Key leaders from the coalition of faith based organisations, trade unions, NGOs and corporate South Africa marched in 2015, speaking out against xenophobia during a peoples march in Newtown. Courtesy: GCIS

By Steven Gordon
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Sep 9 2019 (IPS)

Mobs have attacked foreign-owned businesses on the streets of at least three South African cities in recent days. This has caused outrage across Africa. There have even been retaliatory attacks. The South African government, under pressure to protect her large international migrant community, quickly defused the attacks.

Such attacks are not new. For more than two decades, this type of crime has bedeviled the country. There is growing frustration that so little has been done to stop it.

To combat anti-immigrant hate crime, we need to understand its drivers. Scholars at the Human Sciences Research Council have recently made new discoveries about the drivers of anti-immigrant hate crime in South Africa.

We found that a significant share of the general population hold anti-immigrant views and blame foreign nationals for many of the socio-economic challenges facing South African society. Yet there is little empirical evidence that immigrants are driving problems like crime or unemployment.

But beliefs about the role played by foreign nationals in the country clearly influence how people think about anti-immigrant hate crime. Anti-immigrant statements by politicians also feed into the problem.

Tracking anti-immigrant hate crime

Data from the South African Social Attitudes Survey, conducted annually since 2003, was used. The survey series consists of nationally representative, repeated cross-sectional surveys. It is designed as a time series and is increasingly providing a unique, long-term account of the speed and direction of change of public participation in anti-immigrant behaviour in contemporary South Africa.

Using this data, researchers have found that anti-immigrant hate crime is more widespread than previously thought.

Beginning in 2015, the following item was added in the survey questionnaire:

Have you taken part in violent action to prevent immigrants from living or working in your neighbourhood?

People may be disinclined to disclose this type of potentially incriminating information during face-to-face interviews. But community research suggests that the stigma attached to participation in xenophobic activities may not be as great as we may imagine. Still, the reader should be aware of this possible under-reporting of anti-immigrant behaviour when reviewing the survey’s results.

A minority of the South African adult population reported that they had participated in this form of anti-immigrant aggression. The share of the general public who admitted engaging in violence fluctuated within a very narrow band over the period 2015-2018. This shows the willingness of survey participants to respond to this question varies by only a small margin between the two periods. It also suggests a linear relationship between behavioural intention and attitudes.

The survey results demonstrate the ugly reality of violent anti-immigrant hate crime in South Africa. Although this is an important and dangerous type of prejudice, such crime is not the only form that xenophobia may take. Other forms of peaceful anti-immigrant discrimination are also evident in South African society.

Research has shown that more peaceful forms of anti-immigrant activities are often the first step in a process of escalation that leads to xenophobic violence. Past participation in peaceful anti-immigrant activity (such as demonstrations) was found to be a major determinant of this type of violence.

For this reason, we suggest in our study,

policymakers should consider non-violent anti-immigrant activities as early warning signs of forthcoming anti-immigrant hate crime.

Conclusion

One of the most troubling findings to have emerged concerned possible participation in anti-immigrant aggression among those who had not taken part before. More than one in ten adults living in South Africa reported in the 2018 survey that they had not taken part in violent action against foreign nationals – but would be prepared to do so.

This finding is quite disturbing given that there may be under-reporting of the propensity for violent action. Anti-immigrant stereotypes were shown to be a robust driver of this kind of behavioural intention. This suggests that anti-immigrant attitudes could have a mobilising effect, spurring individuals towards acts of violent xenophobia.

The results of this study show that millions of ordinary South Africans are prepared to engage in anti-immigrant behaviour. So it is vital that the resources dedicated to combating xenophobia be equal to the size of the problem.

The South African government has a national action plan to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The progressive measures put forward in the plan include immigrant integration, better law enforcement, civic education and increased immigrant access to constitutionally entitled rights.

Recent research suggests that many of these measures have a degree of public support. The plan was approved in March this year. If it’s to work, it requires adequate resources and support from all sectors of South African society.

Instead of focusing on short-term solutions civil society, foreign governments and the general public must work with the state to progressively implement this plan.

