A quarter of the British public have witnessed racial hate crime in the last year, according to research released to mark Holocaust Memorial Day as the millions who fell victim to genocide are commemorated.
Younger people are more likely to challenge violence or hostility against someone based on their race or ethnicity, while two-thirds (69%) of people regret not intervening, according to a survey commissioned by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
The role of the bystander is the focus of Wednesday’s Holocaust Memorial Day, which adopts the theme “Don’t stand by” for the annual commemoration of the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust under Nazi persecution, and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
The survey focused on incidents involving ethnicity, religion or beliefs, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. More than one fifth of 2,007 people questioned had seen an act of violence or hostility based on religion or beliefs.
One in six (17%) of 16-24 year-olds said they had intervened, compared with one in eight (13%) people aged 25 to 34, and just 7% of those aged 35 to 44.
More than a tenth (12%) of respondents said they themselves had been a victim of a hate crime, with 60% of them saying no one nearby intervened.
Olivia Marks-Woldman, the trust’s chief executive, said: “When we look back to the Holocaust and to other genocides, we learn that they happened because cultures were created and encouraged that allowed persecution to flourish. People stood by and tolerated increasing persecution, sometimes, because they were afraid to speak out against it.”
“We thought 25% of people having witnessed at least one hate crime in the past 12 months was shocking,” she said.”The survey found verbal abuse was the most common form of hate crime, accounting for three quarters of incidents in the last year. Almost a third (30%) said they had seen harassment, and a fifth (20%) had witnessed threats of violence. Some 14% had seen physical attacks, ranging from punching to spitting.
Online abuse, through social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter, was witnessed by more than a quarter (28%). The overwhelming majority questioned (77%) said they felt there was no difference between bullying or “trolling” someone online and shouting abuse in the street.
Home Office statistics on recorded hate crime released in October showed a rise of 18% on the previous year. In 2014-15 there were 52,528 hate crimes recorded by police, compared with 44,471 hate crimes the year before.
Of those, 42,930 (83%) were hate crimes based on race, 5,597 (11%) were about sexual orientation, 3,254 (6%) were to do with religion, 2,508 (5%) were directed at disabled people and 605 (1%) were transgender hate crimes.
Marks-Woldman said: “As well as taking stock of what’s happening in our own communities here in the UK today, we also need to be mindful of the fact that genocide is continuing in Darfur, where thousands of people have been murdered and millions have been forced to flee to makeshift refugee camps.
“We all need to reflect on the fact that the path to genocide begins with exclusion and discrimination, and that standing by allows hatred to take hold.”
More than 3,500 events to commemorate the Holocaust are being held on Wednesday and during the week at venues across the UK. A national commemoration in central London will be attended by more than 200 survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides with readings from the actors Sheila Hancock, Robert Lindsay, Kevin Whately and Freddie Fox.
Also in the capital, the artist Clare Twomey is gifting 2,000 artworks – handcrafted porcelain spoons inspired by meeting survivors of the Bosnian war – on Westminster Bridge. In York, 600 candles, laid out to form a Star of David, will be lit in York Minster’s historic Chapter House to commemorate the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered by the Nazis during the second world war.
CASE STUDIES
Rwanda: Appolinaire Kageruka
Kageruka, 49, says he owes his life to a neighbour who refused to stand by during the Rwandan genocide, in which almost one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in 1994
As a Tutsi primary school teacher in Kibungo, he saw the hatred building but never envisaged the levels it would reach.
As the violence against Tutsis spread, Kageruka’s parents fled to their local Catholic church along with hundreds of others seeking sanctuary. They were among more than 1,500 victims of the infamous massacre at Nyarubye church.
Kageruka did not follow them, but went instead to the home of a impoverished Hutu neighbour. His neighbour offered to hide him and for three weeks he sheltered in the tiny home. “Me, him, his wife, his two children; we couldn’t hardly fit into his house.”
But rumours starting spreading that Kageruka was being hidden, he said. His neighbour told him: “If they find you here, they will kill you and they will kill us. So it is better [for you] to go.”
He took him out into the bush and brought him food and news at night. Kageruka remained there for seven days until the arrival of the Rwandan Patriotic Front army.
“He saved my life,” said Kageruka, who is now living in Coventry. “You should not stand by. You must do something to fight against hatred.”
Darfur: Abdul Aziz MustafaMustafa was just 15 when, alone and terrified, he fled from Sudan. Today he wonders if more could have been done to halt the continuing mass slaughter of Darfuri men, women and children in western Sudan.
Mustafa, now 25, is from the Zaghawa ethnic group who havefilled the refugee camps in the Darfuri crisis. His father was killed in 2003 as rebel and government forces clashed in Tine, on the Chad-Sudan border, and the town was bombarded.
For two years, Mustafa, his mother and younger brother survived at a UN camp in al-Fashir, terrified that he would be taken as a child soldier. “Any kid over the age of seven, they just take them to fight,” he said.
His mother paid a people smuggler, and he was loaded into a lorry, driven to Khartoum, hidden in a house, driven to Port Sudan in another lorry and loaded on to a ship. “I was very scared, because I didn’t know where they were going to take me,” he said.
After two or three weeks, he was left at a service station on a motorway near London. Police told him he must register with the Home Office.
“I got to Victoria [station], but I didn’t know where I was. I saw police in the station, but they couldn’t understand me.” A passerby, an Iraqi Kurd, stepped in to interpret. He explained that Mustafa would have to register for asylum in Croydon.
“He told the police ‘don’t worry, I will give him a ticket to Croydon.’ And he bought me a ticket, and some water and a sandwich. Then he directed me to the train.” It was an act of kindness from a stranger he will never forget.
Once in Croydon, another stranger showed him the way to the asylum office. It was by now late at night, so he slept outside in freezing January temperatures, before joining the queue the next morning.
Today Mustafa, who was allocated a foster family and granted asylum, has studied at school and worked as a waiter. His younger brother fled to South Sudan, while his mother remains in Sudan. He has not seen them in 10 years.
His memories of Sudan are of the hatred and violence that scarred him from an early age. The Zaghawa, he said, were the constant target of hate crime. “They say ‘you don’t belong here’. But I am from Sudan,” he said.
And still it goes on, he said. “It has been running for 13 years, and nobody is talking about it.”
