by the Russian riot police the OMON. “

Gay Russians need overseas support to protect them against state and neo-Nazi violence.” He was speaking after arrests and violent attacks marred today’s attempted Moscow Gay Pride march. The organizer of Moscow Pride, Nikolai Alekseev, is still being detained at Moscow’s Tverskoi district police station, together with two prominent members of Russia’s Radical and Free Radical parties, Nikolai Khramov and Sergei Konstantinov.

Those who attacked Mr Tatchell are believed to be free, while Mr Alekseev, who took part in a peaceful protest remains in police custodyMr Tatchell told PinkNews.co.uk: “I urge people to protest to the Russian Ambassador and to ask their local MP to send a letter of protest to the Russian embassy.

“He added: “We also need a strong statement of condemnation from the Foreign Office, who have so far been silent. I am a British citizen violently attacked when mounting a lawful protests whilst the Russian police allowed violence to be perpetrated against me.

“A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: “We condemn violence in any form, but in this particular case we need to ascertain the full facts before making any further comment.”Mr Tatchell told PinkNews.co.uk: “There is no rule of law in Moscow. The right to protest does not exist. This is not a democracy.”

“Today’s protest was about much more than gay rights. We were defending the right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest for all Russians, gay and straight. The ban on Moscow Gay Pride is one aspect of a much wider attack on civil society and human rights. It is evidence of a failed transition from communism to democracy and of a rising trend towards autocracy and authoritarianism,” he added.

The arrests and assaults took place in front of and opposite Moscow City Hall, as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) campaigners assembled to hold Moscow’s Gay Pride march. The first people arrested were Mr Alekseev and German Green Party Member of Parliament Volker Beck. They were seized as they attempted to deliver a letter to Moscow Mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, at City Hall.”

After they were driven away in a police bus, marauding gangs of right-wing extremists infiltrated the Gay Pride crowd and began indiscriminately attacking participants. The Moscow police looked on and did nothing,” recounted Mr Tatchell.

After unfurling a characteristic placard declaring “GayRights” in both English and Russian, he was attacked by people he suspects of being right-wing extremists. Mr Tatchell said that Moscow riot police, the OMON, stood by while as these people punched Mr Tatchell in the face, throttled him then dragged him to the ground, and kicked him all over his body. Clutching a bloody eye, he was arrested by the riot police. “They arrested me, but let my attackers walk free.”

“The Moscow police gave right-wing extremists a more or less free hand to attack Gay Pride marchers. Despite many of us being battered left, right and centre, the police only arrested a handful of the assailants.

“Instead of protecting us from the violence, some officers seemed to be colluding with the neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists. I saw them freely talking to each other. It has even been suggested that some of the attackers were, in fact, plain clothes police officers,” Mr Tatchell reported.

Following his arrest, Mr Tatchell says he was violently dragged to a police bus, where he was put in the intimidating situation of being detained with three anti-gay demonstrators, who had been arrested for other assaults.

“They forced me to sit together with the neo-Nazis, it was clearly an intimidation tactic by the OMON, riot police, they are the ones who detained me in their bus.” Mr Tatchell told PinkNews.co.uk. While in the bus, Mr Tatchell was taunted by members of the riot police. They interrogated him as to whether he was gay. When he answered yes, he says that one of the OMON officers said, “Wait until we get you to the police station. Then we will have some fun with you.”

Later Mr Tatchell was transferred to an ambulance and taken to hospital where he was treated for injuries to his right eye. “My face is very sore where I was punched. My right eye is badly bruised, swollen and bloodied.” Speaking to PinkNews.co.uk 10 hours after the attack, he said: “it hurts. It happens to be the same eye that was I was punched in by Robert Mugabe’s violent henchmen in Brussels six years ago.”

Mr Tatchell still suffers from sight and pain problems from the Brussels attack. He was discharged at approximately 3:30 pm, and then detained at the Tverskoi district police station in Moscow. Mr Tatchell filed a complaint with the Moscow police about the assault on him, requesting that officers investigate and arrest the assailants.” Despite the appalling behaviour of the riot squad and Moscow police, the officer investigating my complaint was diligent, fair and professional.”

