The violence of the violated

By A. Sivanandan (Institute of Race Relations)

The director of the Institute of Race Relations comments on the recent riots.

Everyone is clutching at explanations for the riots – gangs, greed, family breakdown, lack of respect. But I would like to go into their deeper causes.

Society is completely polarised between rich and poor, mediated through a culture of consumerism and quick fixes. Almost a third of the population is mired in poverty and deprivation. And this affects the younger generation much more directly and violently than any other section. Directly, through unemployment, cuts in education, youth facilities and mentoring schemes – they are neither socialised by work nor by community. Violently, because they are policed over and criminalised by stop and search laws and an anti-youth surveillance culture. They have nothing to look forward to – no economic mobility, no social mobility. And they have nothing to look back on, disconnected as they are from the previous generation. The system is trying to blame the parents but they themselves have been deprived of the wherewithal to bring up their children in a decent environment. (The only thing that trickles down is poverty.)

Hence the rebellion of the youth is neither community-based nor politically-oriented – which is what distinguishes them from the disturbances of 1981 and 1985. Those were uprisings based on community organising. These are riots mobilised on a Blackberry.

I have been asked if this has happened because multiculturalism has failed. On the contrary, multiculturalism has succeeded at the point of riot: the rioters came from all communities.

We have a political culture which has been manipulated by Murdoch and the press. We’ve got a feral elite of politicians, press, police and banks running the whole system. And there’s so much anger right across society-not just in these kids. This is not the end of rebellion, it is the beginning.

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FOOTNOTE

HAT News is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

Mugabe Legitimizing Attacks on PM, MDC

(Bloomberg) — Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF is using the state-controlled Herald newspaper to “legitimize an attack on Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai,” according to the premier’s Movement for Democratic Change party.

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North Darfur water project helps protect women from sexual violence

(IRIN) – A water project supported by the UN-African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) in eight villages of North Darfur will not only facilitate residents’ access to water but also help to reduce sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the region, local residents and UNAMID officials said.

This report online: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92597

Church calls for end to violence

Church leaders in Zimbabwe have called for an end to escalating political violence and the “hate language” fuelling it as elections approach and the nation slides deeper into a political crisis.

Full story

House of Lords debates Zim violence

The UK Parliament is concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Zimbabwe, and could stay the resumption of enforced returns of Zimbabweans with no legal right to be in the UK. The UK Home Office had broken  a four-year moratorium last year saying the situation had improved. The courts stopped deportations to Zimbabwe in 2006 when judges ruled that the country wasn’t safe. That legal bar was lifted two years later, but the Home Office did not resume enforced returns immediately. The debate in the House of Lords comes as the UK Border Agency was organising the first flights after ruling that the situation in Zimbabwe had improved since 2009 and the UK court’s view that not all Zimbabweans are in need of international protection.

But Lord Griffiths of Burry Port said in a debate in the House of Lords on Thursday: “We need to be conscious that the security situation in Zimbabwe has not improved greatly and that refugees and asylum seekers should therefore not be pressurised to return home prematurely. Perhaps we can put a little bit of muscle behind the coaxing—if it can be done with muscle—of the UK Border Agency and other authorities towards that end.” Some 13,000 Zimbabweans have sought asylum in the UK over the past five years. About a third of them have been granted asylum after saying they faced persecution for opposing President Mugabe.
In practice 4,000 more were given some form of legal right to remain after the courts declared the country unsafe.

Lord Griffiths said the good work of agencies in the UK in preparing and training Zimbabweans to go home when things are settled and to take their rightful places in rebuilding their country should be continued and expanded. “Zimbabwe has slipped down the news agenda,” he said. “It has gone on for so long that thresholds of patience, tolerance and interest have been exhausted but the situation there is important. The people there need our best attention and any efforts that this Parliament can put behind making things better for them.”

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Source: The Zimbabwean

Political violence escalates

(IRIN) – Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity (GNU) was born out of political violence in 2008, and analysts see its demise occurring in much the same way.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR FULL REPORT
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91904

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CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR FULL REPORT
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91792

Election call raises fears of more violence

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Zimbabwe’s unity government was formed after the violent parliamentary and presidential elections in 2008, when ZANU-PF lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence and Mugabe became president after his main opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and now prime minister, withdrew from the poll in protest against political violence.

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Racial violence laid bare

By IRR News Team

Ongoing research by the Institute of Race Relations exposes the reach of racial violence that continues to spread across the county.

Following the publication of a briefing paper, Racial Violence: The buried issue (http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf2/IRR_Briefing_No.6.pdf) in June 2010, the IRR has continued to monitor racist violence in its various guises across the country; the list reproduced below is a collection of some of the most serious cases of abuse and physical violence that took place between the months of January and June 2010, that we have found so far this year.

Random street attacks by gangs of youths, attacks on workers in isolated jobs, such as taxi drivers, takeaway and restaurant owners, and railway staff, alcohol-fuelled racist abuse, arson attacks and cases of graffiti and vandalism all figure on the list below and have been chosen to exemplify how contemporary racial violence affects Britain’s minorities. Attacks on Muslims and vandalism in and around mosques also feature highly on our list.

The 2010 cases that have been analysed reflect the patterns of violence that emerged from our research for 2009. Where once such violence predominately affected people in deprived areas of London like Southall, Newham and Tower Hamlets, now victims of verbal and physical abuse are living in areas that have been traditionally white, and where migration has occurred on a relatively small scale.

• 1 January 2010: A 29-year-old Turkish man was assaulted on a street in Danbury, Essex, around midnight on New Year’s Day in what police called a ‘nasty’ racially aggravated attack. During the assault he was punched, kicked, and was left with a dislocated shoulder and cuts and swelling to his face. (Clacton Daily Gazette, 10 January 2010)

• 10 January 2010: 56-year-old Chinese takeaway owner Sui Chung was hospitalised for two nights after he was set upon by a group of around six youths in Clifton, Nottingham. After being racially abused, Mr Chung came out to challenge the youths but was attacked and suffered a broken arm and wrist, bruising to his face and a swollen eye. This is apparently not the first attack – Mr Chung says that in the fourteen years since he opened his takeaway he has had near constant abuse from gangs of up to thirty youths. (The Monitoring Group, 21 January 2010)

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AI Warns of New Violence In Zimbabwe

Amnesty International warned Wednesday that Zimbabwe could face a new wave of political violence in light of recent attacks on independent monitors activists by alleged supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party during the constitutional revision public outreach process launched last week amid disorganization.

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