Steven Gordon is a senior research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Excerpt:

Kenyan LGBT rights supporters protest Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law. Credit: Dai Kurokawa/EPA

By Joel Jaeger
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 9 2014 (IPS)

Eighteen-year-old Gift Makau enjoyed playing and refereeing football games in her neighbourhood in the North West Province of South Africa. She had come out to her parents as a lesbian and had never been heckled by her community, according to her cousin.

On Aug. 15 she was found by her mother in a back alley, where she had been raped, tortured and killed.“Homophobia becomes both a ruse and a distraction from other real substantive issues, whether those are economic or political.” -- HRW's Graeme Reid

Shehnilla Mohamed, Africa director for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGHLRC), said that Gift’s murder was part of a disturbing trend in which gender-nonconforming individuals are targeted for so-called corrective rape.

“Corrective rape is really the attempt of the society to try to punish the person for acting outside the norm,” Mohamed said.

In the past 10 years in South Africa, 31 lesbians have been reported killed as the result of corrective rape, she said.  A charity called Luleki Sizwe estimates that 10 lesbians are raped or gang raped a week in Cape Town alone.

Transgender, gay or effeminate men are also the subject of corrective rape, but they are less likely to be murdered and are less likely to report it.

If this is happening in South Africa, the only mainland African country to allow legal same-sex marriage, what is it like to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) elsewhere on the continent?

“The type of brutality that you see happening to lesbians and to homosexuals in parts of Africa is just beyond comprehension,” Mohamed told IPS. “It’s like your worst horror movie, and even worse than that.”

More than two-thirds of African countries have laws criminalising consensual same-sex acts, according to IGLHRC.

“Overall what we’ve seen is a fairly bleak picture that’s emerging,” said Graeme Reid, director of the LGBT Program at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Africa is seeing “an intensification of the political use of homophobia,” he said.

Nigeria and Uganda made headlines in early 2014 when they signed anti-homosexuality bills that handed out long prison sentences for being homosexual or for refusing to turn in a known homosexual.

On Aug. 1, Uganda’s law was declared unconstitutional on procedural grounds by its supreme court, but Shehnilla Mohamed expects that it will be back on the table again once international attention shifts away.

Long-time African leaders who wish to extend their stay in office often try to whip up anti-homosexuality sentiment.

“Homophobia becomes both a ruse and a distraction from other real substantive issues, whether those are economic or political,” Graeme Reid said.

Chalwe Mwansa, a Zambian activist and IGHLRC fellow, told IPS that in his country, politicians equate cases of pedophilia and incest with homosexuality, fabricating sensational stories to inflame the public. This strategy diverts attention away from problems with unemployment, poverty, health and education.

Some leaders also claim that homosexuality is an un-African, Western imposition. Mohamed believes it is the exact opposite.

Homosexuality “existed in a lot of the African cultures and a lot of the African traditions,” she told IPS. “It was quite an accepted pattern.”

Same-sex relationships did not begin to develop a negative connotation until after colonisation brought Western religion, she said.

In an environment of antipathy, LGBT individuals have few places to turn to for help. The police station is often not a sanctuary for those who have been raped.

Mohamed recently spoke to a transgender man in South Africa who was accosted in the lobby of his block of apartments by a group of men who thought he was a woman. When they found out he was a man they raped and “beat him so badly that he was totally unrecognisable,” she said.

The man ended up contracting HIV/AIDS.

In South Africa, after being raped, a person is supposed to report it to the police and receive a free post-exposure prophylaxis within 72 hours to minimise the risk of transmission. However, this man was too afraid to go into the station, knowing that the police would most likely feel that he had deserved it.

The problem is even worse in countries like Nigeria that have criminalised homosexuality. According to Michael Ighodaro, a fellow at IGLHRC from Nigeria, after its anti-homosexuality bill was passed in January, 90 percent of gay men who were on medications stopped going to clinics to receive them, out of fear that they would be arrested.

Even at home, LGBT individuals in Africa face an uphill struggle. Anti-homosexuality laws do have a current of support throughout society. LGBT people often fear ostracisation by their families, so hide their sexual or gender identity.

The increased prominence of LGBT issues in national debates in Africa in the past decade has inspired a bit of a backlash.

