Pressure was growing on London officials on Thursday night to withdraw an invitation that could see the leader of the far right British National Party (BNP), Nick Griffin, attend a Buckingham Palace garden party hosted by the Queen after online remarks by BNP members were called racist.
Darren Johnson, chairman of the London assembly, called on the Greater London Authority’s chief executive to rescind an invitation to BNP assembly member Richard Barnbrook to attend the event in July, unless he agreed not to take Griffin. The BNP said Barnbrook had no intention of taking a different guest.
The mayor, Boris Johnson, had earlier written to the chairman demanding he take action.
“Can’t quite believe that the BNP are trying to turn the Queen’s annual garden party into a political stunt,” Johnson wrote on Twitter yesterday. “Am going to stop them.”
Meanwhile, the far-right party admitted it was investigating claims that one of its European election candidates had made overtly racist comments on Facebook.
The anti-racist organization Searchlight claimed it had uncovered a string of racist remarks on social networking pages linked to BNP members standing for election to the European parliament. In a leaked email, the BNP’s national organizer, Eddy Butler, urged members to be careful what they wrote on chat forums and sites such as Facebook.
“Do not make the mistake of thinking that comments posted on these sites are secret or hidden,” Butler wrote. “Making inappropriate comments on these sites will be regarded as a very serious disciplinary offence. Please ensure that this message is passed quickly to all members in your area and that it is acted upon.”
Eddy O’Sullivan, one of the BNP’s northwest candidates for the European elections, said he had written comments such as “Wogs go home Gurkhas very welcome” on his Facebook page, which had been on public view. But he denied they were racist. The page has now disappeared.
He told the Manchester Evening News: “It was supposed to be a private conversation between individuals. I also may have had a drink at the time. I don’t believe those comments are racist. I’m not a racist and that is that.”
The BNP’s organizer in the region, Clive Jefferson, told the paper that if the allegations were proved, O’Sullivan would be suspended from the party in Salford and from the European candidacy.
“There’s freedom of speech and there is unacceptable language and I think this is unacceptable,” he said.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS