House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

 

 

'hate crime' in Northern Ireland

 

 

Belfast City Hall

 

 

Monday 25 October 2004

MR J KNOX, MR D FARRELL, MR P A MagLOCHLAINN, MR G LEE, MS T CULLEN and MS M McCAFFERTY

MR J IWIEDA, MS A LO, MS E McKELVEY, DR K RADFORD, MS V HARVEY and MS N TANDON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 510 - 578

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Monday 25 October 2004

Members present

Mr Michael Mates, in the Char

Mr Adrian Bailey

Mr Roy Beggs

Mr Gregory Campbell

Mr Tony Clarke

Mr Stephen Hepburn

Mr Eddie McGrady

The Reverend Martin Smyth

Mr Bill Tynan

 

________________

Memoranda submitted by The Coalition on Sexual Orientation (CoSO) and Queerspace

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr James Knox, CoSO, Mr Duane Farrell, the Rainbow Project, Mr P A MagLochlainn, Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association, Mr Gareth Lee, Queerspace, Ms Mairéad McCafferty, Lesbian Line, and Ms Theresa Cullen, Cara-Friend, examined.

Q510 Chairman: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming to help us with our inquiry into 'hate crime' which, as you know, is trying to explore the reasons for the reported increase in crimes and incidents motivated by hatred within and between the communities in Northern Ireland, to look at the effectiveness of the measures which the Government and various relative agencies are taking to try and tackle prejudice and to support the victims and, finally, to look at the effectiveness of the existing law and the proposed changes to it. We have got a number of questions, some of which will seem directed more at one of you than all of you. I want you all to feel that you can say what you like. I do not want you to feel that you have all got to answer every reason because if you all feel you have got to answer every question and echo the other we will be here to Thursday. Having said that, I shall not shut anyone out, but try not to repeat what someone else has said. If you agree, simply say "I agree" and that will be just fine. We will all think the better of you for it because we all need to get home tomorrow. First of all, the media in Northern Ireland has recently reported several high profile cases of homophobic attacks. Do you think the problem is becoming more serious given the increase in the number of incidents or is there just better awareness of the problem, and are more people reporting it?

Mr MagLochlainn: I do not think it is absolutely clear to any of us whether the increase in homophobia is due to our efforts. For example, our Pride this year had over 3,000 people walking around this City Hall and that was the first time ever in the north of Ireland there had been any such manifestation of gay presence. There is still a small minority of people out there who do not think that we exist. There is one website which referred to us as "a micro minority of a minority" and they forecast they would have 100 activists to stop this "shameful parade". As it turned out, I think they managed all of ten and they did not quite stop the parade. As to the visibility that we bring, whereas it helps a lot of people in the gay community to appreciate the work that has been done for them and the facilities that are provided for them by the various groups represented here, at the same time it does attract a certain amount of invidious attention from people. We find the same thing happening in the Chinese community with their attempt to set up a community centre and this has attracted very unwelcome semi‑Fascist attitudes from some other people. We are the victims of our own success. It may be, on the other hand, that something is happening to increase the amount of homophobia.

Ms McCafferty: Obviously the level of reporting has increased. Twice the amount of attacks have been reported to the PSNI this year. I do not know whether or not that is because there are more homophobic attacks or people are feeling a greater sense of confidence in going forward to the police and reporting that crime, but there is still a long, long way to go. A lot of the organisations exist on a shoestring and are run entirely by volunteers. What we have done since our last meeting with yourselves in June is set up a third party reporting system called Lesbian Line so that women can report through the organisation rather than having to go to the police directly. A lot of women in our society still feel uncomfortable going to the police, and obviously we can talk about the issues in relation to the police later on. People feel slightly more conflict. The legislation that has been brought in does create a greater sense of conflict. The different organisations have been promoting the fact that you can report these crimes through the organisations and that hopefully when you do report them to the police you will be treated sensitively because in the past that has not been the case and there is a long way to go in regard to how the police handle these incidents as well.

Q511 Chairman: Which organisation do you represent?

Ms Cullen: I am a member of Cara‑Friend and Lesbian Line, but I am here to represent Cara‑Friend, which is an umbrella organisation of Lesbian Line, the Gay Helpline, which is the men's helpline, and GLYNI, which is a youth organisation and it has been providing services for 30 years. Since the last time we met we have gone back to the community and we have raised awareness about homophobic crime and the way in which that can be reported. One of the things we found startling is the number of serious attacks that have gone on in the past. Now, these are not recent, they are not last week, they may be a number of years ago, but these where serious physical assaults on women and resulted in hospitalization and there was intimidation, women having to move out of their homes, having to just take up and flee and find somewhere else to live at short notice. In a number of situations reporting that to the police was not a pleasant experience and they felt that there was further difficulty in trying to address the issues because it was a homophobic crime.

Q512 Chairman: Mr Lee, your organisation, Queerspace, argues that much of the personal abuse against the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual community 'comes from relatively young children' and, more worryingly, paramilitary organisations. These are two entirely different sectors of society. How do you think that this type of personal abuse can be tackled from these two very different sources?

Mr Lee: Most abuse comes from teenagers and adults. We have weekly meetings and people would pass on information at those meetings and from our conversations we are aware of incidents where relatively young children are involved in abuse. For example, in one case two men who were partners basically moved home because they were getting harassment from young children, it was things like name calling, snowballs through windows and the use of laser pens. They tried talking to their neighbours about it. They were worried about what would happen when the children grew up into teenagers. These were children in the seven to 11 age group. A lot of people are aware that children abuse their peers. Homophobic bullying is going on in schools and children attack each other and use the words "gay", "lezza" or "fruit". In our report we refer to homophobic bullying as well. It is very low level harassment, but people do not feel able to tackle this because of the age groups concerned and they feel that they will not be taken seriously by the police because it is embarrassing, they are getting hassle from young children and it is just accepted that that is what young children do.

Q513 Chairman: What about paramilitaries?

Mr Lee: That is another fear that people would have in reporting incidents. Paramilitaries' involvement would be very much more serious and different issues. There have been lots of headlines about violent gangs attacking people. It would be things like targeting specific people who are maybe involved in illegal activity, such as cruising or something like that.

Q514 Chairman: Your memorandum says that much of the personal abuse of the GLBT community comes from paramilitaries.

Mr Lee: In south Belfast there would be paramilitary organisations' involvement or at least it is inferred that paramilitaries are involved in racist behaviour, it is the right wing BNP. That is another reason why people would be scared to report that.

Q515 Chairman: We are trying to concentrate on the problems of the GLBT view. Racist behaviour we understand, that is a slightly different problem.

Mr Lee: Some people perceive that the people involved in the racist behaviour are also the people who are driving the homophobic behaviour in an organized way.

Q516 Chairman: The same paramilitaries as it were?

Mr Lee: Yes.

Q517 Chairman: To what extent have paramilitaries been involved in homophobic attacks?

Ms McCafferty: I think it is invariably the case that paramilitaries live within local communities and when homophobic abuse and attacks happen sometimes it can be condoned by the paramilitaries living within that community. I do not think it is a case of targeting one set of paramilitaries over another and saying that they happen to be worse. I think homophobic attacks should be decried from whatever source they come, whether it is the paramilitaries, teenagers, children and other families living within the local communities because invariably what has happened has led to couples having to leave their local communities and go and live elsewhere because of the level of harassment they have been undergoing.

Mr MagLochlainn: I do not think we present the same tempting economic target that some of the ethic communities are now starting to tempt. For example, Chinese groups are going to places like the Donegal Road and I would not advise anybody in Belfast who is from any minority other than the majority group down in Donegal Road ever to go to that area because, with all due respect to my friends from that part of the city, that is a dangerous part of the city. You will find that any gay people who are forced out of their own communities in the countryside and country towns or in other parts of Belfast tend to make for the safer parts of south Belfast, which is Bohemia or around the university where we do not paint our curbstones, thank God, and it means that you are fairly safe. We are not getting it in the neck as much. There have been gay people killed in little ghettoes like Donegal Road or other parts of Belfast, and I am not saying it is all one way. I do not think there is any organised campaign against us because we are just not profitable enough. It is not as though we are carrying home money in the evening from our restaurant and can be mugged.

Mr Knox: There were two men living together in Derry and they got a letter that was supposed to be from one of the paramilitary groups, but that was then later denied by the political research group that represented them. That put fear in those people. Even after the paramilitaries denied it those people were still afraid. They have obviously moved home since then. The Rainbow Project has been mentioned on Combat 18's website, which is also a problem for the staff that work there, for the people that go in and use the services and all that kind of stuff.