Njeri Gateru, a legal officer at the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission of Kenya, says that Kenya lies in a tricky balance. Society does not actively persecute LGBT individuals if they outwardly conform to sexual and gender norms, but “problems would arise if people marched in the streets or there was an article in the press.”

“We cannot continue to live in a balance where we are muzzled and we are comfortable being muzzled,” Gateru said at a HRW event in New York.

Religion plays a significant role in the lack of acceptance of gender non-conforming groups in Africa.

IGLHRC’s Mohamed said that even “people with master’s degrees, who are highly educated, who work in white collar jobs will say ‘God does not like this.’”

“I think pointing out that LGBTI people are human beings, are God’s creation just like everybody else is really something that we’ll keep on pushing,” she said.

According to Gateru, even when churches open their doors to LGBT groups, they sometimes do it for the wrong reasons.

A year or so ago, a group of Kenyan evangelical leaders announced that they were going to stop turning LGBT individuals away from churches because, in their words, ‘Jesus came for the sinners, not the righteous.’

The churches are “welcoming you to change you or to pray for you so you can change, which is really not what we want,” said Gateru. “But I think it’s a very tiny step.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has repeatedly and consistently criticised discrimination against LGBT groups and condemned new anti-homosexuality laws.

Activist groups welcome the support of prominent religious leaders such as Tutu, and are planning a conference in February to bring together pastors, imams and rabbis to discuss LGBT issues and religion in Africa.

In general, LGBT activist organisations have their work cut out for them.

LGBT advocacy groups “most of the time are working undercover, are working underground, or if they are registered and are working as an NGO, are constantly being harassed by the authorities or by society,” Mohamed said.

IGLHRC was founded in 1990, and helps local LGBT advocacy groups around the world fight for their rights through grant making and work on the ground.

“What we really need is to mainstream homosexual rights, LGBTI rights into the basic human rights discourse,” said Mohamed.

During August’s U.S.-Africa summit in Washington, IGLHRC urged the U.S. to hold African leaders to account.

Depending on the country, the U.S. does have an ability to advance human rights through external pressure. Mohamed speculated that the striking down of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill just days before the summit was a public relations stunt by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, since he wanted a warm reception by the White House.

Nigeria, the other country to introduce a new law in 2014, is more difficult to influence than Uganda, according to Michael Ighodaro. Because of its oil wealth, the Nigerian government would not care if the United States were to pull funding.

The U.S.-African summit, since it was focused on business, offered an opportunity for LGBT advocacy groups to point out the economic costs of sidelining an entire sector of the population.

Mohamed said that LGBT individuals are often “too scared to apply for certain jobs because of how they would be treated. If they did apply they probably would never get the jobs because of the stigmas attached.”

Despite the difficult journey to come, supporters of LGBT rights in Africa can look back to see that some progress has been made.

HRW’s Reid said that the LGBT movement was practically invisible in Africa just 20 years ago.

“In a sense this very vocal reaction against LGBT visibility can also be seen as a measure of the strength and growth of a movement over the last two decades,” he said.

Things may get a little tougher before they get better, Njeri Gateru told IPS, but “history is on our side.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at joelmjaeger@gmail.com

The 19-year-old Azerbaijani man claims he awoke one morning in mid-August to the sound and feel of gasoline splashing on his body and his mother angrily screaming. Through a sleepy haze, he saw her burning a piece of paper. Suddenly, he alleged, his mother’s intentions became clear; he was about to be burned to death for being homosexual.

The story, recounted to EurasiaNet.org by the man, who calls himself Malik to protect his identity, forms part of a disturbing pattern of abuse and mistreatment of LGBT individuals in this Caspian-Sea country. For now, the government doesn’t appear interested in trying to address the issue — even though the country currently chairs the Committee of Ministers of Europe’s foremost human-rights body, the Council of Europe.Fifty-five-year-old Babi Badalov, an openly gay artist, left Azerbaijan for the United Kingdom eight years ago after his brother threatened to kill him for being homosexual.

Unlike in many Muslim societies, Azerbaijani law does not prohibit homosexuality, bisexuality or transgenderism. However, the level of disapproval that exists in this tightly knit society is high, and that places a heavy burden on LGBT Azerbaijanis, some say.

