UNITED AGAINST RACISM, ISLAMAPHOBIA AND ANTI-SEMITISM

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday March 28, 2003 11:57 by Avi H.

Amnesty International released this statement:

As members of all communities including Jews and Muslims we are gravely concerned at the sharp increase in racism and anti-semitism across Europe.

We note with concern the recent electoral success of far-right and Fascist parties in France, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Holland, Denmark and Norway, as well as the British National Party in the UK. Mainstream parties across Europe are also increasingly adopting the agenda of the far-right by demonising refugee and asylum communities so legitimising racism and xenophobia.

Since September 11th Muslim communities in particular have become the focus for vilification with a huge increase in racist violence and attacks. Mosques and other Muslim property as well as members of the Muslim and Arab communities have increasingly become the targets of hostility, hatred and attacks. In Brussels recently, a Moroccan immigrant couple were shot dead and two of their children wounded in a racist attack. Mosques and Islamic schools have been firebombed in the UK, Poland, Denmark, Ireland and Holland. Whilst in the UK a young Muslim woman was attacked for wearing a Muslim headscarf.

In Europe there are now attempts to use the current conflict in the Middle East to legitimise anti-semitism. Synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish property as well as members of the Jewish community have become the target for hostility, hatred and attacks. In France the Synagogue in Marseilles was burned to the ground, as were ones in Brussels and Antwerp in Belgium. In the UK an attack on a synagogue saw a swastika scrawled on the lectern, whilst in other attacks members of orthodox or Hasidic Jewish communities have been hospitalised. In Germany a young Jewish woman was attacked for simply wearing a Star of David pendant.

We call on all governments not to let the far-right set the agenda and to redouble their efforts to combat racism in all its forms and to bring to justice the perpetrators of hate crimes.

We also reiterate our determination to stand united as one community in the struggle to combat racism and anti-semitism wherever it occurs.

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Asad Rehman
Ethnic Minority & Religious Affairs Office
Outreach Team
Campaigns Dept
Amnesty International UK
99 Rosebery Avenue
London EC1R 4RE