The British National Party reports on its campaign against the conversion of a former pub, which was once used as the setting for the BBC TV series Byker Grove, into an Islamic school and cultural centre.
The fascists say they intend to distribute “thousands” of their “Say NO to ‘Burka Grove’” leaflets to local residents. They have also set up a Help The BNP Stop ‘Burka Grove’ Facebook page.
A week ago a pig’s head was skewered on the railings outside the building.
Five men charged with public order offences following an English Defence League (EDL) protest in Leicester have pleaded not guilty. Lee Whitby, 27, from Stoke-on-Trent; Mark Turnbull, 38, from Gateshead and Scott Kerbin, 30, from Abergele, Wales, appeared before Leicester magistrates. Mark Bircham, 23, from Wigston, Leicestershire and Jake Stewart, 21, from Derby, also deny the charges. All were banned from EDL protests as part of their bail conditions.
The men were charged following protests held by the EDL and Unite Against Facism (UAF) on 9 October in Leicester city centre. The five are charged with using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. Mr Bircham was also charged with assaulting a police officer and Mr Kerbin with having an offensive weapon. Mr Turnbull is further charged with resisting arrest and Mr Whitby with using threatening words or behaviour in a religiously aggravated manner.
Mr Whitby will return to court later in November while the other four men have been bailed to return to Leicester in January.
Five men charged with public order offences following an English Defence League (EDL) protest in Leicester have pleaded not guilty. Lee Whitby, 27, from Stoke-on-Trent; Mark Turnbull, 38, from Gateshead and Scott Kerbin, 30, from Abergele, Wales, appeared before Leicester magistrates. Mark Bircham, 23, from Wigston, Leicestershire and Jake Stewart, 21, from Derby, also deny the charges. All were banned from EDL protests as part of their bail conditions.
Four people were arrested after far-right campaigners stormed a meeting where former MP George Galloway was speaking.
Protesters, believed to be members of the English Defence League, burst into Oldham’s Pakistani Community Centre in Glodwick. The group hurled abuse at Mr Galloway and members of the audience at the Respect Party public meeting. Punches were thrown and the police were called. Officers arrested four protesters on suspicion of affray.
It is understood that members of Respect, who arranged the gathering, had earlier made police aware of the event after a similar gathering in Wythenshawe was disrupted by EDL protesters in the summer.
Former Christian Democrat party chairman and cabinet minister Bert de Vries has confirmed he has resigned his party membership. Speaking on public radio, he said he decided to leave the party because of its “move to the right”.
Bert de Vries was one of the prominent Christian Democrats who spoke out against the minority coalition with the conservative VVD and its reliance on parliamentary support from Geert Wilders’ anti-Islamic Freedom Party.
He was quoted at the time as saying: “It was an extremely nasty surprise to discover that my party finds it acceptable to work with a party that does not recognize one of the world’s major faiths as a religion.”
Staff at an Indian restaurant in Bridgwater believe they are being targeted on religious and racist grounds following a spate of attacks.
This week a man was convicted for religiously aggravated criminal damage and provocation of violence at the Spice Club in Eastover. But there have been further reports of an assault on a waiter, racial abuse and criminal damage. Waiter Mehbub Kamali, 19, who claims he was punched on one occasion, told the Mercury: “I have been attacked for no other reason than the colour of my skin.”
Last Tuesday, Sedgemoor Magistrates heard how Ashley Wilson [pictured], 24, smashed a glass pane at the restaurant and threatened to cut waiters’ faces because they served Halal meat. The court heard he asked Mr Kamali and Sultan Ahmet “Are you Muslim?” When they said yes, he said “I’m going to cut your face” and that it was “because I’m EDL [English Defence League].”
Mr Kamali said: “It’s happening again and again and it’s terrifying. I wonder what’s next?”
Wilson, of Claremont Grove, admitted the attack on September 26 and was ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work and to pay £165 compensation and £85 costs. In mitigation, Crispin Hayllar said he had drunk too much and acted out of character.
Police confirmed this week that a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage for an attack on the restaurant on November 3, and have been released on bail.
The anti-racism organisations which pressed the courts last year to take legal action against Geert Wilders for discrimination are to go to court again in an effort to have new prosecutors appointed to try the case.