At 4:30 pm Mr Tatchell was allowed to leave the police station on the condition that he report back to the Tverskoi district station at 2 pm on Monday, 28 May. At this stage, Mr Tatchell believes he is being treated as a witness to the attack on him, rather than as a suspect.

“As I left the police station with several other released Gay Pride marchers, we were pelted with eggs. Some of us were violently attacked by a man dressed as a Russian Orthodox priest and by several neo-Nazis. The Moscow police initially did nothing, and only arrested two of the assailants under pressure from the Gay Pride marchers and journalists, who had photos and film footage of the attack. “Long after the Moscow Gay Pride protest at City Hall was over, groups of far right nationalists and neo-Nazis roamed the streets, calling each other on cell phones, apparently to organize additional attacks on people they suspected of participating in Moscow’s Gay Pride”.

Only a handful of far-right extremists were detained. Despite being arrested on charges of assault, most of them were released very quickly—long before the gay marchers were allowed to leave the police station.

“Mr Tatchell had travelled to Moscow at the request of the Moscow GayPride organizers to support the event and the campaign for gay rights in Russia. He was the keynote speaker at the opening session of the Moscow Gay Pride conference on Saturday morning, 26 May 2007 at the Swissotel”.

PinkNews.co.uk

Racism lite masks reality on the streets

Don’t let the outrage over the Channel 4 show lull you into believing it was an aberration. Discrimination is still horribly endemic in our society.

Stand by for the new and sanitised Big Brother. From Wednesday, contestants may be discussing Cartesian dualism while taking up incentivised recycling. Obviously, future housemates won’t include anyone likely to stir up racial controversy, which rules out mouthy sub-celebrities and Margaret Hodge.

I’ll come back to the industry minister, who argued in these pages last week for British families to be given housing priority over immigrants. Let’s start, though, with the Channel 4 furore and the unprecedented rebuke issued, with Lord Chamberlain solemnity, by the media watchdog, Ofcom. Channel 4’s future is said to be in the balance after code breaches over the alleged racist bullying of the Bollywood actor, Shilpa Shetty.

In general, moral outrage about the arts (I use the word loosely) grows to look absurd. The attack on George Eliot’s Adam Bede as ‘the vile outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind’ now seems as preposterous as East Germany’s 1954 ban on Mickey Mouse for being an anti-Red rebel. The case against Big Brother seems stronger, not least because of the ‘cover-up’ of unbroadcast footage in which some housemates attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to think up words that rhymed with ‘Paki’.

This is disgusting stuff, but it is also just worth remembering the venom, bullying and excess that took place outside the Big Brother house. Jade Goody was reviled by the media as an evil ‘face of hate’, while her co-conspirators were ‘bitches on heat’. Gordon Brown, in India, endorsed Shilpa, 50 MPs signed an early-day motion, and the Sun hailed Jade’s eviction as ‘the most important [ballot] since the general election’.

The mood is just as febrile now. Channel 4 executives have been reviled, with some justification, for their slippery and mendacious ways. The failure to tell an Australian Big Brother contestant that her father had died has reinforced Stephen Fry’s view that all reality television is ’squalid and dreadful’.

There is something unsettling about all this outrage. The Ofcom report, measured as it is, hints at what one TV executive calls ‘regulation by public relations’. More importantly, it soothes people into believing that no right-thinking Briton will tolerate a whiff of racism. The 44,500 viewers who objected to Channel 4 can be assured that such a horror will never be repeated.

Should these complainants be at a loose end, however, there are a few outstanding nationality-related issues, none of which rated much mention in the week Celebrity Big Brother got its come-uppance. In Norwich, seven young men walked laughing from court after receiving suspended jail sentences for ‘a ferocious and unprovoked’ attack, in which they kicked, punched and spat on two Polish workers.

Newspaper reports of ‘floods’ of east European migrants supposedly leeching off state hand-outs masked the truth…that migration from the new EU countries, which is vital to the economy, seems to have passed its peak, and only 8,000 Romanian and Bulgarian job-seekers arrived in the first quarter this year, against predictions of a 300,000 influx in 20 months.