Q518 Mr Clarke: I want to return to this question of reporting. Mairéad, you mentioned that the Lesbian Line people are starting to report because they feel a certain confidence. I think you also mentioned the Gay Helpline and somebody mentioned that the Gay and Lesbian Youth Northern Ireland group are starting to see some reporting. All of you indicated that one of the key issues is the number of unreported attacks. How do we tackle that? How do we make sure that the reports are not just the serious attacks but that we report all the incidences of homophobia which make up some of those more vicious attacks?

Ms McCafferty: We have talked about this. I think it really goes back to creating a climate of confidence generally throughout Northern Ireland. If the PSNI launched a TV campaign to promote reporting so that people knew they should go to the police in the first instance, with a sense of confidence that the incident would be dealt with sensitively and properly and effectively, that would be great. We still have cases where people are ringing the police and three months later they are still waiting for the minority liaison officer to get back to them. We are doing our bit as far as we can with the very limited resources and people power that we have, but at the same time the onus of responsibility really should be on the PSNI to create a climate where this is possible and where people feel they can go to the police in confidence and they will not suffer harassment or be 'outed' as a result, or go to an organisation and report it and it will be dealt with sensitively and properly and carried through. Unfortunately what is happening is that a lot of women who have had the confidence to go and report it to the police have found that the outcome was not satisfactory and it was not carried through and it was not dealt with sensitively and in the end they have had to leave their homes anyway or leave their places of employment because they could not live in an intolerable situation any longer. There are organisations like the Equality Commission and the Human Rights Commission who could help here too. It is definitely about creating a climate of confidence and that does place the onus of responsibility sometimes on our public representatives as well to create a climate of equality where people are treated as equals rather than second-class citizens because unfortunately that is exactly how members of the GLBT community feel.

Ms Cullen: I think there are two important broad issues that fit into under‑reporting. One is visibility and creating that climate where people feel safe to be able to report that as a natural thing. If I was assaulted in a general sense I would not be worried about my own personal safety beyond that and the consequences. That visibility is directly related to homophobia. 'Hate crime' is a result of homophobia. Although we welcome the legislation so that homophobia is now part of 'hate crime', there needs to be a widespread and broad approach to dealing with homophobia in our society. A key factor is legislation around equality. We have had a lot of debate in the public domain about the Civil Partnership Bill, that is a matter of equality and if the state does not introduce that Bill it is enshrining a culture that there is second-class citizenship in our society. I think the debate sometimes gets sidelined. The actual issue is a basic equality issue and that is how we deal with homophobia, it is about making it easy for people like ourselves to come here and not to fear for our safety just because we came here today. A number of us were worried about whether the press were going to be here, whether we were going to be reported in the media and if there would be cameras. That is a real fear for us because we have to leave this room and live in that society.

Q519 Mr Clarke: We very much appreciate you doing so.

Mr MagLochlainn: Some of the people sitting in front of you in this group of very hard‑working people are unable to be 'out' completely in their lives. These people are trying to uproot and do things to change our society and yet they are hidden in a cupboard and that restricts your movements. A friend learned to play the trumpet by hiding in his brother's cupboard because it kept the horrible noise down. If you are talking about where do we go from here, we would say you should give us an office to appoint the people who can publicly front the movement and to provide a rallying point where reporting can be done and which can be mentioned on television and radio, the same as is done for Patrick Hue (?) and various other groups who are able to come out in public and be obvious. It is a shame that the people at this table cannot be open to everyone else outside of this group, we have to worry about the press.

Chairman: Whatever anybody's view is, I think you have all been very brave to come here. I want to say to the press that I hope you will understand the reservations these good people have had about coming to talk to us, but it is very important that we do hear views from everyone. I hope in your reporting, members of the press, you will acknowledge that there are difficulties under which these people live their daily lives and report it accordingly.

Q520 Mr Clarke: One of the ways that we have tackled this fear of reporting in England is through self‑reporting and with multi‑faceted organisations being responsible for the collation of evidence. In my own town we have had a stamp out 'hate crime' campaign and there is a very small CD size pack which includes reporting forms for 'hate crimes' related to race, to homophobia, whatever the 'hate crime' is there is the opportunity to report it to a separate group who can then produce their figures to be matched against those that the official bodies produce. There is some benefit to be had in all those that are the victims of 'hate crime' feeling they are standing together against those that perpetrate it. Is that something that is welcome? I know it does not happen in Northern Ireland, but perhaps it should. Would you welcome such a move?

Ms McCafferty: Yes, definitely. I think it would be very productive to take that forward because I think 'hate crime' is 'hate crime' no matter what group in society it is directed at and the sooner people here realise that people are equals and if 'hate crime' is directed at one group then we are all affected the better. Roll on the day!

Ms Cullen: Would you give us your pack?

Q521 Mr Clarke: I am sure the Committee has some. We will pass those on to you.

Mr Knox: The pack that you are talking about involved around 26 police constabularies coming together to produce it and it is really, really excellent. The PSNI are always moaning about not having the resources to do this, that and the other, but what they could do is feed in to that, to join that and then people would be more likely to make up something which is shiny and glossy and colourful like that little booklet rather than a printed A4 sheet of paper that is just in black and white. I know it is just colours and that kind of thing, but people are attracted to colours.

Mr Lee: It shows commitment as well.

Mr Knox: As to your question earlier on with regard to what the police could do, I phoned up the police exchange about six or seven weeks ago and asked them to put me through to the minority liaison officer in north Belfast, but they had never even heard of the job. I heard the guy ask one of his other colleagues who this was. I got fed up with that and I then asked for the number for north Belfast. I got through to north Belfast and the guy in reception did not know who it was. I then phoned Robin Dempsey and asked him to make sure that these exchanges know that these jobs exist and he said he would follow it up. I told him that this will be a problem when somebody is going to report a crime. I was on the phone for 25 minutes.

Mr Farrell: We have experience of working over the last five years with the police in Belfast and in Derry and in both those places the police seem quite well aware of homophobic 'hate crime' and the issues around reporting. When you go outside Belfast and Derry where there is not as visible a gay community the blocks become more numerable. The block happens at reception when they ask for the minority liaison officer or when somebody says they want to report 'hate crime' and the person at the end of the phone knows nothing about the law regarding 'hate crimes'. I think there is a real difference that the police service need to address across Northern Ireland and not just have Belfast and Derry as the two areas where we are very well looked after in relation to this.

Mr Knox: Normally when there is a press release by an MP or whatever in regard to 'hate crime' it is always race this, that and the other, but this is also happening for people of different sexual orientation and it is a one sentence thing. Even yesterday on The Politics Show they did not mention sexual orientation. They mentioned disability and they mentioned race. Patrick Hue (?) mentioned sexual orientation but that was in regard to monitoring. It is a hidden thing. It is not even dealt with or mentioned.

Mr Lee: There was a report on BBC Radio Ulster this morning about this morning's inquiry and all the categories were mentioned more or less apart from homophobic 'hate crime'. It is like a taboo subject; it is like we are invisible.

Ms McCafferty: It was the same with the news yesterday evening and this morning as well, they mentioned that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee were investigating 'hate crime'. Homophobia is not mentioned as a 'hate crime' and that is the kind of thing that needs to be mentioned because we cannot create a climate of quality unless it is addressed and recognised and identified.

Mr Clarke: I saw the 8.30 regional news and at least on there they did mention the groups that were giving evidence. If they got it wrong earlier on, they did correct it.

Q522 Mr Tynan: Do you feel that the police are responding effectively in some areas to homophobic attacks and not in other areas?

Mr Farrell: I think there is a cohort of excellent officers who are well trained, who are aware of the issues and who we have made good links with and in our working lives we have the names of people who we can work with and we will direct cases and enquiries towards those. I do not think that cohort of officers is anywhere near enough. There needs to be more people trained and aware of the reality of 'hate crime' issues, particularly outside of Belfast and Derry where it is not just about being unable to report a crime.

Mr Knox: Part of the minority liaison officer's role is to make links with local groups, but because there are no gay and lesbian groups in their areas they do not make links.

Q523 Mr Tynan: Have you seen any improvement in the police responding to homophobic attacks?