In Malik’s case, he claims his sister prevented his mother from setting him aflame. He alleges, though, that his mother scratched him to the point of drawing blood. Still in shock and physical pain from the experience, Malik says he lives now at a friend’s place. He claims his mother knew of his homosexuality, though “never admitted that.”

“When she got news about me attending an LGBT seminar in Baku, which was a public event, she realised it is impossible to deny the fact that I am homosexual,” he said. “That was unbearable for her.”

In Azerbaijan’s family-centric culture, disapproval from relatives can often hit hardest. “Family is the first fear of LGBT people,” according to Javid Atilla Nebiyev, director of Nefes LGBT, one of a handful of non-governmental organisations in Baku focusing on LGBT issues. “That is the first, small community where LGBT people experience trouble.”

Fifty-five-year-old Babi Badalov, an openly gay artist, left Azerbaijan for the United Kingdom eight years ago after his brother threatened to kill him for being homosexual. He blames such attitudes on the country’s 71-year Soviet history, when LGBT issues were never addressed.

“It was taboo,” said Badalov, who now lives in France. “People did not even know that there were non-traditional sexual orientations and genders.”

While now Azerbaijanis “have the freedom to know,” he continued, the Soviet past continues to influence present opinions. “Except for some tolerant circles in the capital, Baku, [a non-heterosexual identity] is seen as something extremely abnormal, extremely disgusting.”

Consequently, “for his own safety,” a gay man “constantly” has to think about “what to wear so that he does not look different,” or otherwise attract attention, he claimed. Many Azerbaijanis often presume that men who wear an earring or unusually colourful clothing are homosexual.

Defying such notions, Badalov said he opted for an earring.

One 22-year-old transsexual Azerbaijani can identify with those difficulties. Although born a woman, Leyla, who asked to be identified only by her first name, dresses in men’s clothes and considers herself male. She claims that her family sometimes hides her clothing, keeps her locked indoors and threatens her with death if she does not dress “like a woman.”

A recent university graduate with a degree in education, Leyla says that she nonetheless dresses as a man when she applies for teaching positions. She did not detail how she distinguishes between male and female clothing.

“At job interviews, they expect me to show up as a woman, but instead they see a woman dressed like a man,” she claimed. “I do not know what to answer when they ask why I dress like a man. I am turned down [for jobs] mostly because of that appearance.”

Azerbaijani legislation contains no protections against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, noted activist Nebiyev. He alleged that, as a result, some LGBT Azerbaijanis turn to jobs as “sex workers to earn their living.”

The topic generally is not one for any form of public discussion, including by imams. Allegations of homosexuality, however, have been used as part of smear campaigns against opposition leaders.

Media and human-rights activists have paid relatively little attention to these problems. The Azerbaijani Commissioner for Human Rights’ Office could not be reached for comment on LGBT abuse.

For many, the Jan. 22 suicide of 20-year-old Isa Shahmarli, the head of the LGBT group Azad, illustrated the dangers involved in looking the other way. In a Facebook message before his death, Shahmarli blamed society at large for his suicide.

“He ended his life because society wanted him to do so,” said his former flatmate, Kamila Javadzadeh. “He was all alone, struggling to prove that nothing is wrong about being LGBT. But he failed to convince his own family.”

Yet one 32-year-old lesbian, who declined to give her name, stopped short of calling life in Azerbaijan as a LGBT person “a tragedy.” At least no public calls for violence against LGBT Azerbaijanis have been made, she explained. “But it is not OK at all,” she emphasised. After years of confronting hostility, however, she simply no longer expects tolerance.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Thembela, a 26-year-old lesbian from Gugulethu, Cape Town, seldom leaves her home at night for fear of being the victim of “corrective rape”. Credit: Melany Bendix/IPS

By Melany Bendix
CAPE TOWN, Feb 14 2014 (IPS)

“Every day I live in fear that I will be raped,” said Thembela*, one of thousands of lesbians across South Africa being terrorised by the scourge of “corrective rape”.

By living openly as a lesbian in Gugulethu township in the Western Cape, Thembela says she is at high risk of being assaulted by men intent on “correcting” her sexual orientation through rape.“Lots of my friends have been raped for being lesbian. It’s not an unusual thing.” -- Thembela

“They do it because they hate what we are, because they feel threatened by us,” said the 26-year-old filmmaker for the local documentary television series “Street Talk”. 