In the third, and saddest, example, a report by the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association charted the plight of unaccompanied refugee children, many of them Afghans, who arrive in Britain alone and traumatised after unthinkable journeys. Thousands of boys as young as 13 are being reassigned as adults by the immigration service, and so disqualified from the education and foster care they need.

Discrimination is not cooked up in the Big Brother kitchen. It seeps down from the top, not in rivers of blood but in such meandering streams of cause and effect that people barely notice how shamingly endemic it has become. A quarter of white children live in poverty, compared with 74 per cent of Bangladeshis, 60 per cent of Pakistanis and 56 per cent of black Africans. Stephen Byers, a former cabinet minister, tells our political editor today that, in parts of the country, we are ’sleepwalking towards the segregation of schools on racial grounds’.

This shadowy apartheid means that a child’s future is dictated by race, not by ability. Employers overlook or underpay non-whites, and black people are five times as likely as white ones to be stopped and searched. On Prison Reform Trust figures for 2002, more African Caribbean entrants went to jail (11,500) than to university (8,000). Far from highlighting these imbalances, the Big Brother row has diverted attention from real scandals.

Tony Blair, who has had difficulty untangling reality from illusion ever since he urged that Deirdre Barlow of Coronation Street be freed from jail, said at the height of the Big Brother furore that any perception that Britain tolerated racism had to be ‘regretted and countered’. So how unfortunate that, just before Ofcom underlined that message, Blair’s industry minister used what education secretary Alan Johnson later called ‘the language of the BNP’.

The Jade Goody of the government front benches appeared to be suggesting that newly arrived migrants living in damp squalor with an asthmatic child should be leapfrogged by the less needy indigenous family. This is a loathsome argument, especially since migrants currently get only a tiny percentage of social housing.

I am glad, though, that Mrs Hodge spoke out. Although several of her colleagues professed horror, she is unique only in venturing into nationality. Other ministers have backed constituents who feel their loyalty to the sitting MP is being tested by neighbours with anti-social ways and hellish children. The most illiberal policies of Blair’s tenure have been built on intolerance of one sort or another.

It is easy to imagine Jade, Jo and Danielle as wavering Hodge supporters, though there is no evidence that any of them would ever vote BNP. However vile their conduct, this was television, not the Old Kent Road. Where reality shows serve any purpose, it is surely to spark neuralgia in a complacent society.

If Big Brother got out of hand, then the reaction has matched it. Besides, a sort of weird justice has been done. Jade is no longer ‘the 25th most inferlential [sic] person in the world’. Shilpa has been to Parliament and met the Queen. It would be more than a pity if Channel 4 were now to be privatised by Gordon Brown and Big Brother made into a talking shop for housemates with Lady Bracknell manners, a tofu habit and a social conscience.

Such a result would demonstrate the very intolerance that the programme’s critics deplore. It would also smash one small mirror on a country much more divided than it ever notices. Evidence of racism and dishonesty can never be justified or ignored. Nonetheless, the suspicion remains that the Big Brother circus has become what Jade would call an ‘escape goat’ for much more dangerous failings.

Guardian

Forced out by race-hate mob

Family fled war-torn Angola for sanctuary the UK… but they were driven out in four days by this.

A family fled war-torn Angola only to face terror at the hands of a “seething” race-hate mob in Britain.

Yesterday 11 thugs were locked up for their part in the terrifying attack – aimed at driving their black neighbours out of an estate just four days after they moved in. The racists, some armed with baseball bats and crowbars, targeted Alvaro Vintem, his wife Maura Adriano and their three children as they enjoyed a barbecue with family and friends to celebrate a cousin’s 10th birthday.

Alvaro, 30, said after the mob was sentenced: “I came to England for help and then this happened. At the time I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God what have I come to?’”

The thugs stockpiled weapons in the garden of a house nearby, then threw missiles including bottles, sticks, cans and bricks at the family cowering in their front garden. One little girl begged: “Please don’t let them kill me.”

The racists attacked their victims’ cars, causing damage running into thousands of pounds. They screamed “Get home you bunch of f***ing n*****s” and “Back off you black b******s, you don’t belong here.”

