Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Racism and the Law. posted by Richard Seymour
When Tony Martin, a white farmer in Norfolk with racist views about gypsies, shot dead a gypsy burglar who was fleeing from his home, the right-wing media was afire with homocidal rage. Radio stations carried calls from lunatics saying "I think they bloody well should be shot! And castrated! I'd have done it twice!" The Sun mounted a vile campaign in defense of Martin and the right to shoot burglars. Newspaper columnists constructed elaborate, but ill-informed defenses of Mr Martin, describing him as 'eccentric' and so forth.My view about this has always been simple: Martin is a premeditated murderer who has expressed no remorse, a vile racist and a bit of a nutter to boot. I have no sympathy for him. If he had simply been reacting to a frightening situation, and had subsequently expressed remorse, I would probably feel differently about it. But my thumb is plainly not on the pulse of 'Middle England' or whatever they're calling it today. The punitive consensus among country-house dwellers is even more extreme than the pentateuche: not so much 'eye for an eye' as 'a life for a video recorder'.
By way of contrast , when Mr Farouq Kamara of Stubbington, a small village outside Portsmouth, tried to defend his family from racist thugs, he was arrested and convicted of 'making threats to kill'. It was June 2004 when his house was surrounded by 13 racist youths, who hurled bottles at the house and yelled Islamophobic slogans. Farouq was accused of threatening the youths with a baseball bat, charges which were later dropped, and arrested in front of the youths who were still yelling abuse. Two days later, he made a desperate call to the Commission for Racial Equality, threatening to kill himself and his tormentors. He was arrested for making threats to kill. In March of this year, his wife Amina and two sons were racially abused and threatened outside a takeaway. Amina called her husband, who pulled on his pyjamas and rushed out of his house - to find his son with a head-wound. His sons had previously had bones broken in the course of racist attacks, while his wife had suffered persistent verbal abuse. Later that day, Farouq was arrested, accused of threats to kill (again) and possession of an unlicensed firearm - all of these charges he denies.
The family have tried to move house, but the options supplied by the council and the housing society were rejected because it would have only placed "a few yards" between themselves and any racist thugs. Despite the support of neighbours who have testified to the racist abuse they have received, the family have had to turn over the keys to their house, and have now fled to Manchester - they are homeless, and the wife and children sleep in a temporary hostel. Farouq was served with 100 hours of community service for the charges, to which his perfectly reasonable response was: "A community service means I’m now going to have to serve the very same community that has been persecuting me."
So, if for some people it's okay to murder a burglar as he flees from your home, why does a Muslim family find itself subject to false charges, arrest and eventual homelessness for merely issuing the threat to defend itself? Where is the legion of petty, criminal-minded would-be middle class burglar assassins when it comes to defending something so simple as one's right to life without fear of harrassment? Why no campaign from The Sun and like-minded papers? I suppose we all know the answer to that.
Thanks to Dave for passing this story to me.