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European Muslims > Community & Civil Society
Racial Discrimination in Europe (Part One)
By Papa Cheikh Jimbira-Sakho
Writer and Journalist
Since the beginning of this 21st century, Europe has become seriously confronted with expanding racial discrimination and xenophobia following massive migration.
Actually, these two phenomena were directly proportional to the growing momentum of international labor migration in Western European countries, which resulted from the end of the Cold War and the ensuing process of economic globalization.
Yet, we know that with the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor countries (the latter being fettered by rapid population growth, environmental degradation, armed conflicts, etc.) that grievous process of globalization led many people from developing countries to assaulting the "European fortress" in search of better job opportunities and a haven of peace.
Of course, this mass migration did not fail to cause deep feelings of insecurity among European populations traditionally agreed to racist and xenophobic ideas.
Indeed, as globalization spreads out, so does the accompanying process of economic and social inequality and precariousness, which generates frustrations, xenophobic sentiments, and a proneness to a scapegoat attitude toward immigrants.
A. Sivanandan, director of the Institute of Race Relations, referring to that coupling of globalization with racism, is quite right to speak of xeno-racism.
According to him, "It is racism in substance but "xeno" in form. It is not just directed at those with darker skins from the former colonial territories but at the newer categories of the displaced, the dispossessed, and the uprooted, who are beating at Western Europe's doors — the Europe that helped to displace them in the first place."
Now, before proceeding further, let us promptly shed some light on our key concepts: race, racism, and xenophobia.
Race
Derived from the Latin word ratio (i.e. chronological order), the word race is initially a term specific to the universe of breeding, namely, that of horses.
Today, at the dawn of the 3rd millennium, a determining landmark has been laid in the evolution of modern biological science, with the fruition of the DNA cartography, and the publication of the sequencing of the human genome project, an attempt to discover all the genetic information in the human body in a book that contains some 9 billion letters.
Such are the most recent data of science on the question, and many scholars are now agreed that race is but a social construct with potent social and political effects but without any basis in biological science.
In this regard, we cannot evoke the recent controversy that burst at the last October Bristol Festival of ideas following the racist remarks of American DNA pioneer Dr. James Watson about the Negroes' intelligence quotient (IQ). Actually, a lecture scheduled on October 24, 2007, at the Science Museum for the 1962 Nobel Prize winner was cancelled because he "has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate," according to the spokesman of the museum.
Racism and Xenophobia
According to UN international conventions, the term "racial discrimination" means any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment, or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, or any other field of public life.
Racism clearly appears in social progress theories that postulate the superiority of Europe's civilization over the others. It evolved in tandem with the European colonialism and imperialism and was used as an ideology (backed by a "pseudoscientific racism") to justify subjugation and exploitation of other peoples.
For the upholders of racism, the human race, just like the animal species, is divided into races, each equipped with a specific genetic inheritance that demonstrates special characters and particular and immutable aptitudes.
In the hierarchy formulated by those groups of people that do not have other aim than to justify various inequalities and economic and social discriminations, the Whites lie at the top of the pyramid. They justify this by saying that the Whites are precisely equipped with a genome that tends to be the perfect prototype at the somatic, emotional, and psychological levels.
In the last degree of this pyramid of racial values lie those who are black, genetically retarded, nearer to chimpanzees, incapable of initiatives, devoid of creative imagination, and, of course, good for slavery!
More recently — July 2007 — the Guardian informed about the removal of the title The Adventures of Tintin in the Congo from the children's shelves in Borders bookstores following anti-racist protests by the Commission for Racial Equality.
A customer, David Enright, informed the commission that he "was aghast to see page after page of representations of black African people as baboons or monkeys, bowing before a white teenager and speaking like retarded children."
Although a spokesman of Borders claimed that the book would be moved to the adult section, the commission saw that it is no longer acceptable for any shop to stock or sell the 1930s cartoon adventure because of its crude racial stereotypes.
But xenophobia is a fear or contempt of foreign or strange people. It is a word of a Greek origin, where xenos means foreigner and phobos means fear. The term is typically used to describe fear or dislike of foreigners or in general of people different from oneself.
Racism in the UK
It is widely spread that racial and xenophobic violence against ethnic minorities — especially the Africans, Caribbeans, and Asians — is an old phenomenon in the UK.
Not going back very far, we can easily remember the predicament of the 1950s and 1960s black migrant workers, when native politicians were whipping up racial animosity. Then, racial harassment — from racist remarks to physical aggressions — could be witnessed everywhere in public life: on the streets, at work, in playgrounds, classrooms, shops, etc.