Last year, Amsterdam appeal court told the public prosecution department it should take legal action against Wilders, despite the department’s reluctance to do so. But during the actual trial, which was abandoned last month, the two prosecutors called for the MP to be found not guilty on all charges.
The case was suspended after a special panel ruled a number of incidents involving the judges could give rise to the impression the court is biased. It is not yet clear when the case will be resumed or when the call for new prosecutors will be heard.
Dozens of far-right activists and local residents threw eggs and taunted hundreds of Muslim immigrants as they gathered to pray in a central square for Eid al-Adha surrounded by a protective cordon of riot police.
Greece, which has become the main immigrant gateway to the European Union, has a growing Muslim community and tensions between locals and incomers have run high in some Athens areas such as Attiki square, the scene of Tuesday’s incident.
Athens’ Muslim community is without an official mosque and prayers are usually held at cultural centers or community halls or private apartments around the city. The Muslim community in Greece is estimated at about 1 million, in a country where most people are Greek Orthodox Christians.
While the Muslims prayed, some locals shouted obscenities from their balconies and waved Greek flags. Leaflets that depicted pigs – an animal Muslims consider unclean – were scattered across the square.
“There is a (unofficial) mosque near here but we’re afraid to go there,” said a 30-year old migrant from Bangladesh, who gave his name as Shamasul. “Sometimes Greeks in the neighborhood threaten to kill us.”
Margarita Vassilatou, 56, who has lived in the square for more than 35 years said she wanted to leave as a result of the immigrants: “This is not a life … We are afraid of them. Many of them are criminals, they carry knifes and deal drugs.”
In another, more central square in front of Athens university, about 2,000 Muslim men and women prayed peacefully in front of the neo-classical university and ancient Greek statues.
In the past, moves to build a mosque in the capital have been met with opposition from local residents and some priests of the Greek orthodox church. However, the current archbishop supports the construction of a mosque and the socialist government has set aside a site close to the city center, although building has not yet begun.
The only mosques in Greece are in the northeastern region of Xanthi near the Turkish border, home to a large Muslim minority.
A politician in Germany’s main centre-left party has sparked outcry within his Social Democrats (SPD) by coming to the defence of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), who have been compared to the Nazis.
Hans Pueschel, a longstanding SPD mayor of Krauschwitz, a village of some 560 people in eastern Germany, published a letter in defence of the NPD after attending one of their rallies and said he agreed with much of what they said.
Fears have arisen that Germany could see the rise of an extreme right party since SPD politician and ex-central banker Thilo Sarrazin became a bestselling author and earned widespread backing for a slew of remarks about Muslim immigrants.
Pueschel said that like Sarrazin, the NPD were addressing issues which had been ignored for too long in Germany, arguing that the state was doing too much to help immigrant families who refused to integrate and failing to look after its own people.
“I want them to get into parliament so that the parties in the centre get a fire lit under their backsides. Otherwise nothing will get done,” Pueschel told Reuters, looking ahead to a state vote in his home state of Saxony-Anhalt next year.
Katrin Budde, head of the SPD in Saxony-Anhalt, where the party rules in coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), said Pueschel’s actions were helping to make neo-Nazi views acceptable in Germany. “We saw where all that led in the Weimar Republic,” she told MDR radio, referring to the period before the Nazis took power.
Pueschel, who is head of his local church council, said he spent 1½ hours at an NPD rally earlier this month, and found much to agree with in the speeches they heard. “I barely encountered one sentence that I couldn’t have signed up to myself,” he wrote in an open letter which a local newspaper refused to publish and is now on the NPD’s website.
“I don’t think Sarrazin has had a negative impact on support for the SPD, more likely a positive one. And it’s the same here. I stand by what I said,” he said.
Police say they will investigate the protests which took place outside a Portsmouth mosque on Saturday.
Scores of demonstrators gathered outside Portsmouth’s Jami Mosque. They were protesting after a small group of Muslims – not from the city – burned poppies in London during the two minutes’ silence on Armistice Day.
The protest, led by former soldier David Tallard, congregated outside the mosque at midday and numbered about 40. It broke for Pompey’s home game against Doncaster, and gathered again shortly after 5pm this time with about 100 taking part.
Peace protesters who had heard about the protest also gathered outside the mosque. Shouting between the two groups then ensued with firecrackers, an egg and a golf ball being thrown into the peace campaigners.
A 6ft poppy had also been graffitied on the mosque the day before.