Examination of Witnesses (Questions 560
- 579)
MONDAY 25 OCTOBER 2004
MR JAMAL
IWEIDA, MS
ANNA LO,
MS EVA
MCKELVEY,
DR KATY
RADFORD, MS
VIVIAN HARVEY
AND MS
NISHA TANDON
Q560 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.
Q561 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.
Q562 Mr Beggs: Do you report incidents
to the police and, if not, why not?
Ms Lo: We do.
Ms Tandon: We do.
Q563 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.
Q564 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.
Q565 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.
Q566 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.
Q567 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.
Q568 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 10 years
ago. No one has been arrested and no one has been prosecuted.
Q569 Chairman: That was not the question.
Will the new legislation help? It will not help anything that
happened 10 years ago.
Ms Lo: It would help if the police
sharpened up their act and brought more prosecutions, yes.
Q570 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.
Q571 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.
Q572 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.
Q573 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.
Q574 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.
Q575 Mr Tynan: So it has done some
good but not enough good at the present time?
Dr Radford: It is a lever.
Q576 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.
Q577 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.
Q578 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.
Q579 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.
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