One witness claimed the jeering mob then got hold of the barbecue and threw it at the windows of the home in an attempt to set fire to it after the women and children had taken shelter inside. The men at the birthday party kept the thugs out of the house. The court was silent as video footage taken by a guest revealed faces twisted with rage. Seven racists have still not been traced.

Judge Peter Hunt said at Leeds crown court: “What’s depressingly striking is the seething aggression demonstrated by so many.”

Prosecutor John Topham told the court: “The Angolan family were terrified… children and women were terrified and crying. Some of the white residents on the estate were hostile to the presence of a black family. There were discussions in a cafe in the locality with the idea of forcing the family to move.”

The family’s arrival on the Seacroft estate in Leeds was marked by a stone through a window. Later, their door was broken down, windows smashed and their TV stolen. Then followed the 30-minute riot which erupted after their guests – including eight children – had arrived.

Alvaro, who came to the UK in 2000 and has now moved to another part of Leeds, said the mob “got what they deserved” after the judge locked them up. The father of three said when his girls now see a group they think they’re going to be attacked.

The 11 pleaded guilty to violent disorder yet denied racist intent, but the judge declared race hate was the only motivation. David Holdsworth, 34, described as showing “extreme violence”, was jailed for three years and seven months. Leanne Montgomery, 19, who “lost control” battering a car, was handed three years in a young offenders institution. Andrew Boylan, 25 and Liam Bellwood, 20, were jailed for three and a half years.

Other terms were Wayne Purchase, 31 – two and a half years’ jail; Darren Kaye, 19 – 21 months in a young offenders institution; Jonathan Wilson, 19 – two and a half years in a young offenders institution; Patrick Burns, 34 – two and a half years; Wayne Lorimer, 21 – two and a half years; Glynn Milburn, 33 – 12 months; and Duane Watts, 24 – two-and-a half years.

HELL IN ANGOLA

• More than 1.5 million people died and 4 million were displaced in the 27-year civil war.
• It has the worst infant mortality rate in the world – 125 in every 1,000 die before their first birthday.
• More than 33 per cent of children under five suffer malnutrition.
• Life expectancy is 45 for men, 48 for women.
• Only 32 per cent have clean water and 42 per cent are illiterate.

Sunday Mirror

TUC threatens boycott action over BNP ad

The Wales TUC General Council is today being urged to end all advertising with the Evening Post in a row over this newspaper’s publication of a BNP election advert.And individual trade unions are said to be considering advising members to cease buying the paper.

The moves follow publication of a BNP advertisement on May 1, ahead of the Welsh Assembly elections.

Wales TUC general secretary Felicity Williams says in a letter to the Evening Post: “Wales TUC is committed to the development of Wales as a thriving, multi-faith, multi-cultural society and condemns without reservation the promotion of any extremists who seek to divide our society by spreading fear and suspicion through misleading racist and/or religious propaganda.”

Her executive committee is calling on the General Council to authorise a ban on further advertising. It is also seeking to remove the Evening Post from the list of publications receiving editorial articles prepared by Wales TUC. The General Council was set to meet today in Llandudno, where the Wales TUC annual conference is underway.

In her letter to the Evening Post, Ms Williams says: “Wales TUC-affiliated unions are also considering advising their members to boycott the publication until further notice and until assurances are given from South West Wales Media Ltd that advertising policies have been amended to prevent the abhorrent promotion of fascist groups in Wales.”

Spencer Feeney, Editor-in-Chief of South West Wales Media, and editor of the Evening Post, said: “Trade unions enjoy the freedom to advise their members as they see fit. It is for the individuals concerned to decide if they want to be told which newspapers they can or cannot read.

“Obviously, if Wales TUC officials choose not to talk to journalists on Wales’s largest-selling newspaper about issues that affect and are of interest to their members, it will deny those individuals the opportunity of having their point of view on these important topics publicised.”

Dawna Stickler, advertisement director with the paper, said: “All submitted advertisements are considered for publication according to the codes of Advertising Practice as recommended by the Newspaper Society.