“I live with my partner and we live alone. Many guys in my neighbourhood know this and at any time they can come and kick down our door and rape us. They usually come in gangs and we would be powerless to stop them,” she told IPS.

“Lots of my friends have been raped for being lesbian. It’s not an unusual thing.”

Horrific reports of corrective rape are rife in South Africa, but just how many women and men have been raped and even murdered due to their sexual orientation is still unknown.

It is this dearth of data on hate crime that the country’s Department of Justice and Constitutional Development hopes to address with the “Policy Framework on Combating Hate Crimes, Hate Speech and Unfair Discrimination”.

The policy is the foundation for what will later become law and aims to “send a clear message that hate crimes will not be tolerated in South Africa,” according to Justice and Constitutional Development Deputy Minister John Jeffery.

He said the new law would create a separate criminal category for hate crimes.

Although it was created in direct response to the increase of hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in South Africa, the policy covers all forms of hate crimes, including xenophobic and racist attacks and hate speech.

During a briefing in late January, Jeffery said the policy framework had been “largely finalised” and would be released for public debate “shortly”.

Cobus Fourie of the South African Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation told IPS that having hate crimes as a separate category would shed light on how serious the issue was.

Ingrid Lynch, research, advocacy and policy coordinator for the Cape Town-based LGBTI lobby group Triangle Project, said the new legislation would meet the “desperate need” to monitor the extent of LGBTI-related violence and hate crimes.

“Without a crime category that recognises the influence of homophobic prejudice in violence against LGBTI people, we have no hope of systematic data collection and monitoring of the problem,” she told IPS.

“What we currently know is only the tip of the iceberg.”

Law Cannot Change “Hateful Attitudes”

While lauding the policy as a “symbolic” move to recognise and protect marginalised individuals’ plight, constitutional law expert Professor Pierre de Vos cautioned that law alone will “not change people’s hateful attitudes”.

He pointed out that South Africa already had several progressive laws protecting the rights of LGBTI people, including the legalisation of same-sex marriage. However, in practice these laws do little to protect LGBTI people increasingly faced with violence and victimisation.

“It will take much more than a new piece of legislation to address hate crimes,” added Lynch, who said “being able to experience [constitutional] rights continues to be the main challenge for LGBTI people in South Africa.”

Sibusiso Kheswa, advocacy coordinator for Gender Dynamix, the first African organisation focusing solely on transgender rights, argued that it was pointless introducing new laws, however well intended, if the criminal justice system could not implement them effectively.

Kheswa told IPS the root of the problem was that the system was “not victim friendly”, starting with the South African Police Service (SAPS) – a victim’s first point of contact.

Lynch agreed and said her research had found that LGBTI survivors of assault and rape are “typically confronted with humiliation, dismissal and even direct victimisation by the police because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Kheswa said this resulted in victims not reporting crimes out of “fear of secondary victimisation by the police and other players in the criminal justice system”.

“‘It would be a mistake to think that we can achieve better outcomes for survivors of LGBTI hate crimes within a broken criminal justice system,” warned Lynch. “We need structural transformation of the entire system, along with specific attention to LGBTI concerns.”

Education is Key

Fourie and de Vos both believe that education is key to reducing hate crime against LGBTI people in the long term.

“There should be far more vigorous education against prejudice, from basic school level right up to the government departments,” said de Vos. “But for that to happen you need political will.”

Johan Meyer, health officer for Johannesburg-based LGBTI advocacy group OUT, was upbeat that there was a good measure of political will behind the policy framework.

“There is always concern that the hate crime law might be like South Africa’s other progressive laws that are supposed to protect LGBTI people.

“But I do believe that in this case things are different, since there is real and committed involvement on national level from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, as well as from the SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority,” he told IPS.

Back in Gugulethu where Thembela and her partner triple bolt their doors and seldom venture out at night for fear of being attacked, she too is hopeful that the fledgling law will one day allow her to live free of fear.

“If we had our own law to protect us, a law that really punishes these guys for raping us, it might make them think twice. And if they think twice, maybe they will stop and I can stop being scared all the time.”

*Surname withheld to protect identity.