Mr MagLochlainn: In general, as my colleagues are saying, there is not as much of a gay presence in the country. I think you find throughout the United Kingdom that people tend to leave their own family area and move to a large conurbation nearby, a town or a city, in order to find themselves and explore their different sexuality because quite often they are growing up in a family that knows nothing about it. People will come 'out' while they are at university or at a Belfast institution or while they were on some sort of a service away from home and then they will get their feet under them, they will grow in confidence gradually and maybe move back to the original fraternity if they are confident enough. Rainbow has had its finger on the pulse of what has been happening in several of the rural areas in Northern Ireland and there have been instances of homophobia. There appears to be some particular problem up in Londonderry at the moment. I am not sure why there has been such an upsurge there. The coverage in the country seems to be fair enough as far as we can see it. It is not any worse than it is in the town. In some areas the service we are getting in the town can be quite good. I have had very good reports from the organiser of the Gay and Lesbian Sonna (?) in Northern Ireland who said the police were very supportive. We have had a number of instances where active officers on the ground have been unsympathetic during homophobic attacks and these have left a little bit of a sour taste even in Belfast. It is partly the luck of the you draw as to whether you get a senior enough police person who is up‑to‑date and modern looking or whether you get somebody who has been in the force for 40 years and has seen all this arty stuff and they are an old soldier and they are just waiting until their next tea. I am not sure they treat any other member of the public any better sometimes than they treat us. By and large the force is making a move. How well they are directing this and how far it has got through to all ranks and how well they all know about their own system is another matter. We definitely think they could improve on that for all over Northern Ireland, rural and urban.

Ms Cullen: I think there is very much a rural/urban divide and I think it is something to do with the confidence in numbers. I think it is more likely people will report crime in that city context than they will do in a rural setting. It comes back to my earlier point about visibility and confidence. If you are living in an isolated context and you are a gay person that has experienced homophobic crime it would be very difficult to walk into your local country PSNI station and start addressing that as homophobic crime. It comes back to one of the other key issues that we have touched on this morning and that is resourcing for our community. Of all the section 75 communities, the gay and lesbian community is seriously under‑resourced. The majority of the work that is carried out is done by volunteers. The volunteers sitting here spend four or five nights a week working on consultations and all of the issues to move the cause forward. The issue of under-funding means that we cannot reach out to our community and support our community and help in building confidence or even let people know what the situation is for reporting homophobic crimes. Even though they sound like particular soapboxes, the under‑resources, the visibility, tackling homophobia, they are the real issues that need to be tackled to address something as simple as somebody living in a rural community that cannot walk into the PSNI station and report it.

Mr MagLochlainn: Section 75 is a reference to section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act which at that time put a statutory duty on all public authorities to be certain that none of their policies, past or present, impacted on a number of various groups in Northern Ireland, including people of different sexual orientation.

Q524 Mr Tynan: What could the police do to build a better relationship with the community than it has at the present time?

Ms Cullen: I think there needs to be a two‑pronged approach. I think it needs to come from within the community. Organisations like Cara‑Friend have been going for 30 years and they have been providing helpline services and outreach and support for the gay and lesbian community. Organisations should be given the resources to be able to reach out to the community and create that safe space so that people can identify and agree in confidence and be part of the debate and be part of the future of Northern Ireland. The other prong to that is the statutory responsibility and in particular the PSNI saying "We are here. We understand where your community is coming from. We acknowledge you're a valid part of this society and we will protect you. We will work on your behalf." We are not hearing that message. The LGBT community is hearing it from the organisations because we are meeting with people like you and then we promote that, but it is so small and we cannot have the impact that we need to have.

Q525 Mr Tynan: Apart from resources, do you believe that there is a need for further training?

Ms Cullen: Absolutely.

Ms McCafferty: And not just with new recruits, I think there needs to be huge training throughout the whole PSNI because you cannot just focus on the new recruits, you need to tackle it across the board. There definitely needs to be a campaign coming from the PSNI to encourage 'hate crime' reporting and create a climate which is easy for people to engage in.

Mr Knox: As far as I am aware the new recruits all receive awareness raising training through role plays. The person who is doing the role play is the only one that benefits from that education because everybody else hides round the corner because the trainers do not want them to see what the answers are. When they go out to a station, because nobody else in that station has had awareness raising training, through osmosis all that training disappears and then we are back to square one. It needs to be followed through. The minority liaison officers have had awareness raising training on sexual orientation issues, but that was brought in from England, which is brilliant. The issues are completely different in a lot of senses.

Ms McCafferty: A lot of currently serving police officers do not know there is a minority liaison police officer service. When you lift the phone and ask for that officer they say "What?" or "Who?" They do not know who it is themselves. Obviously the PSNI need to address that internally.

Mr Knox: I have been talking to a couple of police officers in different stations over the last couple of weeks and what I have found is that they keep calling the minority liaison officer the race officer. So if somebody phones up wanting to report a homophobic crime they say, "We don't have anybody here", and when they ask who is dealing with their minority stuff they tell them they have a race officer, but that is ridiculous because the officer is a minority liaison officer for everyone, not just race.

Q526 Mr Tynan: Have you had any input into the training of police officers?

Mr Knox: I used to go and train them.

Ms McCafferty: There would need to be a more concerted effort on behalf of the PSNI to contact the organisations and involve us in the training. Even if it is a case of asking speakers along to talk about what it is like to be lesbian, to be gay, to be bisexual or transgender in Northern Ireland today, even if that was just talking to a room of 20, 30 or 40 police officers, at least those officers are going away with an idea of what the issues are.

Q527 Mr Tynan: That does not happen at the present time, does it?

Ms McCafferty: No.

Mr MagLochlainn: Several years ago there was slightly better training, there was much more role playing and awareness raising exercises that we engaged in with a panel of speakers and facilitators going to the police and dealing with this, but for some reason or other they decided to change that and to revert to a less effective method of teaching. Speaking as an ex‑teacher, I do not know what they are doing at the moment, but I doubt if it is as effective as that training was that we gave them in the late Nineties.

Mr Lee: The police want our community to engage with them to help them through that process, but we do not have the infrastructure to deal with that effectively because all this activity is done on a voluntary basis, the people have jobs, etcetera. Mairéad mentioned a publicity campaign to make the public aware about homophobic 'hate crime'. The police service have advertised in the Gay Community News, but they need to mainstream this into wider society because we can only reach a certain amount of people. Not everybody reads the Gay Community News. It needs to go out much wider if it is going to be effective at all, especially in rural areas.

Q528 Mr Tynan: If people who are at different stages of 'coming out' of their sexuality are reluctant to report crime, how can the police or other statutory agencies help in these circumstances? You made the point about half‑hearted reporting and obviously that is key to this.

Ms McCafferty: Unfortunately that will probably be the way it is for a long time in Northern Ireland, but it does create a conduit whereby people can report the crime and have it recorded by the police and that will give a truer reflection of what is happening in our society. There is not a lot you can do in terms of if they are at a stage in the 'coming out' process where they are feeling quite vulnerable they will not feel confident enough to approach the PSNI, but they may feel more confident if they know they can lift the phone to Lesbian Line or the Gay Helpline or Rainbow or any of the organisations and tell them they have just been subjected to 'hate crime' and report it that way. That way we can pass that information on to the police and it can be recorded and dealt with.

Q529 Mr Tynan: Are there any ways in which statutory bodies could do more to protect individuals who want to report homophobic crime and do not want to be 'outed'?

Ms McCafferty: There are practical things that can be done in a sense. If somebody from a local community is reporting 'hate crime', the police could step up visibility in that community even in terms of being on the streets and being visible themselves so that that person is not facing a nightly barrage and attack on their home, something whereby we do not have to give an address or the name but we can say in the general vicinity of this community we need to have a visible presence so that this person does feel more confident and safe in their own home. There are practical things like that that could be implemented.

Ms Cullen: There is a really important analogy. We have lived with the troubles and the confidential phone line in terms of reporting incidents. Something similar needs to be done here. We need to promote what is the confidentiality around this process so that people understand which bit is going to be in confidence and which bit is going to be public. If people feel confidence in the mechanism then they will feel more confident in using the system. It is very important to know whether, if I ring up and report a crime, my name is going to be in the public domain. Secondly, is my address going to be there? Are any of my personal details doing to be there? That detail needs to be communicated to individuals.

Q530 Mr Tynan: It is a similar problem to people reporting anti‑social behaviour.

Ms Cullen: Absolutely, yes.

Mr Lee: And also in the judicial process. It is typical in cases of sexual harassment for rape victims to be given protection by being anonymous. I think a similar process would help when cases go to prosecution, etcetera, otherwise it will deter people.