During the previous decade, a British Crime Survey indicated that in 1991, at least 18 percent of all crimes against ethnic minorities were racially motivated. Then, in 1997, a Human Rights Watch report on racist violence in the UK noted that the UK has one of the highest levels of racially motivated violence and harassment in Western Europe and the problem is getting worse.
Today, numerous judiciary reforms to remedy the situation are being initiated. One of those reforms aims at issuing an antiracist legislation that complies with the European Convention on Human Rights with regard to confronting the discrimination in employment, housing, and social services. Yet, the racist and xenophobic acts are commonplace in Great Britain. The situation is getting worse, especially after the creation of a number of new "racially aggravated offenses" with the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.
Ironically, a report by the government's Migration Impact Forum concluded that "migrants in the UK work harder than British workers, pay more tax, and contribute six billion pounds to the UK economy."
By that time, the substantially populated African-Caribbean areas, where those violent uprisings took place, registered increasing harassments and physical attacks by white racists on black people. Actually, for the latter, things have changed for the worse. Nowadays, besides other numerous blatant discriminatory practices, a young black man is six times more likely than his white counterpart to be a victim of "stop-and-search" humiliation and to be caught up in the criminal justice system, according to a paper that was presented in theUniversity of Warwick, Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations.
Records of British Racism
According to a British Crime Survey, there were 280,000 racially motivated incidents in 1999, and 98,000 of these (i.e. 35 percent) were against black, Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi people (who comprise 7 percent of the population). Those at greatest risk to racial attack are Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (at 4.2 percent), Indians (at 3.6 percent), and Blacks (at 2.2 percent), all this compared with 0.3 percent for the white people.
In 2001, grievous uprisings in Bradford and Oldham derived from harassment by the police force or from racial crimes against Africans or Asians, which resulted in dozens of victims.
Actually, between 2000 and 2001, the British police recorded 25,100 racially aggravated incidents, of which 12,455 were of racially aggravated harassment, 4,711 of racially aggravated common assault, and 3,176 of racially aggravated injuries in England and Wales.
Yet, it must be noted that in this obnoxious social atmosphere, xenophobia stems from within all social groups. Lots of Whites fall victims of racist attacks, whether aggressive or retaliatory. According to a British Crime Survey, in 2004, 92,000 white people said they had also fallen victims of racially motivated crimes.
The BBC also reported that the latest crime statistics show that race-hate crimes increased by almost 600 percent in London in the month after the July 7 bomb attacks, compared to the same period last year, with 269 more offenses allegedly "motivated by religious hatred" reported to the Metropolitan Police Service.
But, much more alarming are the racially motivated attacks committed daily in the UK. On the soaring number of attacks on ethnic minorities, we learn from the British government — namely, the British Ministry of Justice — that 41,000 such offenses were committed between 2005 and 2006, a rise of 12 percent over the previous year.
The statistics confirm anecdotal evidence from immigrant groups that ethnic minorities have been increasingly targeted in recent years, with the Muslim community under particular pressure since the 9/11 attacks.
Irish Racism
Although lacking a tradition of ethnic minority immigration due to historic poverty, Ireland started experiencing a rise in xenophobic and racist attitudes with the Celtic Tiger (a name for the period of rapid economic growth in Ireland, which began in the 1990s and slowed in 2001).
These attitudes reduce to verbal and physical abuses against African and Asian immigrants. Among the most tragic cases of racial aggression is the murder of Zhao Liu Tao in January 2002. Aged 29, that Chinese student — beaten to death by a group of Irish youths — was the first race-hate victim in Ireland. The second victim, Leong Ly Min, is another Chinese who succumbed later that year in mid-August after being lynched by an Irish gang who had been racially abusing him.
As for Northern Ireland, an official report stated that racist attacks are at 16.4 percent per 1000 of the minority population, while in England and Wales, the figure is 12.6 percent. Furthermore, because of the severity of its racist and xenophobic acts (intimidation, assaults, general harassment, vandalism, house burning, etc.), North Ireland has been labelled by the Guardian the "race-hate capital of Europe."
Another BBC report stated in 2002 that one in four Scots admitted that they are strongly or slightly racist.
Racial Discrimination in Europe (Part Two)
By Papa Cheikh Jimbira-Sakho
Writer and Journalist
In the first part, we tackled the definitions of race, racism, and xenophobia. We then moved on to some real samples of racial discrimination in the UK. In this part, racial discrimination in other European countries — namely, France, Greece, Finland, Denmark, and Germany — will be highlighted.