“The advertisement in question did not contravene these guidelines and, in fact, conformed to the principles of legal advertising. As such, there was no justifiable reason for this advertisement to be rejected.”

This is South Wales

Violent neo-nazi skinhead group Volksfront growing in prominence

Volksfront, a virulently racist and anti-Semitic group comprised mostly of neo-Nazi skinheads, is growing in prominence in the United States and internationally, with chapters in Canada, Spain, Australia Germany and Portugal. A new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) identifies Volksfront as one of the most active skinhead groups in the United States, with a range of activities including distributing newsletters, rallies, recruitment and promoting the hate music subculture.

According to ADL’s Center on Extremism, which monitors and reports on the activities of domestic extremist groups, Volksfront, based in Portland, Oregon, has become the most active neo-Nazi group on the West Coast and maintains close alliances with many other hate groups. The group has a history of violence.

“Volksfront promotes a deeply racist and anti-Semitic worldview and its members have not been afraid to back up their words with violent deeds,” said Deborah Lauter, ADL Civil Rights Director. “The group appeals to disaffected, young white males and promotes an ideology of hatred and white supremacy that has led in some cases to intimidation, assault and murder.”

ADL’s report identifies the facets of Volksfront’s activities, leadership, recruitment and outreach:

• Members have been involved in a number of violent crimes in the Pacific Northwest. Kurtis Monschke, who was a probationary unit leader for Volksfront, is serving a life sentence for his role in a March 2003 murder that emulated a brutal attack depicted in the film “American History X.” Another Volksfront member in Eugene, Oregon was arrested in 2005 along with three other men for throwing rocks engraved with swastikas at a synagogue during a religious service.

• Volksfront is a major player on the hate music scene. The group works with many white supremacist rock bands and has organized a number of concerts. Volksfront holds a number of events annually, including weekend long white power concerts two or three times a year.

• Volksfront promotes meetings that serve as networking opportunities for racists from a variety of domestic extremist groups. One of the more heavily promoted events in early 2007 was its Victory Achievement Conference, held February 24 in St. Louis, Missouri. More than 80 white supremacists attended the event, including racist skinheads from the Hammerskins and members of White Revolution, Aryan Nations and Women for Aryan Unity.

• Volksfront distributes newsletters and tries to exploit controversial public issues. The group’s Web site features information on their history, editorials by members, information about upcoming events and downloadable hate literature. Several units have their own Web pages and sites that provide information about local activity.

• One of Volksfront’s primary goals is to establish an autonomous whites-only living space in the Pacific Northwest and, to this end, the group claims to have purchased several acres of property in Oregon and Washington State.

• Volksfront has established units in Oregon, Washington State, California, Arizona, Massachusetts, Illinois, Missouri, the Carolinas and New York.

ADL

Corsham anti-BNP protest planned

Anti-BNP protesters will be taking to the streets of Corsham to show their disgust at a member of the far-right party claiming a seat on the town council. A rally and protest has been organised for Monday, June 11, after BNP Cllr Michael Simpkins took the Rudloe ward uncontested at the recent elections. He made his first appearance at Corsham Town Council last week and was greeted by protesters outside the town hall.

Now one local campaigner is organising a much bigger event to show what he says is the “strong anti-fascist feeling” in Corsham.

Kyle Thornhill, 21, who has lived in Corsham all his life, has had leaflets and posters printed to publicise the event, and is calling on everyone in Corsham and the surrounding area who objects to BNP involvement in the town to get involved.

He said: “Myself, like a lot of local people, did not get to hear that this BNP candidate was standing until it was too late to do anything about it, because if we had I would have stood against him to stop them getting in. Although there was the protest last week, again not enough people heard about it until too late, so what we are doing is organising a protest, letting plenty of people know about it and giving them plenty of time. The response I’ve had from all the people I’ve met has been overwhelmingly positive, with the only negative comments coming from BNP people via websites.”

Mr Thornhill, whose great grandfather came from Barbados, says the rally will also celebrate Britain’s multi-culturalism. African drummers are expected to attend and there will be a host of foreign cuisines on offer.

