Race/Ethnicity

In what will probably qualify as the year's least exciting civil rights victory, the far-right British National Party has agreed to admit nonwhite members nearly three decades after its founding: 

A government-backed rights body took it to court, claiming the party's constitution is discriminatory.

At a court hearing, a lawyer for the party said leader Nick Griffin would ask members next month to change the constitution so it did not discriminate on the grounds of race or religion.

In an order issued at the Central London County Court, the BNP agreed to use "all reasonable endeavors" to revise its constitution to comply with the Equality Bill, which bans discrimination on the grounds of race, gender or religious belief.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, which brought the case, said it would be watching to see whether the BNP complied.

Somehow I don't think minorities are going to be beating down the door to join.

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

A Canadian immigration court has granted refugee status to South African citizen Brandon Huntley, saying that he faces persecution as a white man in his home country:

Huntley, 31, "would stand out like a 'sore thumb' due to his colour in any part of the country", the board's panel chair, William Davis, said in his decision.

Huntley, who grew up in Mowbray, said he had been attacked seven times and stabbed four times "by African South Africans" between 1991 and 2003.

Davis found he "was a victim because of his race rather than a victim of criminality".

The South African goverment is peeved that it wasn't even allowed to testify in the case, particularly since none of the attacks on Huntley were ever reported to the police. "Canada's reasoning for granting Huntley a refugee status can only serve to perpetuate racism," said an African National Congress statement.

The "sore thumb" remark is particularly ripe for mockery, as evidence by this Onion-esque piece reporting the tribunal's shock that Hartley "wasn't the last white in South Africa" and warning Canada to "expect a deluge of young, unemployable, white South Africans."

Hartley's case, argued by a South African immigrant who had been looking for a test-case for years, does seem a little dodgy. And all the more so since the country's "white flight" and its high crime rate are real issues that deserve more serious discussion.

Two days ago, the Chinese government expressed "strong dissatisfaction" with the visit of exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer to Japan. The Japanese government (whose record on Chinese human rights issues is not particulary strong) chose to let the visit go ahead anyways, despite China's assertions that Kadeer helped spark the riots in Urumqi earlier this month (an accusation Kadeer has denied).

What China probably feared most has happened: Kadeer said today in Tokyo that "The nearly 10,000 (Uighur) people who were at the protest, they disappeared from Urumqi in one night." Kadeer called for an internation investigation to uncover more about the riots. China claims that 197 people died in the riots, with a further 1,000 detained.

While China's attempts to pressure other countries (and a movie festival in Australia) over the Uighurs have been pathetic, one point should be made in its favor: the Western media response has been rather curious - numerous publications are carrying the quotes, but none that I've seen mention any further proof, even from Kadeer herself, whereas the AP account before her visit to Japan noted that "China has not provided evidence" of Kadeer's alleged role in the riots. This is not to question Kadeer's account (China's reputation for forging the facts when advantageous is well-established), but to ask: why merely repeat her words? 10,000 people in one night is a serious accusation by any country's standards, and similar claims about other countries would not (and do not) get the same benefit of the doubt. 

TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images

Joachim Crima -- a 37-year-old immigrant from Guinea-Bissau is trying to become Russia's first black elected official, running in district elections in the Volgograd region. Naturally, Crima, who has lived in Russia for 12 years, has been dubbed "Volgograd Obama," though as RIA-Novosti reports, his campaign rhetoric isn't exactly "Yes we can."

I want to make the lives of people who I consider my compatriots better. I am ready to work from morning until evening to resolve their problems. In other words, I am ready to toil like a negro," he said

I must admit, when I saw that quote in RIA-Novosti's story, and the fact that Crima apparently sells watermelons for a living, I wondered if the whole thing wasn't a very nasty hoax. But AFP's Anna Smolchenko called up Crima, who says he doesn't mind using racial stereotypes to his advantage:

If Russians are accustomed to calling dark-skinned people 'negroes' then so be it. I am not in the least bit offended because you have to be proud of who you are."

If he says so. Something still feels very off about this whole thing. Crima seems to not have a chance in hell at beating the local United Russia candidate, and despite the credulous media reports, it seems like no one is really taking him seriously:

There is an impression that he is laughing at himself, saying 'I am a Russian Obama'," Viktor Sapozhnikov, chief of the district election commission, said.

If he goes through with his plan to run for office, said Sapozhnikov, voters would cast ballots for him either "for the sake of a joke" or as an act of protest against Russia's moribund political life.

Sean's Russia blog also has a round-up of some of the uglier racist reactions from Russian Web commenters. Rather than being a sign of social progress, the fact that the very idea of a black man running for office is being treated as a joke seems like a sign of just how entrenched racist attitudes are.

None of the articles I've read so far have looked into who's backing Volgograd Obama's run, but I think it's fair to wonder if they really have his interests -- or those of Russia's black population -- in mind.

Last November, Sudhir Venkatesh over at the Freakonomics blog predicted that France was due for more youth riots. Somebody give him a prize: 

French riot police firing teargas and plastic bullets have struggled to contain three nights of rioting and arson by youths on suburban estates in the Loire, amid protests over the death of a 21-year-old in police custody.

High-rises in Firminy, a small town bordering countryside on the outskirts of Saint-Étienne, saw running battles between police and youths in the early hours of this morning after Mohamed Benmouna, a local supermarket cashier, was taken from his police cell in a coma and died in hospital.