France
Over a decade, the reports of the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) kept on expressing concern about far-right organizations in France, like Jean-Marie Le Pen's party National Front. The reports also charged the French authorities of laxity and trivialization with regard to racist acts. Moreover, it is well known that the chauvinistic politicians of that party take advantage of that situation of the French authorities and openly encourage xenophobic and racist sentiments through their speeches, slogans, and political campaigns. In 1997, Catherine Megret, a politician of the National Front, became mayor of the southern French town of Vitrolles. She was quoted as calling the immigrants "colonials." She said, "There are simply differences in the genes!"
The same report notes, "As with other cultural practices, there exists a strong French bias against immigrants, religion, and traditions. The exclusion of Islam from the French society is very apparent. There are religious schools under state supervision for Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, but not for Muslims. While there are Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish chaplains in the French army, there are no Muslim chaplains. This exclusion is troubling as there are indications that French Muslims are vastly outpacing French non-Muslims in birth rates."
In his special report on France, Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo, United Nations' special reporter on racism, stated, "The greatest discrimination in hiring was experienced by immigrants from Africa, followed by Turkish and Southeast Asian immigrants, who remain marginalized from mainstream French life."
In March 2001, the European Commission of Human Rights established that 69 percent of the French were racists at various degrees. Likewise, the pressure group SOS Racisme, a French antiracist nongovernmental organization, indexed hundreds of cases of employers discarding applicants with foreign names and established that such discrimination is "particularly rife in the retail and hospitality industries but also for jobs involving no contact with the public."
Greece
For many human rights organizations, Greece has one of the worst records in the European Union regarding racism against ethnic minorities, especially the Albanians.
From the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) and according to Amnesty International Report 2002, we learn that the Greek police regularly abuses and even tortures members of minority groups and undocumented workers.
A total of 66 cases of ill-treatment of detainees, including Albanians, Nigerians, and Romans, were reported. Amnesty International sees this was only the tip of the iceberg.
Furthermore, during December 2004, it was reported that a group of Afghan asylum seekers was subjected to ill-treatments and torture by Greek police officers. Reportedly 60 Afghans, of whom at least 17 were teenagers, were beaten.
The IRR then stated, "On December 30, [2007,] the Afghan refugees and the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights held a demonstration in the center of Athens against the violence of the police and the racist behavior of the authorities."
Finland
As for Finland, racial abuses are usually perpetrated by large neo-Nazi gangs, with Helsinki becoming a base for skinheads from across the country. In 1994, for instance, the police recorded 20 violent, racially motivated assaults on immigrants, according to the IRR.
In January 1996, five skinheads were sentenced to imprisonment by Joensuu local court for "assault, attempted assault, and violation of domiciliary peace caused by racial hostility." At the end of the trial, Judge Pekka Janhunen said, "Everybody has to have the right to personal security regardless of the color of their skin."
During 2001, many analysts in Finland raised concerns about "racism and discriminatory practices against Somali nationals by the police in the Hakunila suburb of Vantaa."
Denmark
For the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Danes are "primitive nationalist." Sweden's leading newspaper Aftonbladet branded Denmark as "the most racially prejudiced country in Europe"!
Illustrative of the predicament of ethnic minorities in that country is the rising number of homeless immigrants. In five years, the number of immigrants in Copenhagen's homeless shelters has increased from 5 to 50 percent, according to the United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Germany
As for modern Germany, the CERD warned of an alarming increase in racial abuses at the start of the present decade. In its 2001 recommendation, the CERD stated,
The Committee shares the state party's particular concern that despite appropriate actions undertaken and significant improvements to the various means of preventing and punishing right-wing extremist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic crimes, the number of racist incidents, which had more or less stagnated during the 1990s, suddenly and dramatically increased during the year 2000.
The committee also encouraged the state party to reinforce its efforts to prevent and combat such acts, also through further studies and research, in order to fully understand the reasons for the recent increase in racial violence and to devise appropriate measures.
The committee is further concerned about repeated reports of racist incidents in police stations, as well as ill-treatment inflicted by law-enforcement officials on foreigners, including asylum seekers and German nationals of foreign origin.