“The vast majority of people in Corsham do not want the BNP here, and it has been inspiring to hear the comments from all the people I’ve spoken to,” said Mr Thornhill. “I’m sure there will be a very big turnout.”

The protest starts at 5.30pm. For more information email notobnp@ hotmail.co.uk

Rudloe Air Cadet leader and Corsham BNP chairman Mike Howson has rubbished claims that he intends to resign his position as a youth mentor. He said: “I will not be standing down. My work as a youth leader and my political views remain completely separate. Those with leftist views are using every trick in the book to try to get me removed, which is sad as it is only the youngsters who suffer.”

This is Wiltshire

Rise in racism in the playground

A threefold increase in reports of racist incidents in Derby’s schools over seven years has been put down to better reporting. Children are now not so afraid to tell others, and a mentoring scheme also helps them, officials say.

Figures revealed by Channel 4 News showed that 151 reports of playground racism in 2000/1 rose to 451 last year.

Graham Falgate from the city council said there was now a much better awareness of how to report incidents. He said typical racist incidents included name-calling, ridicule, religious intolerance and other forms of bullying.

Alan Vaughan, a teacher at Derby Moor Community Sports College in Littleover, said they had operated a mentoring scheme for the past four years, which had proved successful.

“The children work with each other to solve the problems,” he said. “There is always going to be an element of racism,” he said. “We accept it exists and work together to conquer it.”

BBC

Sector rebukes call for allocations policy to favour indigenous families over migrants

An attempt by senior Labour politicians to make housing allocation policy favour British families trapped on long waiting lists would face fierce opposition from housing professionals.

A call by trade and industry minister Margaret Hodge this week for indigenous people to be given a greater right to social housing than new migrants was criticised by the housing world. The issue has also created a rift in Labour’s high command with Keith Vaz, a member of its national executive committee, signing an early day motion describing the call to give British people housing priority ‘regrettable’.

Ms Hodge’s comments follow former home secretary David Blunkett’s suggestion that two housing waiting lists should be created. One should be set up for people in urgent need, the other for those who do not benefit from needs-based allocation regimes, he said.Labour party chair Hazel Blears, a candidate for the deputy leadership position, backed Ms Hodge’s call for a rethink on allocations policy.

Chartered Institute of Housing chief executive David Butler said the senior MP’s moves took housing ‘in a direction we don’t want to go in’.

‘For a government policy to allow people to come into this country and then deny them access to services is the wrong way to deal with this problem,’ he added.

Mr Butler said the real problem was the insufficient supply of social housing, something most senior housing professionals identified as the greatest source of community tensions in an Inside Housing survey (17 November).

MP Jon Cruddas, the Labour deputy leadership candidate whose Dagenham constituency borders Ms Hodge’s, said she was in danger of ‘racialising arguments over housing allocation’.

Barking & Dagenham Council’s director of housing David Wood rejected the suggestion that refugees and asylum seekers were given priority. He also said lack of supply was the main problem.

The mayor of London has also criticised the demands for a housing allocation policy that favoured the indigenous (see above).

David Lunts, the mayor’s executive director of policy and partnerships, said the number of migrants living in social housing was tiny. A spokesperson for the prime minister said that just 1 per cent of lettings in 2005/06 went to foreign nationals.

Karen Buck, Labour MP for Regent’s Park & Kensington, said she had ‘never seen an economic migrant in areas of high housing need that get housing first’.

‘The real issue is about supply,’ she added.

inside housing

British reality: coloured TV

Dale Bhagwagar, Shilpa Shetty’s publicist, had made a prediction earlier this week – “It will be like the classic Hindi film. Truth and goodness will triumph in the end.” An apologetic Jade Goody leaving the Big Brother house proved true Bhagwagar’s clairvoyance.

After having seen visuals of her abusing and ridiculing the Indian “poppadom”, Goody had to agree with much of the British and Indian public. “Oh my God! Maybe I am racist,” confessed the embarrassed 25-year-old mother of two.

Goody’s self-deprecation, however, might not be enough to assuage the wounds of a bruised national psyche. A proud Indian populace felt shocked when it found that the adjectives being heaped upon its pretty representative were caustic rather than flattering.