Mr Knox: There is a wider issue there as well in terms of the Civil Partnership Bill because when it comes here people will have to have their name and address and all that kind of stuff up outside the Registry Office, but the likelihood of that happening is minimal because of the fear of the whole process. I would certainly back up what Gareth is saying, that one way to promote people coming forward is to protect them within the judicial system.

Q531 Mr Bailey: What is your reaction to the recently introduced Criminal Justice (No.2) (Northern Ireland) Order 2004? How do you think it may help against homophobic attacks?

Mr MagLochlainn: We welcome it.

Mr Knox: It is certainly a welcome thing for sexual orientation to be included in it and it is definitely something that has been lacking for a number of years for all the categories involved. It has changed mindsets already. In the past the DUP have been very vociferous against gays and lesbians and then they had someone take a case against them and they ejected the person who was being homophobic, which shows how far organisations and people have come and we welcome that. In terms of society, legislation is the first thing that changes here before people's mindsets. We think that certainly a couple of years down the line people will feel more confident in coming forward to report the crimes and people will realise that it is not just the gay and lesbian community that needs to support homophobic crime in terms of reporting it. It is one of those things where it is too early to tell, but we think it is positive.

Mr Farrell: I would support what James has said, it is a welcome thing and it is very much a definite thing. We are seeing what the real impact has been. At some point in the future what the Criminal Justice Order offers us is a mechanism to report break downs in relation to homophobic crime as and when they happen and that acts as a deterrent. I think at some point we are going to have to look at education. I personally believe education is part of the answer to stopping homophobic 'hate crime' and that is a mantle that needs to be taken on by a range of institutions across Northern Ireland. When we look at racism and disability, they are all issues that can be fitted in under different schools' curricula issues. Sexual orientation, because of the nature of it here in Northern Ireland, will never be looked at currently in relation to post‑primary level and as an issue where we need to work with young people. We need to instill a set of values in people that it is not acceptable to treat members of the gay/lesbian/transsexual and bisexual community as second-class citizens in the same way as ethnic minorities. That is going to be a real block over the coming years. We have a mechanism that allows us to address it and report it. If we are serious about presenting it then I think there is another stage that we have to look at.

Mr Knox: I am aware that the Department of Education in Whitehall is introducing policy guidelines against homophobic bullying in all state schools in England and Wales and it would be interesting to find out if that is going to apply to Northern Ireland as well.

Q532 Mr Bailey: You have anticipated my next couple of questions. First of all, are there any further legislative changes that you think would help?

Ms Cullen: As a society we do need to address all of the legislation that pertains to the equality of a community and issues like the Civil Partnership Bill should work in tandem with the 'hate crime' legislation and any ways that people can be protected in law and given equal status as valid human beings with rights in this society. Often we get sidetracked with the debate and it goes into all sorts of other areas. It is really an equality issue and it is the equality of people like us with people like you that has to be addressed in law. So it is all about legislation and legislation should be scrutinized to see how it impacts in terms of the quality of our community.

Q533 Mr Bailey: Are there any other measures, other than legislative, that you think would be helpful in dealing with homophobic attacks?

Ms McCafferty: That is a huge question.

Q534 Mr Bailey: You have touched on several, education and so on and I do not want you to go over old territory, but is there anything else you would like to add?

Mr MagLochlainn: The provision of goods and services is at the present time left out of the equality legislation. That means that someone running a guest house in Scotland can decide not to entertain two gay men because he reckons that they are an affront to God's law. That is possibly true, but is that the right sort of attitude for someone promoting Scottish tourism to have? People are entitled to have their own opinions but not when this affects the wellbeing of another person. We are going to have to decide in the area of the delivery of goods and services if we can insist on equality.

Mr Knox: The goods, facilities and services thing is a major issue here. There were two women in a coffee shop about a year or so ago who were asked to leave the coffee shop for holding hands. My housemate has been out with his boyfriend in a restaurant and as soon as they fished their meal they brought the bill instead of asking if they wanted coffee or dessert because they realised they were gay and they just wanted them out. They do not even want us in their premises and that is ridiculous considering the amount of money that the gay and lesbian community put into Northern Ireland and we do not get it back out.

Q535 Mr Bailey: Who do you think should be responsible for driving through these measures or changes?

Mr Knox: The Single Equality Bill at the minute is out for consultation and it includes goods, facilities and services, but it is only mentioned at the minute. We would certainly be pushing for access to goods, facilities and services.

Mr Farrell: One of the initiatives that the Rainbow Project is promoting at the moment is a social partnership approach to homophobia. We believe that homophobia is the responsibility of all sections of society. It is not up to us to be trying to address and turn back the tide on this issue here in Northern Ireland. It is the responsibility of churches, businesses, the education sector and the community and voluntary sectors and a useful initiative would be to attempt to start bringing all these people together to create a very real awareness of what homophobia is. The use of language like "queer", "poof" or "lezza" is quite acceptable to young people. It is political correctness gone mad. We have to begin to get hold of and instill confidence and values in our different sectors so that they will address this and not let it happen. When it happens in the small instances then somebody gets murdered and nobody sees the link between the two. It is initiatives like that that brings people together.

Mr Knox: Since the last time we met we have instigated an anti‑homophobia week in Northern Ireland which will happen every year and this year it will be from 3 December until 12/13 December. The partnership approach in that, working with different statutory agencies, is certainly excellent.

Ms McCafferty: We need to make sure that those who are in positions where they can influence change are taking that responsibility on board within the education system for instance which, as a lot of us have already mentioned, needs a lot of work. We need to go back and outlaw prejudice and say that this is wrong. We should celebrate the fact that we have people within our communities who may be slightly different for whatever reason, whether it is sexual orientation, whether it is race, disability. Basically what we have to do is challenge 'hate crime' and to make sure that that is not acceptable any longer in our society.

Q536 Reverend Smyth: Mr Knox, in your Annual Report for CoSO it notes that "it is clear that sexual orientation is not at the top of some public authorities' agendas in relation to section 75". Can you provide examples to support this assertion?

Mr Knox: In 2001 when we had initial meetings with public authorities on their equality schemes everyone that we had asked to attend the meetings turned up, there was excellent bridge building opportunities, all that kind of stuff. Last year we tried to run a series of meetings again with the local councils and found that none of them turned up. That shows that in 2001 when sexual orientation was a new thing they all wanted to deal with it, they were told they needed to deal with it and now they feel they do not need to deal with it at all, so they did not turn up at the meetings. Another example is that the DHSSPS consulted on a domestic violence strategy and they did not have figures for same sex domestic violence and I thought that was very strange, so I phoned the police and asked them what the figures were. I got the figures and I had a meeting and I asked them where the figures were and they said there were not any and I gave them headed notepaper from the police to say these were the figures. This shows that they are not even asking the questions anymore when they are following through the EQIA (?) process and the scrutiny of other policies. Another one is the health inequalities document produced as part of DHSSPS again and there is very little in it on sexual orientation. Even the suicide information that they have has nothing in it on gay and lesbian issues even though other research here has proved that it is about 30 per cent of attempted suicides in Northern Ireland.

Q537 Reverend Smyth: What are the main sources of funding for homophobic support groups? Should more funding come from the public sector for your work and, if so, from which bodies and agencies?

Mr Farrell: The majority of funding that organisations access currently is from grant making trusts and it is not from the public purse at all.

Q538 Chairman: Is there nothing from the public purse?

Mr Farrell: In the organisation that I work in about 25 per cent of our budget comes from the public purse, 75 per cent we rely on others for and we get three year cycles and we have to invent something new and innovative.

Q539 Chairman: Which part of the public purse?

Mr Farrell: Through the Department of Health.

Ms McCafferty: The Cara‑Friend organisation, which runs the Gay Helpline and Lesbian Line and GLYNI, get an amount of core funding from the Department of Health and have done for the last 30 years and evaluations etcetera are carried out, but we still have to fundraise to raise over 25 per cent of the money that we need to survive on an annual basis just to offer basic service provision like operating the help-lines. Any of the work that we do over and above that or any projects which we instigate are always funded from grant making trusts and outside funding bodies. The issue of resourcing is a crucial one and quite vital in this context.

Mr MagLochlainn: There are still bodies in the gay scene which receive absolutely no funding, mine for example and we are all helping each other. I am a spear carrier in one organisation and I am an Indian with a big feather in another organisation. There are a large number of organisations getting zilch. In Northern Ireland we do not have a fund for what we are all doing. BORC is the Belfast Outdoor Resource Centre. We have felt for a long time the need for some sort of permanent base to fund together all our activities and we have been backing that totally. Dublin has such a base, which is one of the reasons that they have gone ahead by leaps and bounds, Edinburgh has one and Glasgow has got a civil servant seconded for two years to set one up for them, but we have nothing.