Border guards in Bangladesh refuse entry to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Migration is one factor that can contribute to polarising communities. Credit: Anurup Titu/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2013 (IPS)

Amidst the rising tide of racial and religious intolerance worldwide – including xenophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) will meet in the Austrian capital of Vienna later this week to strengthen cross-cultural relations in a world it describes as “alarmingly out of balance”.

In our inter-connected information age, says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “we may not be able to prevent every merchant of hate in every corner of the world.

“But we can build bridges that are strong enough to withstand those forces,” he adds.The television cameras focus on the fringe. The extremists gain easy publicity with their bonfires of bigotry.

And the task of constructing those bridges is one of the primary responsibilities of UNAOC, which holds its Fifth Global Forum aimed at “Promoting Responsible Leadership in Diversity and Dialogue.”

The last four Forums were held in Madrid, Spain (2008), Istanbul, Turkey (2009), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2010) and Doha, Qatar (2011).

The Vienna Forum, scheduled to take place Feb. 27-28, will be the first to be headed by the new High Representative of UNAOC Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar, a former president of the U.N. General Assembly and chairman of the Board of Directors of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.

Asked about the most effective way of remedying the growing malaise, UNAOC Director Matthew Hodes told IPS intolerance and discrimination have been a sad, unacceptable part of the human experience, and may never be completely eradicated.

“What the international community can do, what U.N. bodies have and will continue to do is maintain the fight against these scourges,” he said.

Whether it is by setting standards through international instruments, vigilant reporting of abuses of those standards, or proactive efforts at reconciliation, “We all have a role to play in that fight,” he added.

Meanwhile the spread of hate crimes has also been attributed to sensational coverage by the international news media.

When the United Nations commemorated International Day of Peace last September, the celebrations were marred by news of widespread rage in the Islamic world, a continued bloody civil war in Syria, suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan and violent demonstrations in Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh against a video caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad.

In his address, the secretary-general warned that the world was facing global protests and violence in response to another ugly attempt to sow bigotry and bloodshed.

But he also directed his jabs at the media. In today’s world, he said, the loudest voices tend to get the microphone.

“The television cameras focus on the fringe. The extremists gain easy publicity with their bonfires of bigotry,” he said.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, was equally unhappy with the news coverage when she said the best way to deal with provocations, including religious intolerance, was to ignore them. But the news-conscious media doesn’t.

Asked whether the press is a contributory factor to the current state of hate crimes through sensationalism in news reporting, Hodes told IPS, “The societies in the world that are the most free are also those with the most unfettered media.”

He pointed out that those who work in the media are subject to professional standards set in each country: standards that when followed tend to ensure responsible reporting.

“And let’s be clear: when I speak about vigilant reporting of abuses I am speaking not only of international civil servants but the media as well,” he added.

Hodes said the media has a central role to play in increasing the public understanding of sensitive issues, including religious intolerance, migration and diversity.

All of these factors can contribute to polarising communities.

“The UNAOC tries to address this challenge by regularly convening editors, media owners and experts to establish a platform for dialogue leading to concrete recommendations,” said Hodes. “And we aim to organise a meeting around religion and religious intolerance in the year to come.”

Asked about a proposal for an international convention against Islamophobia, one of the most widespread of religious intolerances, he said: “While I would not comment on any particular proposed convention it is apparent that an agenda of fear has taken root in certain parts of the world”.

But that cannot justify the vilification of an entire religion or its adherents, he added.

“Islamophobia is a real phenomenon in certain places and must be addressed,” Hodes said.

A concept paper jointly prepared by the UNAOC Secretariat and the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, which will be discussed at the Vienna Forum, will focus on how responsible leadership can make a difference in the following three major issues:

First, promotion, protection and full enjoyment of the right to religious freedom in a context of religious pluralism which consists not only of greater diversity, but also of perceptions of that diversity and new patterns of interaction among religious groups;

Second, media pluralism and diversity of media content and their contribution to fostering public debate, democracy and awareness of diverse opinions;

Third, shaping a new narrative for migration, integration and mobility in the global economy.

By Walter García and Becky Bergdahl
NEW YORK, Oct 11 2012 (IPS)

Donald P. Green is a U.S. professor of political science who turns theories about hate crime upside down with his research.

