White Britons unfairly targeted for hate crimes
WHITE Christians are unfairly targeted by police and prosecutors over alleged hate crimes compared with minority groups and other religions, a report said yesterday.
Think-tank Civitas said that hate crime legislation was restricting freedom of speech and had introduced a new blasphemy law into Britain by the back door.
The Civitas report said: “Some police forces and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) seem to be interpreting statutes in favour of ethnic and religious minorities, and in a spirit hostile to members of the majority population, defined as ‘white’ or ‘Christian’.”
Civitas – the Institute for the Study of Civil Society – claimed there was “evidence of biased application of the law”.
It cited the case of a Muslim man who sprayed “Islam will dominate the world – Osama is on his way” and “Kill Gordon Brown” on a war memorial in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
He was prosecuted for criminal damage but not religious or race offences. The CPS argued that “defacing the memorial did not attach to any racial or religious group”.
But the report pointed out: “If a non-Muslim had defaced a Muslim building, the system would have thrown the book at him.”
This compared with Christian hoteliers Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, of Liverpool, who were prosecuted and then cleared of a religiously aggravated hate crime after a female Muslim guest complained that the pair had made abusive and offensive comments about her religious dress.
Civitas also questioned whether CPS decisions were being influenced by a staff association called the National Black Crown Prosecution Association, which “takes an interest in the impact of CPS decisions on members of ethnic minorities”.
Last night, a spokesman for the CPS said: “The trailing of the suggestion that the NBCPA may affect the CPS’s impartiality is without foundation.”