Q540 Chairman: Have you applied?

Mr MagLochlainn: We are exploring that at the moment.

Ms Cullen: One of the issues comes back to time. We spend nights and nights and days on this. I have taken a day off work today to come here. It is all volunteer time and we are on so many different committees and groups we are all at the point of burn out. Cara‑Friend provides premises using that DHSSPS funding for the other gay groups to access, but we need a dedicated centre. I have been involved with BORC, but finding the time to fill out major funding applications and getting together a business plan is difficult. It is a case of too many things and not enough time and that is the story throughout the community.

Mr MagLochlainn: An application was made on behalf of the funding for the Derry/Londonderry centre which ran for a while and it took one year in total of the life of a young accountant called James Grant to secure that funding. None of us has the expertise that James has; he is a fully expert accountant. I am a retired school teacher and other people have full‑time jobs to do. We just cannot produce it, Chairman.

Ms McCafferty: Any time the DHSS carry out an evaluation with Cara‑Friend we do always highlight that we need resources to do the work that we do and to have a designated centre. This information is getting back to Government. What Government are choosing to do with it is entirely in their hands.

Mr Knox: CoSO was set up five years ago to deal with section 75 and it has had no funding whatsoever apart from for carrying out consultation processes.

Q541 Mr Beggs: Do you feel that you are consulted adequately when policy has been developed in this area? How could consultation with the GLBT community be improved?

Mr Knox: One of the difficulties is time because most of the people who are involved in the groups have a full‑time job. Most of the consultations that the government agencies would run themselves happens Monday to Friday nine to five, so nobody can go. I am the only paid person in Northern Ireland - I work for the Rainbow Project - in the sexual orientation sector doing this work and it is ridiculous because the other sectors maybe have four or five different people doing the same work that I have to do. I cannot go to everything, so I have to pick and choose. The main areas would be health, education or the police and that kind of thing.

Ms Cullen: Certainly the consultation process has improved dramatically and now there are many, many consultations and as soon as we go into the office and we open the mail it is for this consultation or that consultation. The problem that we have is giving serious time to responding to those consultations. We were up until 11 o'clock last night trying to put something down on paper and get our thoughts together because the previous day we were responding to something else. Having the time to respond comprehensively is not there because we are spread about too thinly.

Mr Farrell: Another issue which feeds into it is the absolute lack of research around gay people in Northern Ireland. More recently we have seen initiatives like the Human Rights Commission bringing out research reports, but essentially there is no information out there for public authorities or for government to base policy development around, so they are looking for meetings to follow up different aspects that relate to the legislative process and we are not always in a position to give that time. Quite a practical thing is adequate funding into developing research and development things like data for the gay and lesbian communities.

Mr Knox: Under section 75 they have to follow it up with quantitative and qualitative data, but when they come out and they talk to you about the qualitative stuff they still want to know how many people are affected by what you said.

Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for giving up your time to come and help us.

Memoranda submitted by the Chinese Welfare Association, the Belfast Jewish Community, Dr Katy Radford of Save the Children and the Traveller Movement

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Jamal Iweida, Muslim Community, Ms Anna Lo, Chinese Welfare Association, Ms Eva McKelvey, Northern Ireland Filipino Association, Dr Katy Radford, Belfast Jewish Community, Ms Vivian Harvey, Traveller Movement Northern Ireland, Ms Nisha Tandon, Indian Community Centre, examined.

Q542 Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for coming to help us with our inquiry into 'hate crime' in Northern Ireland. As you know, we are trying to explore the reasons for the reported increase in crimes which is motivated by hatred within and between the communities, to examine the effectiveness of the measures which the Government are taking, and to see how effective our witnesses think the present laws are and what more might need to be done. The media in Northern Ireland recently reported several high profile racist attacks. What is your view about this? Is the problem becoming more serious or is it that more people are aware of the problem and are reporting racist attacks more? I say to you what I said to the previous group, we want to hear from all of you what you have to say, but please do not all feel you have to answer every question or we will be here until tomorrow. If you agree with what the previous speaker has said then just say so, do not repeat it. Who would like to start?

Mr Iweida: I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on behalf of my community, the Muslim Community in Northern Ireland. I have been living in Belfast for a number of years now and in the last seven to eight years there has been an increase in the number of racist attacks against people from ethnic minorities. We have not seen enough effort put in to dealing with this problem. The attacks which have happened in the last two years were definitely more aggressive than the attacks which happened before and that is very alarming and people are suffering because of that.

Q543 Chairman: Would you describe briefly what you mean by more aggressive?

Mr Iweida: Yes. Last year about ten Muslim families were forced out of their homes and that had never happened before.

Q544 Chairman: Where?

Mr Iweida: In Portadown and Craigavon and in some parts of Belfast as well. They were intimidated and they had to leave their houses. Members of our community received serious injuries, broken limbs, some of them were admitted to hospital and were in a coma and others had very serious medical conditions. I am afraid we have been having fatal incidents of this kind for a while.

Q545 Chairman: Who do you think were largely responsible for these? How would you describe the groups who are carrying out these attacks?

Mr Iweida: There are some groups from across the water coming here, like Combat 18 and some other right wing groups and they are probably partially responsible.

Q546 Chairman: So they came from Britain?

Mr Iweida: As far as I know they did not exist here before. They started establishing new branches here and recruiting people.

Q547 Chairman: Would anybody else like to talk about this?

Ms Tandon: I also believe that teenagers are carrying out attacks in the workplace. The young need to be taught about other cultures because some of them are carrying out the attacks on members of ethnic minority groups.

Ms Lo: We think the local paramilitaries might have been involved with sympathisers of Combat 18 and the British National Party. There was talk about fielding candidates for elections representing the British National Party here in Northern Ireland. We believe the local paramilitaries are involved in this, which is something new. Racism has always been here in Northern Ireland. I came here in the Seventies and I was kicked on the street by a group of youths after they called me all sorts of names. The troubles in Northern Ireland have always overshadowed the problem of racism and for a long time people here have denied that there is racism in Northern Ireland, saying there are so few ethnic minority people here, therefore there is no racism. The division between the two major communities has been pushed down the agenda. The media's reporting would always have been about sectarian issues and so racism has not been on the agenda or part of the media's coverage. I agree with Jamal that there has been an increase in the number of racist attacks on ethnic minority people here, but it has always been here. It has increased in conjunction with the increased number of ethnic minority people coming into the province after the ceasefire.

Dr Radford: I would like to enforce what all three speakers have said about the increase in 'hate crime'. There is a continuum between sectarianism and what is unacceptable within a sectarian context and unacceptable within a race or ethnicity and religious context. If we accept people abusing each other verbally because of their sectarianism or where they come from the same thing will be applied here. There is very clearly an increase in verbal abuse as communities become more visible. As they are given the capacity and their capacity develops to become representatives in public life so too does the increase in racism, Islamophobia and Judaiophobia.

Q548 Chairman: Has anybody got any thoughts on why the total number of racist incidents is falling in England and Wales and rising in Northern Ireland? Is there a particular reason for that that you could identify?

Ms Tandon: I feel that the education system here needs to change a little bit. The whole environment has to be taught that there are different people living in this society. It is the role of cultural diversity which is important and let us welcome it and let us work together. I think it comes from the education side from day one.

Ms Harvey: I think the Traveller community have experienced racism forever in Northern Ireland and it is education that is the key to changing that.

Dr Radford: And training.

Q549 Chairman: Do you think that in the Traveller community it is racist or do you think it is about their lifestyle and the effect they have on their temporary innateness?

Ms Harvey: The Traveller community was designated a racial group in 1997 and that was the turning point for work amongst Travellers and Travellers' development. It is important we recognise that Travellers have a separate and distinct culture, which includes being nomadic.

Q550 Chairman: Perhaps it was the nuisance factor of having Travellers near people rather than the fact that they were a group on their own.

Ms Harvey: Travellers have experienced complete exclusion in Northern Ireland. There is not one piece of Northern Ireland legislation before 1997 that positively addresses the needs of Travellers. So communities, like statutory agencies, perceive the Traveller community as a problem. You were allowed to say that Travellers were a nuisance or that Travellers could only park where they are allowed to park. They have no access to permanent sites to improve their community. They are always being perceived in a very negative sense. To be designated a racial group is the turning point and we can begin to look at the needs of people who live and work and economically survive in Northern Ireland.