Courtesy of Donald Green.

According to Green, hate crimes don’t stem from economic competition. Instead, they are rooted in a fear of the unknown – and from ideals of masculinity.

After 22 years teaching at Yale, he has been based at Columbia University in New York since 2011. IPS correspondent Becky Bergdahl sat down with Green at his office to talk about his work.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Which groups are being targeted by extremists in the United States, and what sorts of hate crimes do they suffer?

A: Arabs and Muslims were being targeted in much greater numbers in the aftermath of 9/11 than before 9/11, but that has subsided. Some of the biggest groups being targeted today are gay men and lesbians, racial minorities, and then a broad array of different groups, including Jews and Muslims.

And people are often the subject of property attacks that are not necessarily associated with a physical confrontation. For example, swastikas painted on a Jewish cemetery, or Muslims having a stone thrown through the mosque window.

Q: Should hate crime laws be more uniform in the United States, to combat those acts of extremism?

A: Women and people with disabilities are only covered under hate crime statutes in some states. That is also true for gay men and lesbians. Some states have very broad statutes, whereas other states have what is known as “race, religion and ethnicity statutes”.

The problem that I see, especially in the case of gay men and lesbians, is that their probability of being protected is lowest where the risk of being attacked is probably the greatest. In that case, I think that having more uniformity would be useful. In the case of women, it is dicier. But the case could be made.

Q: Which are the sources of hate crimes?

A: There is going to be no single answer. My work tends to argue against those who believe that hate crime stems from economic competition. I do not find evidence that hate crimes surge in a period of economic downturn. Instead, I would argue that you get hate crimes when places, or ways of life, seem to be threatened by people perceived as outsiders.

For example, in the United States, when all-white neighbourhoods were first experiencing immigration in the 1970s and ’80s, you saw a massive surge of hate crime. Or in Germany after the unification, you saw a huge number of non-Germans come into Germany, especially into former East Germany, which had been quite homogenous. And then you saw a big surge of hate crime.

Q: I thought that living side by side would be a medicine against hatred – not the opposite.

A: In the long run it perhaps is. In the 70s and 80s, you saw this big surge of hate crime in the U.S., but as immigration became more common, those sorts of hate crimes subsided.

Q: Even if you have found no evidence for the theory that a financial crisis fuels hate crime, there is evidence that right-wing extremists are generally poorer and have lower education than the average. But the most striking statistic is that they are almost only men. There are of course also poor women with low education, but they do not tend to join extremist groups like men do. Why is it so?

A: I think that your point of gender differences helps to puncture the idea that there is pure economic motivation behind those crimes. It shows how important social reinforcement is. Men reward each other for their machismo or violence. They are more likely to engage in these kinds of behaviour, especially in small groups, whereas women are not.

And when people – well, men – are arrested for violent hate crimes, they are often surprised that they are being treated as criminals. They think of themselves as defenders of the culture.

Q: So how can we combat the growth of hate groups?

A: One thing that stands out is to clearly point out norms. Surprising to those of us who study hate crime is the infrequency of when publicly elected officials will say openly that this kind of behaviour runs counter to the laws of the United States. But I think more and more people understand that hate crime is subject to special penalties. Burning trash on someone’s lawn, that is arson. But if you are burning a cross on someone’s lawn, that is subject to stronger penalties.

In addition, the media has, through its portrayals of gay men and lesbians and interracial couples, changed the norms of what could be seen as ordinary behaviour.

Q: In Europe, many right-wing extremist groups used to be both racist and anti-gay. But all of a sudden, many of those groups now state that they respect gay rights – in contrast to Muslims. Are you familiar with this rhetoric?

A: It reminds me of how the United States during World War Two was in a tricky position vis-à-vis Nazi Germany. We were sending soldiers in segregated military units. The Germans surely noticed the irony of this, the hypocrisy of fighting Nazism with a racist set of institutions.

Q: Could an alliance against right-wing extremism, between Muslims and the gay rights movement, be possible?

A: That will obviously depend on what people who set the norms of Islam will say in the years to come. Their current norms are conservative. But I wonder whether in the future they will soften their line. It might seem inconceivable now, but my guess is that 50 years from now, we will gradually see it.