Racism in Football
Coming now to football, as one of the fields that many people do follow, we can assert straight off that football is one of the areas where xenophobia and racial abuse are becoming most alarming in some European countries. Whether at an amateur or professional level, on or off the field, chauvinism and racial reviling from fans, players, or coaches are becoming more and more blatant on some European football grounds.
During the 1970s and 1980s, racism against black players was tacitly but deeply entrenched in the English football championship. Indeed, although it was then rife to witness monkey chanting and banana throwing from racist supporters in English football stadiums, the phenomenon in institutional mass media was somewhat concealed, for they all kept silent about it.
Former Chelsea captain Paul Elliott, who suffered endless racist abuses, confessed, "It is much better than the seventies and eighties when the atmosphere was intimidator. Back then, the mindset was that you just had to put up with it; it was part of the game. It was conveniently swept under the carpet. It was taboo. It was never reported."
Echoing his words, Paul Barnes, former element of the English national football team, added, "It's good that people are talking about racism now, but it's how they are talking. The biggest thing for me is the hypocrisy of the people who were around 10 or 15 years ago when this was going on [in the UK]. Why weren't they saying anything then? Is it just politically correct to be doing it now?"
Today, there is still racist violence by English football fans against ethnic minority members. For instance, recently, the Rochdale Observer posted an article titled "Football Supporters Attack Elderly Asian Couple." The article stated,
An elderly Asian couple, aged 64 and 73, were attacked by a gang of football supporters in Rochdale an hour before a match between Rochdale and Bury. The couple were abused, spat on, and had lager sprayed on them.
One can find dozens of such news in brief in the UK all over the map.
Islamophobic Supporters
Here, we have an intriguing case in point. It is a racist, Islamophobic humiliation against Egyptian Muslim football player Mido at the Riverside Stadium.
On August 26, 2007, during a match between Newcastle United and Middlesbrough, Mido suffered serious Islamophobic abuse from Middlesbrough supporters. Sources said that "clearly audible" racist, anti-Arab chants were directed at him, and it was understood that the Football Association (FA) will launch an investigation for possible sentence against the fans of Newcastle United.
An FA spokesperson said, "We are very much in favor of banning orders being imposed on anyone identified as engaging in racist behavior in football. The FA will obviously work with the police on all football-disorder-related matters."
Another incident that football fans remember is the controversial friendly match between Spain and England on November 17, 2004, when two black players for the English team, Ashley Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips, were subjected to monkey noises and racist slogans chanted by thousands of fans in a crammed full stadium. Actually, an incident of racial abuse took place the day before, during the Under-21 friendly match between the two countries.
The incidents were so alarming that the world's football authority, FIFA, demanded an explanation from the Spanish football federation for the abuse aimed at England's black players. A FIFA spokesperson noted, "Colored English players were the target of racial abuse from spectators. The FIFA is concerned about the latest surge of racism in football and harshly condemns these incidents."
During the 2004 English football championship, a Blackburn fan was fined the equivalent of about US$1,900 and banned from football stadiums in England and Wales for five years for racial harassment against Birmingham player Dwight Yorke.
Yet, on the whole, things have improved a lot nowadays, and there are less blatant racist abuses against black players on English football grounds. Actually, despite all the racist abuses they horrendously suffer, talented players are found in every major football league in Europe, especially in France and the UK where they are numerous. In England, about 30 percent of the top-level players are Blacks!
However, if they are accepted as players, they are seldom welcomed as referees, front-office staff members, or coaches, save in a few cases (e.g. the two former international football stars, the Dutch Ruud Gullit and the French Jean Tigana). However, those players are not at all accepted as managers because of racial prejudice.
Conclusion
As demonstrated in what precedes, a soaring trend of erosion of human rights and civil liberties can be witnessed all over Europe because of racial abuse. Under the cover of the so-called global fight against terrorism initiated by the US, that combat is unfortunately predominantly directed against Muslims in the form of Islamophobia, which is rife in Europe all over the map. Yet, hopefully, a lot of effort is being consented to block the trend.
From the start of the present decade, the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights explicitly banned racism along with many other forms of social discrimination. Article 21 of the charter prohibits discrimination on any ground, such as race, color, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, disability, age or sexual orientation, and also discrimination on the grounds of nationality.
Among many other active European organizations, the ECRI is doing much in combating racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and intolerance at the level of greater Europe and from the perspective of the protection of human rights.
In the same combat, the world football body FIFA and Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE) are most concerned about the cancer of racism in the game and call for a united front.
So, let's hope, along with all people of good will, that reason shall prevail over prejudice for peace and justice to reign.