Q551 Mr McGrady: The Commission for Racial Equality in England and Wales in their report indicated two problems which they have. One is getting people to report on racist crime and, secondly, an underreporting because of the way the complaint is handled, either a misunderstanding at the source that it is racist or a lack of evidential procedures that do not indicate that it is racist and such things as that. Are these problems the same in Northern Ireland? If they are, have you any suggestions as to how that might be addressed?

Ms Lo: Certainly we know there is very much underreporting to the police of racist incidents for various reasons. Yes, communication is a problem for the Chinese community, but there is a general lack of confidence in the police within the Chinese community. They feel there is no point reporting to the police because the police do not respond fast enough. After they have called the police, the police may take two hours to come down and then the incident is over. A lot of them do not bother reporting incidents. We feel there is a sense within the Chinese community that they are second‑class citizens and they will always be second‑class citizens here and that the police will never take them seriously. There have been a couple of incidents whereby Chinese people reported attacks by local people and the Chinese community ended up being prosecuted or being questioned seriously and were kind of blamed for retaliating. So there was a sense within the Chinese community for a while that the police would always be on the side of the local people rather than on the side of the Chinese people who were under attack. There is this general sense in the community for Chinese people that there is really no point in reporting crimes. I think the police need to double their effort in terms of creating better relationships with the Chinese community, in terms of responding quicker and in terms of meeting the Chinese community more frequently. We had a public meeting one time with the police and the people at the public meeting were giving out their grievances and two of the four police officers were very dismissive. That is not the way to deal with a community who already feel under threat. I think the police need to put in a lot of effort to improve communications with the Chinese community and show the Chinese community how they can lobby Parliament and make complaints about the things they are not happy about. We could create a mechanism whereby the Chinese community can report to a third party like ourselves if they do not want to report directly to the police.

Mr Iweida: There is no doubt about it, there is under-reporting. I agree that there is a lack of confidence. Our Muslim community feels the same way towards the police and because of that many people would not report incidents. Also, it is the bureaucracy, you have to go to the police station and report it even if it is verbal abuse; there is no easy way to report these things. For example, when I walk down a street sometimes I get abused verbally three times on the same day here in Belfast. I cannot go to the police and report these three times, there is no way, I have things to do. The number of abuses is increasing towards our Muslim community. After September 11 there was a clear increase. That makes it difficult for us to keep reporting. When we have reported these incidents in the past we did not feel it made any difference because nothing was done. We always try to convince people to report them to the police, but they say "What's the point?" Unless we build this confidence in the police and the problem is going to be tackled or the issue is solved I do not see any point in trying to convince the people. England and Wales are ahead of us because they had this problem before and they had more legislation and the education system was developed better there than here. What we need is to learn from them, not to start from the zero point here.

Dr Radford: We have had a different experience within the Jewish community of the PSNI. We have received a lot of support from them for initiatives that we have undertaken in Northern Ireland to try and be in a position to report incidents. Our incidents have been very different from those experienced by the Chinese community and the Muslim community and I think that should be acknowledged, but we have had a very different level of support too from this organisation. There is certainly still an unwillingness within our organisation to record some incidents and there are a variety of reasons for this, some of which are very much based on the fact that the community is a very small community, a voluntary community, it does not have the resources or the capacity within itself to do it, but it can address minor issues. There are also issues of victim status and survival status which have a very real and symbolic sense within the Jewish communities both here and throughout the world. Jews tend to see themselves as survivors rather than courting victim status. Small incidents tend not to be something which is recorded.

Ms Harvey: Traditionally the Traveller community's only contact with the police would have been with the police in an enforcement role, not in a support role. It would be very difficult for Travellers to access the services that are available to record crimes against them. I think this is a huge learning curve ahead for us. Now that things are changing, as support groups we have a role to play in that. Ethnic monitoring needs to be put in place and an understanding of other people's cultures needs to be recognised by statutory agencies and the police themselves need to step back from that enforcement role.

Ms Tandon: The Indian community have been a very settled community for a long time in Northern Ireland and it has got a very good reputation and has never suffered racial abuse. The new people who are arriving here through employment, through recruitment agencies and all that are suffering and they have reported it to PSNI and they have been very helpful to them, but again it depends on where they are living and in which area they go and report to the PSNI. Certain areas are ruled by paramilitaries and it is just not possible for the individuals to go and report to the PSNI because they cannot go into those areas themselves.

Q552 Mr McGrady: I must declare some interest in the response you are making vis-à-vis the police because I am a member of the Police Board as well, but I hear all that you say. A couple of months ago one of the local newspapers reported under a headline "Only eight prosecuted out of 453 incidents" and it was in fact an article by the police themselves who went on to say: "It's very difficult for the police because when a sinister attack happens we are relying on people in the community to come forward. At the moment they are not coming forward and that means there is nothing we can do unless there is forensic evidence." Do you find that members of the community in the vicinity of such incidents are not coming forward to assist you in pursuing these investigations?

Mr Iweida: The communities are afraid of the paramilitaries or the people who carry out these attacks. There is a culture of fear here. People are afraid to come forward because they will be victimised themselves. Even people of ethnic minorities do not report to the police because they are afraid of the consequences. When the police come to their house people will know that they have reported something to the police and they will be targeted more. The neighbours do not want to help because they are afraid. We know they know who it is but they cannot say because of the culture of fear they are living in.

Ms McKelvey: There are Filipinos who have reported 'hate crime', but they say the police are not helping that much. Some of the Filipino community are being attacked, they are throwing things at their windows, and it is mostly teenagers who are doing that. The police will just say they cannot do anything because they are still under age. It is useless them reporting it because there is not a lot of work being done about it.

Q553 Mr McGrady: Dr Radford, as I understand it the police have not recorded any single incident of anti-Semitism or attacks on the Jewish community. Can you give me some indication of why that is so? What is the nature of the hostility and is it getting worse or is it static?

Dr Radford: There are two questions there, one of which is that the Jewish community is not reporting crimes to date for a variety of reasons, one of which is resourcing. Up until the last two months there has been nobody who has taken on the role within the community of getting engaged with community development and that goes back to some of the comments earlier in the previous session about the lack of resourcing and support for minority communities. Also, there has been a difficulty with incidents within north Belfast, where the synagogue is based for example, because people are not always clear about whether a general act of vandalism on symbolic architecture and places of worship is in fact gauged at us because it is a Jewish community or just because it is close to the hospice where they are going the next day.

Q554 Mr Clarke: I would like to concentrate for a couple of moments on the nature of racist attacks which can be very different from one community to another. A racist attack can be political if there is somebody like the White Nationalist Party or the BNP trying to spread its filth around a particular area, or it can be fiscal if there is a group that is trying to intimidate a particular community in order to extort money from businesses. In the Chinese Welfare Association's submission it argues that racial crime has become more violent and sinister and there has been comment in the past about those crimes that are based on extorting money from local businesses. Do you think there is a paramilitary involvement? Can you separate out the racist acts from those that are being perpetrated by the xenophobes and those that are being perpetrated by the criminal fraternity who are just picking on the community because they can extort money?

Ms Lo: I think the protection money is really a general "trend". They are taking money from restaurants of all kinds. I do not think you can attribute that as being racist in a way because they take money from everybody in the street. Chinese restaurants pay money like everybody else, but then you have the other racist attacks which are meant to drive out people from a certain street, like in Donegal Road where the paramilitaries wanted to 'ethnic cleanse', ie to get all ethnic minority people out of the road, and that is racist.

Q555 Mr Clarke: Do you think there are links between the two, between the political wings of the far right party and the paramilitaries?

Ms Lo: Yes, we believe so.

Q556 Mr Clarke: When you talk about the nature of racist incidents there can be a number of different reasons. I would imagine Mr Iweida would say that the current world situation has probably led to more attacks on Muslim people in Northern Ireland and that would be the reason for race attacks. I am trying to get an idea of how much of this current rise in racial hatred and crimes connected to it is about circumstance and how much of it is deep-rooted. If I went across the table ‑ and this is an awful thing to say ‑ we could talk about the equality of suffering in terms of who is suffering most and why are you suffering as communities. Is it that some communities will always suffer more or is it just about taking it in turns depending on the world scene and what is happening within Northern Ireland?

