The Special Report

Hate crimes must be stopped

Hate crimes must be stopped

By Richard Woods and Rosie Waterhouse

In the battle against the tide of crime, the Metropolitan police dispatched its latest patrols. A team of 20 undercover police officers were briefed and given their targets. 

And what did they do when they sallied forth in pairs nine days ago? They went for a curry. Or a Thai meal. Or a Chinese. Their mission: to find people guilty of being racially offensive to waiters. 

On the beats of the Met an average of 2,284 burglaries and 872 muggings a week were committed in February (the last month for which there are figures). Each week there were, on average, 42 rapes and four murders. 

Friday night, when the pubs empty, can be a busy time for the forces of law and order - so what weird idea inspired the police to divert precious manpower into what is being dubbed “the curry patrol”? 

To be fair, there was some method in the madness. More than 1,100 racial offences were recorded by the Met in February and some might argue that serious crimes, such as assault, stem from the prejudice and viciousness inherent in such “hate crime”. 

Matthew Baggott, assistant chief constable of West Midlands police and a spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “I don’t think that protecting people properly is political correctness. Hate crime is an issue which causes misery. You only have to look abroad, to places such as Kosovo and Rwanda, to see the dangers.” 

Victims such as Ziaul Islam, 27, would agree. A minicab driver from Ilford, Essex, Islam suffered horrific injuries which required 50 stitches across his face and lips when he was savagely beaten by three youths and struck by a beer glass in what police described as an unprovoked racist attack. 

He is scarred for life and has only just been able to return to work part-time after the incident a year ago. His attackers were recently sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. 

But whether the way to tackle such serious crime is to spy on diners in curry houses is open to question, especially when the Met is short of more than 1,000 officers. What is driving such initiatives, in fact, is an ethos much more at home with the Thought Police than the Metropolitan police, which clearly felt embarrassed about the operation. 

Though the Met initially said the operation would be repeated, it quickly backtracked and claimed the curry patrol was a one-off. But it turns out the experiment is not an isolated one. 

Last year Gloucestershire police staged Operation Napkin, in which a series of curry patrols were dispatched over seven weeks. The result? One caution and one prosecution, which was thrown out because of procedural irregularities. 

The truth is such operations come against a background of politically inspired change. 

After being condemned for institutional racism by the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the Met responded by putting more emphasis on its “racial and violent crimes taskforce” commanded by John Grieve, former head of the anti-terrorism branch, in charge. Along with the physical resources came political clout. 

“The reality is that with the numbers of police officers we have, whatever Jack Straw says, we have to prioritise,” said Glen Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation. “Hate crime is a ministerial priority.” 

Under it, the police launched a drive last month against hate crime with an advertising campaign in 300 cinemas across the capital. The campaign, urging young Londoners to report incidents, was backed by celebrities such as Jonathon Ross, actors from ITV’s The Bill, and victims including Sheryl Gascoigne and Gary Reid, a survivor of the Admiral Duncan pub bombing, a homophobically motivated attack. 

Then, in dawn raids, 100 people were arrested for alleged racism, domestic violence and offences against homosexuals. Any crime, of course, deserves the right to be investigated and the due process of law, but are the priorities correct? 

The switch in emphasis is partly prompted by the rise of what might be called the golden age for rights. British citizens, who muddled through without a written constitution for a millennium or two, now enjoy more statutory rights than they know what to do with. 

From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the movement has marched across Europe, producing the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. Last October the UK implemented its own Human Rights Act (HRA), codifying for the first time basic rights ranging from the right to life to the right to marry. 

Two months later, EU leaders meeting in Nice signed up for yet more rights. This time it was the turn of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, a mammoth document that sets out “the whole range of civil, political, economic and social rights of European citizens and all persons resident in the EU”. 

The EU is still undecided over exactly what legal status the charter will have, but the spread of legislation relating to rights continues. On Monday, an amended Race Relations Act comes into force, which will place a legal duty on all public bodies - including schools, police forces and health trusts - to promote good race relations and equality of opportunity. 

They will be obliged to monitor the composition of their workforces to ensure they reflect the ethnic make-up of local communities and will have to assess the impact on racial equality of proposed policies and services. The rules will be enforced by the Commission for Racial Equality, which will have the power to conduct formal investigations. 

If you thought this array of law and charter provided enough rights already, you’d be wrong. To go with them, say left-leaning rights campaigners, we also need a human rights commission. The idea was touted recently by Lord Irvine, the lord chancellor. 

But is there is a danger of an unbridled “culture of rights” taking hold and poisoning the very freedoms the rights are supposed to protect? Some observers believe so and others counsel caution. 

“To have yet another legal or quasi-legal body - I’m not sure what a commission would do,” said Robert Pinker, emeritus professor of social administration at the London School of Economics. “We have the Human Rights Act and I would have thought seeing how the courts work it out is the best thing to do.” 

Allan Levy QC, a leading liberal lawyer, supports the idea of a commission but accepts there may be difficulties in getting its balance right. 

“You must appoint representative people,” he said. “They should not be a pressure group or partisan group. They should act in the public interest.” 

It doesn’t always work out that way. In Northern Ireland, the human rights commission set up as part of the peace process has been accused of exactly those failings: being partisan and unrepresentative. 

The commission’s members are, to unionist eyes, dominated by nationalist sympathisers, none of whom have a reputation for fighting terrorism. At its outset, a spokesman for the pressure group Families Against Intimidation and Terror said: “The list of commissioners contains many people who are eminent in their own field, but not one who has made their reputation agitating on behalf of the victims of terrorism.” 

That bias seemed well illustrated when the BBC series Panorama made a programme about the alleged Real IRA members suspected of the Omagh bombing. The commission tried to block the programme even though not one of the people named in it had lodged a complaint. 