Much like a hundred years ago, it blamed the mindset of a still-colonial Britain; Big Brother is, after all, ‘reality’ TV. The one question that Jade Goody has prompted the world to ask is this – Is multi-cultural Britain still a distant dream?

A quivering stiff upper lip

In the aftermath of the Goody-Shetty saga, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, Leader of the Opposition David Cameron and London Mayor Ken Livingstone, have all felt the need to publicly condemn racism.

Chancellor Gordon Brown has found himself in an even worse predicament – on a state visit to India, Brown has had to field many more angry questions about Celebrity Big Brother and has hardly been given a chance to outline his prime-ministerial ambitions.

The British electorate, too, has been worried that the conduct of BB contestants can quite easily be mistaken for a reflection of modern Britain’s manners, morals and culture. Over 95 per cent of the letters sent to newspapers express concern about the tarnishing of Britain’s all-inclusive image.

This hullabaloo has led a commentator to note – “It is depressing that this country’s race relations debate is now dictated by the ignorant views of a few attention seekers on a television programme.”

Another community bruised

For the British Asian community, however, this instalment of BB is a lot more than your usual television programme. It has helped bring to fore a cruelty that they eternally suffer; Shilpa allegedly being called ‘Paki’ was perhaps the most telling instance.

The BBC Asian network claims that the BB imbroglio has been its biggest story ever. As compared to Kashmir, the rise of the right-wing British National Party, and the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Shilpa Shetty has generated a lot more audience response.

The resultant uproar has also united the disparate South Asian communities of Britain. Despite a storm of 80 mph that crushed all hopes of a staged protest, an Indian TV channel crew found two Pakistanis holding ground.

“While we believe that Britain is a respectful society, racism does exist,” says Rickie Sehgal, chair of Britain’s Hindu Forum. “Indians are more likely to be employed in Britain, but the number of Indians at the board level can be counted on your fingers.”

With the majority of British Muslim youth already alienated, the likes of Blair and Brown would have undeniably breathed a sigh of satisfaction seeing Jade Goody leave the house. A usual BB eviction vote had turned itself into Britain’s referendum on racism.

The British population seems to have unanimously declared that racism will not be tolerated. They have thus deferred yet another crack in Britain’s multi-cultural façade.

Laughing to the bank

Channel 4 caved in to accusations of profiteering over the row by declaring that all earnings from the bumper vote – reportedly 50 pence per phone call – would go to charities, as demanded by Britain’s biggest union, Unison.

Earlier they had reportedly wanted to give a quarter of the collection. Even so, the broadcaster and producers, Endemol, will benefit from the controversy. Ratings have almost doubled after the row.

And Channel 4 is not the only one laughing on its way to the bank. At 31, Shilpa Shetty did not seem to have many options left in Hindi films. In fact, she has just a couple on hand – Apne with Sunny Deol and Anurag Basu’s Metro. She had just one movie – Shaadi Karke Phas Gaya Yaar – last year and it bombed in spite of Salman Khan.

Her last hit, Dus, was in 2005 but it was a multi-starrer. You’ll have to go back to 2004 for her last performance of note, in Phir Milenge, where she played an HIV patient. She began espousing the AIDS cause after that, but really, has received the most publicity in recent times as a judge on the dance reality show Jhalak Dikhla Ja.

Shetty’s publicist Bhagwagar says, “Even though her Rs 3-crore-plus fee for Celebrity Big Brother has been made much of, it is not a sum Shilpa would have too much trouble earning back here in India.” Her Jhalak stint is said to have earned her a crore in all. She would charge somewhere between Rs 20 to Rs 30 lakh for a movie (admittedly not too many of them now) and Rs 15 to 20 lakh for a performance on stage or at an event (of which there are plenty).

She is also said to charge Rs 5 to Rs 6 lakh to inaugurate a store. So why would such a success subject herself to such misery? Bhagwagar explains, “She’s decided to do the show to do something new, take one step ahead in life.”

International offers will undeniably lead to many a new step. But Hindi filmdom is set to remain largely unmoved. Racism, alas, does not work wonders at the Indian box-office.

 The Hindustan Times