Mr Iweida: I think the problem is a general one. There is a fear of others in Northern Ireland and this is a problem which leads to sectarianism, but there is no work done to tackle it and to suppress it. In Northern Ireland we need more active political leadership from the main political parties, church leaders and so on to try to educate people and make them more accepting of people from ethnic minorities. The fear of others is there and it has been there for a long time and sometimes it is because of circumstances, the media, certain articles here and there and if you have not tackled it and major political experts and churches and community leaders have not spoken against it, they have not tried to tackle it, that will increase and will get worse.

Ms Lo: A social attitude study published in 2001 showed that racist attitudes here are more significant than sectarian attitudes. In Northern Ireland we have gone through almost 40 years of sectarian strife and there is that sense of fear and worry about the other side. It seems to have transferred from not trusting your Catholic or Protestant neighbour to not trusting your ethnic minority neighbours. I certainly feel that in Northern Ireland we have not tackled this issue head on for the last two or three years. With all these incidents it is very much left to the ethnic minority organisations to deal with it, it has not been seen as a societal problem. We have not seen too many politicians speaking out to condemn it. We have not seen any concerted effort by OFMDFM with a coordinated campaign to say we need to do all these different things. Promoting ethnic minority people here adds so much diversity and richness to Northern Ireland.

Dr Radford: I think there is a huge amount of discrimination both within the education system and the health system in various ways that with very basic training and education, starting from the preschool level, will go some way to addressing this. This may be a long-term issue, but there are some short‑term initiatives that that will hit on and I think there needs to be concerted effort and support of government and designated people to enable the minority communities to deliver this and to disseminate the information that they already have.

Ms Lo: A report published by the Equality Commission called "A wake-up call" shows that very, very few organisations see the problem of racism as an issue. We have been very lacking in Northern Ireland in the voluntary sector in addressing anti‑racism issues, in delivering anti‑racist and equality practice and policies.

Q557 Reverend Smyth: What is your reaction to the recently introduced Criminal Justice (No.2) (Northern Ireland Order) which came into operation in September? Is it dealing with the issues that you are talking about?

Dr Radford: The law is a great floor. I think we need escalators and ceilings to aim at.

Q558 Chairman: Are you pleased that it has been introduced?

Dr Radford: I am pleased with any forward move in legislation.

Ms Lo: While we obviously welcomed this, when you look at the prosecution rate of the police in the last few years, the law will not help us unless people report it better and unless the police can use the law better. The law would not be of any benefit to people on the ground unless other mechanisms work to bring people into the court system.

Q559 Reverend Smyth: This is true in every aspect of law. We know that over the years there have been inter‑ethnic issues. A Chinese woman was found murdered once and immediately people thought this was part of the ethnic racism problem whereas in the end it was Chinese people who were brought to justice for it. What I am trying to say is that it is up to people to come forward and give the evidence. Beyond the introduction of legislation, what other practical things need to be done to address the problem of racist attacks? Who should take responsibility for these? For example, one of you made reference to promoting people in the ethnic community. In Belfast over the years people have been so promoted and there are some Chinese magistrates for the city. I want to know what can be done to improve the situation.

Dr Radford: North Belfast recently negotiated a North Belfast Minority Ethnic Forum and it was supported by various local communities working in the area with the statutory agencies. I think there needs to be more grass‑roots communities coming up from the community supported by the statutory agencies enabling this to move forward.

Mr Iweida: There are many things happening on this issue but they are scattered and repeated initiatives. Belfast City Council and a lot of others are working, but we keep meeting the same people and saying the same thing again and again. I do not know how we can develop a mechanism so we can deliver things. We have been talking for the last three or four years now about the same things and it is the same faces around the table every time. The people on the ground want delivery. One of the problems is the resources. The communities themselves do not have enough resources. For example, the Muslim community never had any funding from the Government or any department until three years ago and unfortunately this funding has been renewed only for one year and that means we have no stability because the employees we have cannot stay in a job for only one year at a time. We need to develop our own resources so these people can represent us and speak on behalf of us. I am sitting here as a volunteer, I am not employed by the Muslim community, but I am here because there is nobody else to come and speak here today. We need to build these communities, to build their capacity and to build their confidence and to make them trust themselves and have the self‑confidence to deliver and to enable them to promote their culture within the wider society. They can give ideas and some cultural awareness about their cultures. That would help to appease this problem and to solve this problem. We need to do something with the education system. We should include something about other cultures or religions and so on in schools. I would call on the main political parties to try to put something on their agenda. I know sectarianism is more important, but I see the two as linked and racism should come forward on the agenda of the main political parties and we should see it taken forward. I have not said the police do not cooperate with us, they do cooperate with us, but the problem is the delivery. Sometimes the police have different departments. Some departments are very cooperative with us. Again it is about policies, meetings and so on, but when it comes about on the ground we have a difficulty. There is a very short example I would like to give. The Belfast Islamic Centre received intimidating emails a few times from the same source of email and we informed the police every time. This threat came to a specific person in our community. They described him and his car and his number plate. He is a taxi driver. We informed the police many times and they have not taken any action. I asked if they could find this person and they said no. However, one night we received an email saying that by the end of the night this person would be killed. I phoned the police and I asked what they were going to do, if they were going to find this taxi driver to warn him and they said they would be unable to find him, that I should find him. I would not have been able to find him. If they need to do so they can find people within minutes. Then I said, "Look, if you do not do something about this I will phone the media and I will complain about you and I will make it a news story." Believe me, within one hour they found that person and they warned him and the next day they managed to find the person who was sending us the emails. Why did it take me to threaten them that I was going to phone the media and do something before they would do anything? All of this took about three months and I have all the records. I think this is very, very unacceptable.

Dr Radford: It is not just about mainstreaming issues of diversity within the curriculum, it is also about enabling people to have the right to their own cultural background, to their language of choice, of birth, of family and once we mainstream these issues within and across departments and sectors then we may start to address this. This is a long‑term initiative.

Ms Harvey: The mainstream communities, including all the political leaders, the church leaders in Northern Ireland, have always perceived Travellers to be in a sense outside the law, so it is very difficult to see what changes can come about with the New Criminal Justice Order. The practical change that could be put in place is that we could stop the unauthorized encampments draft that is going through now until the executive strategy is put into place and there are authorized sites where people can develop access to services, to schools and to health.

Ms Lo: The Chinese community is not generally seen as a nuisance by the wider community, but when we wanted to buy and renovate the building on Donegal Pass in south Belfast there was huge opposition to it. It is about racism, it is not wanting to share with ethnic minority people in the area. Again it was very much left to the Chinese Welfare Association to deal with it. We are thankful that Belfast City Council stepped in to offer us a site, but the politicians who were interviewed were saying we needed to understand the local people's views about their culture, about their identities and how that they were seeing this as a threat. That is excusing local communities. I have not really heard or seen many politicians or church leaders, voluntary organisations or public bodies coming out and condemning that outright and saying that it is outrageous, it is racist and we cannot allow it to go on, but politicians have been giving excuses for that local community. I do not want to demonize the whole community because it is a section of that community saying they do not want the Chinese centre, so much so now that we have abandoned the plan and we will go and get another site. We have spent £17,000 on developing our plans and almost a whole year of time in working up this proposal. We have the money already gathered together, we need to spend it and move somewhere else. The media was very much on our side.

Mr Iweida: Obviously this is not a new thing. It happened when our Portadown/Craigavon Muslim community applied to build a mosque and eventually they got the planning permission but they decided not to build it because they were afraid. We saw on the TV some politicians speaking publicly against the Muslims in that area and we have not seen one of the major parties taking action against that member of their party who was speaking about Muslims publicly on the TV. They have got the planning permission but they are not going to build the mosque there because they are terrified for the safety of their families.

Reverend Smyth: I have to put on record that David Trimble publicly rebuked the councillor in Portadown for the position he took.

Q560 Mr Beggs: The Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities stated that the basic problem was 'the persistent reluctance of the police to listen to victims, to treat such crimes as serious, to respond promptly or at all, and to investigate efficiently or at all'. Do individual racial groups concur with this assessment or have circumstances improved?

Dr Radford: I have put on record earlier our position, which is that that would not be the position of the Belfast Jewish Community in our experience.

Ms Harvey: I think I have also stated the difficulties experienced by the Traveller community with the police.

Q561 Mr Beggs: Do you report incidents to the police and, if not, why not?

Ms Lo: We do.

Ms Tandon: We do.

Q562 Chairman: Let us go along the line. Yes or no?

Ms McKelvey: Some members of the Filipino community do report and some do not. Those who are victims of racist attacks just go to work and then go home and that is it. They are afraid to go out and they are afraid to mix with other communities. Some say, "We're here but we're not from this country", they just seem to accept what is going to happen and try to keep a very low profile.