The suspected terrorists’ rights were being infringed, it claimed; never mind the right to freedom of speech or justice for the victims’ families. 

Continuing developments in Northern Ireland may also be a harbinger of the future. The human rights commission’s own report on its progress, published last month, recommends that it be given - yes, you guessed it - more rights. 

It wants the right to review draft laws and policies, the right to intervene in court cases, the right to compel people to divulge information to it and the right to more money. 

“You cannot believe the craziness of all this,” said Austin Morgan, an Irish lawyer. “They are a fourth branch of government that wants to demote the other branches.” 

In Britain, the effect of the HRA has so far been muted. The floodgates of litigation have largely not opened, though that may only be a matter of time. 

Already the act has been used to refine the right to privacy. Two prisoners have tried to use it to be allowed to vote. The immigration service says it is being used by asylum seekers claiming their right to life would be breached if they are returned home. Many more issues will doubtless arise. 

Less noticeable, but perhaps equally influential in the long term, is the shift in mood. A generation of children are growing up not with a sense of community but of individual rights. 

The government has, for example, sent out a new edition of its “young citizen’s passport” for schoolchildren, which includes a guide to the HRA. It advises that the act will make “claiming your rights much quicker and easier”, and that “those in authority over you will have to check that they do not ride roughshod over your rights, even if they believe they are doing so for a good reason”. 

But perhaps the most telling part of the booklet is buried away in the middle: “How far the rights act will improve the quality of life for all in the UK depends on how far we all respect the rights it enshrines.” 

Some people believe that under such shifting perspectives on rights and wrongs, we risk losing sight of more basic concerns. 

“Because we have lost control in dealing with crime, police chiefs are targeting politically correct issues - and there is nothing more politically correct at this moment than race,” said PC Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust. 

“I think society is getting a bit fed up with this. What people want is crackdowns on muggers and burglars. - The Sunday Times, London.

Crouching Tigers, hidden war 

By Jonathan Steele

Top place in this league of unreported wars surely goes to the struggle between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who want their own homeland. Close to 300 troops were killed in a single battle last week. 

Armies tend to inflate their claims of enemy dead and underplay their own, but here was the government acknowledging the loss of 221 men, while the Tigers admitted losing 75. 

Internet surfers could find these figures in despatches filed by Colombo-based reporters for the international wire services, but they did not make their way into many newspapers or TV bulletins, even though the army offensive which produced these casualties was not only colossal (and futile) in military terms but significant politically. It marked the end of a four-month ceasefire, threatening the start of another bloody chapter in a conflict already in its 18th year. 

Yet blame for this war’s lack of coverage does not rest mainly with journalists. It lies with the Sri Lankan government which runs the tightest censorship in the world, at least for a functioning democracy. When troops wounded Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times as she made the perilous illegal crossing out of Tiger-held territory last month, her bravery reminded people that no reporter has been allowed near the front lines, let alone to cross them, for almost six years. This wretched phenomenon of “crouching Tiger, hidden war” equally restricts Sri Lankan journalists who are invariably denied permission to reach the area. 

A few independent reports from Tiger-controlled territories emerge via aid organisations. They tell of great hardship for more than 300,000 displaced Tamils, living without permanent shelter and suffering from a government-imposed embargo which limits medical supplies and kerosene. But they also speak of growing disillusionment with the LTTE which taxes the few supplies which enter or insists they are sold in its own shops at high prices. The Tigers still recruit children as young as 12. 

On the government side there are repeated accounts of people “disappearing” or being tortured while held under the repressive emergency regulations brought in last year. Sri Lanka is second to Iraq in unexplained disappearances. 

Although most of the 12,000 cases precede President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s election in 1994, at least 540 have happened in her time. 

Her government has also failed to act against security officials named in commissions of inquiry, some of whom remain in high places. 

One hope is a peace mission by Erik Solheim, a Norwegian facilitator, which is modelled on the Oslo process which got Israel and the Palestinians together. 

Earlier talks soon after Kumaratunga took power collapsed because they were hasty, personalised, and unprepared. The new approach is snail-like and by involving a third party may produce more. Solheim is trying to inject a vital human rights component into what is otherwise an elite diplomatic affair by persuading the government to relax its embargo. 

The government has made concessions but its failure to respond to the ceasefire was disappointing, even though the Tigers halted the appalling atrocities of suicide bombing in Colombo and other southern cities. But the concept of “talking while fighting” is still upheld by both sides, and neither has repudiated the Solheim process. 

Another cause for hope is that Sri Lanka’s vibrant civil society has not been silenced or split into ethnic laagers by the war. Independent bodies such as the National Peace Council have Sinhalese and Tamil representation and, even after the worst bombings, reprisals were not taken by Sinhalese civilians on Tamils. The Tigers appear willing to accept something short of independence for their homeland and almost every Tamil politician who stands for non-violence has come out in support of the Tigers’ right to sit down as an equal party with the government. Even the main Tamil party, the Tamil United Liberation Front, which lost a valued MP, Neelan Thiruchelvam to a presumed Tiger bomb in 1999, acknowledges the Tigers as the Tamils’ main representative in the Solheim process and the talks which should flow from it. 

Like all wars, this one has profiteers. Most people in Colombo are convinced the defence ministry and army command are full of men who take backhanders from the huge arms purchases of recent years. 

Kumaratunga has a hard task, but it would be easier if she opened the war and its devastating human impact, as well as the business deals which prolong it, to the scrutiny of the Sri Lankan and foreign press. She should also ensure that those already named for human rights abuse or corruption are made to resign and face the courts. – 

The Guardian, London

Inside the glass house

Editorial/ Opinion Contents