US president-elect Senator Barack Obama’s victory earlier this month has provoked a rise in hate crimes against ethnic minorities, civil rights groups said on Monday.
Hundreds of incidents of abuse or intimidation apparently motivated by racial hatred have been reported since the election, though most have not involved violence, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
White supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Council of Conservative Citizens have seen a flood of interest from possible new members since the landmark election of the first black president in US history.
“We have seen a fairly dramatic backlash over the last three or four weeks, since the final weeks of the campaign,” said Mark Potok of the Montgomery, Alabama-based center, which monitors far right groups.
“These [incidents] are merely gut level reactions from a lot of people,” Potok said. “There is a substantial subset of white people in America who are boiling angry over this.”
In the highest-profile case, a federal grand jury indicted Jeffrey Conroy, 17, for second-degree murder and classed it as a hate crime last week after Marcelo Lucero of Ecuadoran descent was stabbed to death on New York’s Long Island.
Six other teenagers face lesser charges in the case. All pleaded not guilty. Police said last week the seven youths set out to find and attack Latinos.
About a quarter of black Americans live in poverty — nearly three times the rate for whites — at a time when rising budget deficits and expensive corporate bailouts are going to leave little federal money for anti-poverty programs. The federal budget deficit is likely to hit a record US$1 trillion next year.
Black adults are more likely than whites to be in prison. Homicide is the leading cause of death among black males ages 15 to 34 — and it has been for years.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
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