Human Rights First: Hate crimes, anti-Semitism on rise in Europe

Source: Ha'aretz

Anti-Semitism and hate crimes rose last year in several places throughout Europe, according to a report released on Wednesday by the American advocacy group Human Rights First.

The report says more than 50 people were killed in Russia because of their ethnic origin, and Britain has seen a sharp rise in anti-Semitism and hate crimes since the terror attacks in London on July 7, 2005.

The report was published before an international conference to open in Bucharest on Thursday, sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The conference will discuss the struggle against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism and xenophobia. The OSCE has 55 member-countries, including Israel.




Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/867966.html

Russia monitors Internet to dampen ethnic violence By James Kilner
Thu Jun 7, 3:57 AM ET



MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian authorities for the first time blocked nationalists from using a popular Internet blog to organize anti-migrant demonstrations, one of the leaders of a nationalist group told Reuters on Wednesday.

In January President Vladimir Putin ordered the security services to stamp out growing extremism and racism partly fuelled by envy towards successful businesses run by Caucasians and Central Asians and two wars in Chechnya from 1994.

Authorities monitoring the livejournal Web site made it hard to organize protests on Tuesday against Chechens in the southern city of Stavropol, Alexei Mikhailov, one of the leaders of Action Against Illegal Immigrants (DPNI), told Reuters by telephone.

"I think we should organize a protest but in Stavropol everything is under police control," he said
more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070607/ts_nm/russia_racism_corrected_dc_2

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

same could be said of many nations including ours :(

At least in America we respect minority rights.

and the influx of fundamentalist muslims is not helping any.

And welcome to DU!

His invasion of Iraq increased emigration from the Middle East to Europe, but it did already exist.

And certainly European anti-semitisim predates Bush!

The comment in relation to the subject matter is escaping me.

bigotry thriving. :(

I don't think he can be blamed for most of this. There was anti-semitism and race-hatred in Europe long before Bush.

And although there is certainly some anti-semitism to be found among Moslems, I don't think one can put most of the problem down to Moslem immigrants either. Most Europaean countries have indigenous nationalist groups who are very resentful, and sometimes violent, toward anyone who is 'not one of us'. E.g. we have the British Nationalist Party; France has the LePen supporters; etc.

In the UK, while anti-semitism is a problem, it's not IMO a massive problem in most areas. Colour prejudice and anti-immigrant bigotry are our major forms of violent prejudice. Islamophobia is a problem, especially since the London bombings, but I suspect that some of it is really a current 'excuse' for other forms of prejudice: people of Pakistani descent are targets firstly because they are non-white 'immigrants' (though many of them were born in Britain like their parents before them), and only secondly because they are Moslems.

I suspect that anti-semitism is a bigger problem in some other parts of Europe, especially Eastern Europe.