Benmouna, who had been arrested on extortion charges, died on Wednesday. Police said he attempted to hang himself in his cell and fell into a coma. His Algerian family, sceptical of the official story, have filed a lawsuit to establish the circumstances of his death and whether police violence was covered up[...]

For three nights, youths have taken to the streets of Firminy to riot over the death, burning local shops, torching dozens of cars and stoning police, despite repeated pleas for calm from the family. Last night the family and 200 locals staged a peaceful sit-down protest outside their block of flats. But later groups of youths began torching buildings and cars and stoning police. The local bakers, chemist, tobacconist and hairdressing salon were razed. Two hundred riot police were brought in to control rioters with teargas and plastic bullets. Six arrests were made.

As The Guardian says in the article, the riots are merely the latest clash in a long-running fight between urban minorities and the French police. Numerous reports in the last year have shown the police force using ethnic profiling and human rights violations against minorities, and racial problems are not just limited to law enforcement, either. As NPR noted in January,

Today, the French political, academic and media establishments are lily-white. In France, it is illegal to gather data according to race and ethnicity, so it's impossible to measure the minority population's exact size. It is estimated at between 10 percent and 15 percent of the total 63 million.

There are black parliamentarians from overseas territories, but only one from continental France and hardly any blacks or people of Arab origin among 36,000 mayors.

There are no minorities among the military brass, in the foreign service or judiciary."

It's a long walk backwards from when France was a haven for African-Americans.

FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

The Times of India reports a total of 81 confirmed attacks on Indian citizens, mainly students, in Australia since May 23. The New South Wales state government and police admit a reluctance among Indian populations to report crimes against them, alluding to what is potentially a much larger figure. The attacks are believed to be both "recessionist" and racist in nature. The violence has prompted a patrol of Indian men along Melbourne's suburban train system to protect other Indians from attack.

The attacks were condemned by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last month, who insisted that efforts to make international students feel safer would be undertaken at both the state and national levels. Australia currently plays host to over 93,000 Indian students and its education institutions fear a significant drop in attendees from the sub-continent if the current climate of 'curry-bashing' is not effectively dealt with. Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland released figures showing 1,447 reported cases of robbery and assault against Indians in 2008-2009, up from 1,083 the year before.

WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images

During the ongoing political crisis in Iran, another less noticed "revolution" has been going on in Peru with relatively little international attention, but potentially with lasting consequences for both the country and its role in the global economy.

Over the past two weeks, indigenous protesters have successfully forced the Peruvian protesters have successfully forced the government to reverse planned land reforms that would have opened their traditional land to investment and exploration by international energy companies. 

The demonstrations against the reform turned violent earlier this month in a confrontation that left 50 dead, including 23 police officers. Peru's prime minister offered to resign over the controversy after the government caved to the Indians demands. The leader of the protest movement has fled into exile in Nicaragua after being charged with inciting the violence. 

President Alan Garcia has come under fire for his insensitivity to the violence and for comparing the protesters to "garden watchdogs" protecting their food. Garcia had framed the new development as both an economic opportunity for the region, a way of clamping down on illegal logging, and a way to combat drug trafficking by increasing government presence. 

Granted, the news has been dominated by Iran this month for good reason, but protests leading to the killing of 23 police officers, the reversal of a major government decisions affecting multinational corporations, and the resignation of a head of government, seems like a pretty big deal. I think it's safe to say that if this had happened in Asia or the Middle East it would have been front page news in the United States.

Consider how intertwined it is with U.S. foreign policy, it's always surprising how little discussion Latin American affairs (unless Hugo or Fidel are talking) merits in the United States. Peru's largely ignored situation is a perect example. Since when are race, money, violence, and drugs not interesting topics? 

AFP/Getty Images 

Back in 2007, I wrote a post noting a video of Mohammed Khatami shaking hands with female supporters that had gotten the former Iranian president in some hot water. The post was titled "Mohammed Khatami's macaca moment," but Khatami's latest viral video sensation is actually more like George Allen's infamous racial slur.

In the video, which is making the round of the Iranian blogosphere, Khatami tells an insulting joke about Azeris. (I'm fairly sure it's the video above but Farsi speakers should correct me if I'm wrong.) This had lead to public protests in several cities by Iran's sizeable Azeri community. It's quite possible that the video was leaked in order to discredit Khatami's reformist ally Mir Hossein Musavi in the upcoming presidential election.

RFE/RL's Iran Election Diary Blog provides a translation, though I think it probably loses something from the original:

“There was a preacher from Ardabil whose expertise was telling the story of how Fatemeh Zahra [the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad] got married," he says. "[The preacher] said that the night she became a bride, she was being taken to the house [of the groom] and the Prophet was walking in front of her, while Imam Hassan and Imam Hossein [both the sons of Fatemeh Zahra] were walking with her.”

This is way over my head but the implication, apparently, is that Azeris are slow. In any case, Iran's reformists may want to keep cellphone cameras away from Khatami for the next three weeks.

The same blog also has a collection of (funnier) Iranian election jokes, such as the best reason to vote for Musavi over Ahmadinejad:

"He's made anti-Israeli and anti- American comments at international venues but nobody walked out."

Update: Some further explanation from commenter Nemesida below.