Q563 Chairman: You report incidents, do you not?

Ms Lo: We help the local communities to report, but we do detect that there is a sense of helplessness.

Mr Iweida: As an organisation we do report all the incidents. We have been attacked many times. As for members of our community, I think most of them choose not to report them because they think there is no point.

Q564 Mr Beggs: What more can the police do to improve relationships with each of your groups?

Ms Tandon: I think the police should be allowed to go into the areas where they cannot get their hands in at the minute because that is where we are suffering. The nursing staff living in certain areas have to live in those areas, but they cannot go and report to the police, they are just too scared because they are living in an area where the police are not allowed to go. The police should be playing an active role in going into all areas no matter where they are.

Q565 Mr Bailey: There is an ambiguity that is arising. First of all, you have reported that there is a sense of frustration and dissatisfaction within the Chinese community about the way that the police have handled complaints. In our earlier discussion the police were quoted from a press article as saying that people were not coming forward. How do you reconcile these two points of view? Do you think that is a legitimate point in relation to the Chinese and law enforcement?

Ms Lo: There needs to be some capacity building work done within the Chinese community. They need to build the confidence in people to come forward to make complaints about their neighbour instead of keeping their heads down thinking that it will go away, but the police need to do more. For example, not that long ago there was a case in Derry which the person involved told us about. We talked to the police and we arranged for the person to go to the police station to make a statement. When the person arrived apparently there was not even an interpreter available. The police need to get their act together if they know a Chinese person is being interviewed. We phoned ahead and said that this person could not speak English and they arranged a different time for the person to go up to the station. The police have their own interpreting service that we would not be involved in. We asked the person to go up to the station, but it was a waste of time for the person and the person said there was no point going again because there was not any interpreter there. The police need to double their efforts to try to facilitate people within the Chinese community and a lot of other ethnic minority communities. If one person coming out of the police station is saying there is no point going to the police that will go round the whole community and when the next incident happens people will say not to bother reporting it.

Q566 Mr Bailey: There does seem to be a communication problem here because the police may have made the totally wrong assumption that the person they were going to interview could speak English.

Ms Lo: We told them on the phone. When the person came to us, we phoned the police and said that the person did not speak English and there had been an incident. The policeman making the appointment should have known to engage an interpreter.

Q567 Mr Bailey: So there are problems in that respect and the police need to sharpen up their act. Your organisation and others need to build capacity within the Chinese community to be ready to come forward. Do you think the new legislation will help this process?

Ms Lo: Not really. In the long run the police may be able to increase their rate of prosecutions and successes in convicting people. We have another case of Simon Tang, a young man of 27 years old who was killed nearly ten years ago. No one has been arrested and no one has been prosecuted.

Q568 Chairman: That was not the question. Will the new legislation help? It will not help anything that happened ten years ago.

Ms Lo: It would help if the police sharpened up their act and brought more prosecutions, yes.

Q569 Mr Bailey: Do you not think there is a temptation within the community to find other means of protection within the community?

Ms Lo: People who pay protection money tend to go to the local boys when they have troubles instead of the police.

Q570 Mr Tynan: You have indicated this morning that there is no real Government initiative regarding coordinated action by the Government. What are your views on the Race Equality Strategy currently being developed by the Government in conjunction with the Race Forum?

Ms Lo: We have been very disappointed with the slowness of the Race Equality Strategy. It must have been about three years ago that was first talked about and worked on and today we are still in the final draft of that strategy. It should take less than three years to have a piece of strategy let alone action plans and resources tied in and timescales tied onto it.

Q571 Mr Tynan: I understand that, according to the statistics we have, the Government intends to publish it either in October or November of this year, so we are holding our breath for that at the present time and it will be very interesting. How effective is the Race Forum in tackling issues of importance for ethnic minorities?

Ms Lo: It has been very slow going; meetings have been postponed and postponed and postponed. They really need to have an emphasis in getting it off the ground, in coordinating it and in putting some energy into it. Ethnic minorities are completely fed up with it. We want to see something happening. We want to see something on the ground. I am a member of staff of the Chinese Welfare Association and a representative of the Chinese community. I go to those meetings and I just hear talk and talk of the same thing over and over again. We want to see something new so that I can go back and report to my organisation and, more than that, report to the Chinese community what is being done, how it is going to affect them positively. At the moment people are feeling very vulnerable and they are getting very angry as well. They look different, they cannot protect themselves and they are easy targets and they are feeling very vulnerable.

Q572 Mr Tynan: So the Race Forum is not tackling the issues as far as you are concerned?

Dr Radford: I think there are clearly administrative and operational difficulties around the forum and one of those might be the fact that it appears to be top heavy with statutory agencies and representatives from voluntary groups that do not necessarily come from minority ethnic minorities themselves. A number of representatives here today have observer status but not full status beyond that, so I think there are difficulties around that that need to be addressed with some urgency before it can have some meaningfulness.

Q573 Mr Tynan: Are there any success stories coming from this forum?

Dr Radford: Yes. Our own organisation has recently been granted a community development worker, which is a new post and a very welcome post for us and part of that work is about connecting networks with other minority communities and that is a very important role that the Jewish community is now able to deliver. One of the initiatives that this has enabled us to do is to develop a teacher training resource which is being used by the major teacher training colleges here and I think this is a real acknowledgment of what the minority community can do here to support this work. This is a first step and a very efficient one but it needs sustainability and continuation.

Q574 Mr Tynan: So it has done some good but not enough good at the present time?

Dr Radford: It is a lever.

Q575 Mr Tynan: Are the Filipinos, Indian and Travel communities actively involved in the Government's Race Forum?

Ms Harvey: We welcome that and we are active participants in that, as are a number of groups around the country. We would be more delighted if the decision‑makers decided to attend those meetings and timetabled action for the future. It appears to have been quite slow so far.

Ms Tandon: The Indian community as well has been helped by the Race Forum. Without them we would not have been developing what we have been developing. They have been very helpful. The people who are the big executives in all those boards should be sitting down and talking to us as well and not just the representatives.

Q576 Mr Tynan: So the Race Forum is a good idea but you do not think it is working effectively at the present time and really what you need to do is to push that forward so that you are in a position where you are getting a response from them, is that not really what you are saying?

Ms Lo: My worry is that the strategy has been on the table for so long and all the government departments who are part of it are looking to it and saying they have not looked into our own policies and they have not set up action plans because they are all looking towards a strategy. The slowness of it in many ways is stopping people from doing something because they are saying there is going to be a big strategy and all the government departments can say is that they are looking towards that to give them a lead.

Q577 Mr Tynan: What else could be done in order to make sure that Government and other agencies take the question of racist violence seriously?

Dr Radford: A more coherent approach across the sectors and departments which looks at addressing issues of ethnic diversity, multiculturalism and racism, at the core of the work and the projects that are coming out of different departments and ensuring that the minority communities and those communities who are represented under section 75 and the 1998 Act are crucial to the development of those processes. This does not mean action plans and box ticking. I think there is a huge amount of consultation going on which is very welcome by the minority community but I think we should feed back into that. Methods of accountability to the community need to be well developed and well resourced.

Mr Iweida: I agree with this point very much. They consult us on many things, we receive all the consultation documents, but we do not have the human resources to deal with them. Unless there is some sort of resourcing for these communities they will not be able to address these problems and develop themselves. The resourcing issue is very important especially for a community like this. We cannot access a lot of funding, such as Lottery funding, for religious reasons, we can only rely on local government or government funding.

Ms Lo: We need to be resourcing statutory bodies as well. We know that OFMDFM has a race unit and it is very helpful, but there are not enough staff there to push. You need people at the top to push the strategy and to push for action. Also, the Equality Commission and the Human Rights Commission need to push race equality items very much higher on the agenda. The Equality Commission used to have five people in their race development unit, but it is now down to 1.5 and the half is an administrator. That is a disgrace when racism is on the rise.

Q578 Mr Hepburn: Do you think the Government is consulting your individual communities adequately when they are developing policy and, if not, are there any ways that can be improved?

Dr Radford: I would like to go back to the fact that we need appropriate methods of consultation to be developed and supported, I think it is crucial that is done. Issues of racism de facto include Islamophobia and Judaeophobia.

Ms Harvey: The Traveller community was not consulted at all and yet they are most affected by it.

Ms Tandon: The Indian community has been consulted and has given their input.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for coming.