Any party which plays the race card to secure and win votes unfortunately forgets that providing a platform and oxygen to right wing voters automatically will disturb the values of the society in which everyone should be equal regardless of the colour of their skin, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or language.
As nearly all the political parties focus on the immigration issue it has a bearing on undermining the issue of homosexuality in our society.
The results can be seen as number of racist and homophobic incidents in London are showing a “disturbing” rise over the past four years. Reports of racist attacks rose by 7 per cent and homophobic incidents soared by 28 per cent over this period.
Who should responsible for the rise of hate crimes? As these figures are dramatically higher should the politicians not be taking any action?
Four years ago, there were 9,617 racist and 1,208 homophobic reported cases. The rise of in anti-gay attacks should be a signal that something is seriously going wrong on the streets of London. Last month, a former public schoolgirl was jailed for seven years for the gay-hate killing of a civil servant, Ian Bayham, in Trafalgar Square, who was travelling on a bus when he was attacked.
The chief executive of charity Stonewall Ben Summerskill said: “We’re deeply concerned that hate crime continues to overshadow the lives of so many gay Londoners. We hope the Mayor (of London) will commit to becoming personally involved in tackling this blight. The Met (police) has taken huge steps forward but there’s still too little evidence of real commitment from the very top.”
I agree with Ben Summerkill as the real commitment must come from the very top. If the people who are at the very top can change things in the society, they still fail to understand and act on the connection of hate crime towards anyone ‘who is not one of us’, then we know in which direction this is going to take us.
The connection of rightwing politics and hate crime should never be forgotten. The more a society moves to the right of the political spectrum the more there will be rise in racist and homophobic attacks.
There is no room for compliancy and we must hold those with power and responsibility to a deal with these evils in our society.
Copyright Semra Eren Nijhar – All rights reserved
Semra Eren-Nijhar 