Excerpt:

The attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in early August on the heels of the shooting at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado signals the rise of right-wing domestic terrorism in the United States, experts say.

After the shooting at the Sikh temple, a statement repeated on nearly every U.S. media outlet was that the Sikh shooting was a case of mistaken identity and that because gunman Wade Michael Page was actually trying to gun down Muslims and desecrate a mosque, the act was somehow therefore justified.

A talk held by the New America Foundation on Aug. 23 entitled “What do we make of extremism after Wisconsin?” sought to address these issues and highlight hate crimes against Muslims that have not received the same media attention as recent events.

On Aug. 6, a mosque in Joplin, Missouri was burnt down. The day before, the Sikh temple shooting had taken place in Wisconsin. On Aug. 7, pigs’ feet were thrown into a mosque in southern California. On Aug. 10, pellet shots were fired into a mosque in Illinois. The list doesn’t end here.

Haris Tarin, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council believes that a change in attitude towards Muslim Americans needs to come from the top. “Democrats and Republicans need to come together to fight Islamophobia. We don’t want it to become a partisan issue,” said Tarin, who pointed to Representative Michelle Bachman’s witch hunt as an extremely dangerous turn taken by politicians.

Participants at the talk argue that how politicians portray American Muslims has a significant impact on how they are treated. “When the president talks, it helps. When politicians talk in favor of a certain group, it definitely helps,” says Valarie Kaur, director of the Visual Law Project.

Perhaps most unsettling is the fact that Muslims in America are held accountable and answerable for terrorist crimes perpetrated by a select number of Islamic extremists – most often foreign elements – who, moderate Muslims have explained, do not represent true Islam.

Spencer Ackerman, a senior reporter at Wired.com, dismissed the idea that people weren’t educated about Islam. “I’m an American Jew, and I have never had to explain or defend actions of Jewish people around the world. I realize I am in a privileged position. So why do American Muslims have to explain themselves or defend other Muslims’ actions?” said Ackerman.

Kaur added that no white Christians would ever be held responsible for the actions of other white Christians across the world.

The double standard is mind-boggling, but a truth that slowly seems to be permeating American society.

After 9/11, hate crimes against Muslims and turban-wearing Sikhs more than doubled. The word “terrorist” has become synonymous with “Muslim extremists”. The Aurora shootings, the Sikh temple tragedy – neither of these incidents was treated as “terrorist” activity by the media.

The manner in which media covers such events, as well as how politicians talk about Muslims, plays a huge part in the way Muslims are perceived in the United States.

“Rhetoric does not fall on deaf ears. Rhetoric is how political extremism becomes mainstream,” says Tarin. “There is a correlation between violence, rhetoric, and political extremism; hate crimes do not occur in a vacuum,” he adds, explaining how the media and the government can mould the public’s view towards certain groups.

Two incidents that highlight this correlation are Bachman’s witch hunt against Muslim politicians, and Representative Joe Walsh’s (R-IL) claim made in a town hall that radical Muslims are “trying to kill Americans every week”. The town hall was 15 miles from the Morton Grove Mosque, where pellets were fired by David Conrad. Other attacks such as an acid bomb incident in Lombard, Illinois and graffiti in Evergreen Park, Illinois, also took place in Walsh’s district.

Although negative perceptions of Muslims have reached extreme levels and can and have take on dangerous forms, there is reason to believe that not all Americans maintain such negatively biased beliefs about Muslims.

An evangelical friend of Tarin, along with a group of other evangelicals, has bought ad space and plans to put up signs reading, “I stand with my Muslim brother. I stand with my Sikh brother.”

“This is the greatness of America, its democracy and its pluralism; that people stand up and support one another,” says Tarin. Yet a lack of exposure to other cultures and religions is perhaps one of the largest factors for fear and hatred towards certain religious groups.

“The most supportive pro-Islam groups in the U.S. are returning veterans. Most Americans don’t travel, (they) only assume,” says Ackerman of the need for people in the United States to broaden their horizons and understand other peoples and cultures.

Whether Islamophobia will decrease in coming years will depend greatly on the media, and the U.S. government’s willingness to tackle hate crimes and counter negative perceptions of this religious group.