World Conference on Racism

NGOs tackle key issues at UN race meeting

With Britain in the throes of what activists are calling the "summer of resistance", campaigners drawn from the Runnymede Trust and the UK Race and Europe Network will fan out in Durban to inform government ministers and fellow NGOs of the realities of being "British, almost" and their search for diversity and justice. Leading activists have targeted key issues they will raise at the United Nations world conference on racism, xenopbia and related intolerances taking place in South Africa 31 August to 7 September.

Broad view
Michelynn Laflèche, hailed the unprecedented display of unity of the network, known as UKREN, and coordinated by the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think-tank. Ms Laflèche, the trust director, said "our common priorities have been established through consultation in seven regional meetings, and we intend to lobby the UK government and European Union members states to take a courageous line against institutional racism in schools, job markets, judicial and social services".

Ms Laflèche will renew her charge that the problems of refugees and asylum seekers - abuse, arson, violence and murder - are common across Europe. These problems are rooted in wider issues of migration and globalisation. This view she shares with her partners, the European Network Against Racism, and Pan-European and African NGOs.

Visible minorities
Patrick Yu, a Northern Ireland civil rights campaigner based in Belfast, says he is eager to broadcast the experiences of "visible minorities". The province's minorities include people of Chinese origins, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who are mainly Muslims, Indians of Hindu and Sikh backgrounds, Filipinos and African Caribbeans. Central to Yu's mission is the notion that the mainstream media and public attention are dominated by Catholic-Protestant Irish disputes. "It is alarming that the voices and perspectives of minorities are simply not being heard," he says.

Mr Yu concludes that the immigrants' dreams of a bright future are unfulfilled. As a leading member of the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities, called NICEM, Yu has pioneered race equality audits and assessment projects. These serve to monitor minority employment gains and allow comparative studies.

As Mr Yu is quite well aware, ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland are not sanguine about disturbing events across the border in the Republic of Ireland. Attacks are increasingly common in Dublin, Cork and Limerick and Black people have borne the brunt of racism.

Devolution and equality
Distress signals are apparent in Scotland, as well, according to Ms Farkhand Chaudhry, race equality development officer of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. Council members include Pakistani, Hindu/Sikh, African Caribbean, Chinese and Jewish organisations as well as women's and youth groups.

Bringing about equality changes is problematical, however. No one knows how the new, and totally white, Scottish Parliament will use its devolved regional powers to deal with race equality issues, says Ms Chaudhry. She is convinced that the fledging parliament should not blindly accept UK government policies on the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers. "Placing newcomers in inhospitable, semi-abandoned municipally-owned properties is a recipe for disaster and stokes the fires of white-led violence," she says.

Current events have emphasised this prediction. The recent racist inspired murder in Glasgow of a 22-year-old Turkish Kurd, Firsat Yildiz, is a case in point. The youth was among 1,200 asylum seekers who were summarily re-settled in the city's rundown, high-rise Sighthill housing project. This tragic event shocked many Scottish people who believed that racism was only an English disease.

Race-faith unity
In Nottingham, England, Gulzar Khan leads the Afro-Caribbean and Asian Forum, an umbrella group of 70 organisations. Recently acclaimed by the city tabloid, the Evening Post, the ACAF is a frontline provider of advice to human resources managers, professionals, trade union officials and businessmen. Khan aims to expand the ACAFs activities in support of racial and religious harmony.

"But all is not rosy", says Khan. Overwhelming evidence of racial incidents should be monitored. Careers workshops and seminars should be organised with disgruntled youth. Key topics are overcoming job discrimination and racial stereotyping. Islamophobia, a form of bigotry fuelled in many mixed neighbourhoods by poverty and failed aspirations, must be combated. He cites examples of this summer's spate of race-faith riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley and more than a dozen old northern industrial towns.

Tarnished reputation
London-based Black-led organisations are at the forefront of national anti-racism campaigns. Milena Buyum of the National Assembly Against Racism, or NAAR, says that reports by the UN High Commission for Refugees denouncing Britain for "vilifying refugees" are damaging Britain's international reputation.

Making sure that the racial victimisation is central to the Durban debates is the special interest of leaders of Black organisations. Slavery and compensation issues are also of grave concern to activists Lee Jasper, Kumar Murshid and Simon Wooley, associates of the NAAR, the 1990 Trust, Operation Black Vote, and Leroy Logan of the Black Police Association.

Tolerance and justice
"So where does all this leave us?" muses Ms Laflèche. Much of UKREN's conference efforts will be directed to the ears of leading British government representatives at Durban: Guyana-born Baroness Valerie Amos of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Angela Eagle of the Race Equality Unit of the Home Office.

The message is clear enough. Decision makers must introduce immediate reforms in race and migration matters. Governments should adhere to their national and local equality commitments. Galvanising grassroots organisations and public opinion to support these efforts is crucial. At stake, at home and abroad, say the UKREN campaigners, is Britain's claim to be a truly tolerant and just society.