Hate Crimes? In Canada!?
Statistics Canada informs through its latest release of statistics that police-reported incidents of hate crime have risen 163% between 2008 and 2009. This is interpreted as "an encouraging statistic". And Ottawa, the nation's capital, has the distinction of representing the largest increase of any Canadian city with the third-highest reported number of hate crimes. Toronto and Vancouver come in first and second.
Can we hazard a guess? Can this have anything to do with immigration, with migrants bringing all the elements of their cultures and heritage and religious convictions with them and traditions of dislikes and antipathies toward specific others? While Canada encourages immigrants to take their place in this vast multicultural society, all manifestations of cultural differences are seemingly considered valid?
We're informed the rate of police-reported hate crimes in Ottawa came in at 14.5 per 100,000 population in 2009, representing the fourth highest percentage in the country; triple the national average. How outstandingly singular and how miserably awful. Wrong; this isn't how the police interpret these figures.
It only seems to the naive who don't understand hate that this upward-creeping incidence representing fear and detestation of the 'other' subverts society and makes us infinitely less than we should aspire to become, as a pluralist society. The police take from these figures an encouraging sign that people are more willing to come forward to report hate crimes.
The distinction can be lost on those not engaged in public security and who see themselves the recipients of hate-inspired bigotry. Aided and abetted by historical and traditional events and responses that take place in the international arena. Exemplified by the increasing in-gathering of people leaving countries where they have been oppressed, yet bringing awkward baggage along with them to their new country.
Previously, the general survey conducted by Statistics Canada discovered that many more Canadians felt themselves to have been victims of hate crimes than were routinely reported to police. "If more are being reported, that's a positive thing"; the message is getting through to people, police assert, that hate crimes "are not tolerated by community members as much as they were previously."
Most hate crimes, it was pointed out, don't involve physical violence, but do represent psychological violence. In the form of graffiti, for example. And surprise, surprise, the group which attracts the most hate appears to be Jews, and there is a huge increase in the reported number of anti-Semitic hate crimes.
Coincidentally, when there are international incidents, particularly those that take place in the Middle East, say relating to Israel and that state's situation in the larger Middle East, the incidences of hate crimes specifically targeting Jews increases exponentially. The Jewish community, it was pointed out, has a long tradition of reporting abuses committed against them.
Whereas, according to Khaled Mouammar, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, the police are not as 'aware', not as frequently approached by members of the Arab and West Asian community in reporting hate crimes. Although the incidents of purported hate crimes against those groups remain infinitely fewer than those directed against Jews.
Mr. Mouammar additionally claims the Canadian government fosters an environment of hostility toward Arabs and Muslims in Canada. That's an interesting opinion, one hardly borne out by fact, unless we bring into the picture the antagonisms expressed by many Arab and Muslim groups toward the State of Israel in their public pronouncements, extending their distaste to Canadian Jews.
Which may very well represent and explain the growing numbers of hate crimes directed toward Jews in Canada.
Can we hazard a guess? Can this have anything to do with immigration, with migrants bringing all the elements of their cultures and heritage and religious convictions with them and traditions of dislikes and antipathies toward specific others? While Canada encourages immigrants to take their place in this vast multicultural society, all manifestations of cultural differences are seemingly considered valid?
We're informed the rate of police-reported hate crimes in Ottawa came in at 14.5 per 100,000 population in 2009, representing the fourth highest percentage in the country; triple the national average. How outstandingly singular and how miserably awful. Wrong; this isn't how the police interpret these figures.
It only seems to the naive who don't understand hate that this upward-creeping incidence representing fear and detestation of the 'other' subverts society and makes us infinitely less than we should aspire to become, as a pluralist society. The police take from these figures an encouraging sign that people are more willing to come forward to report hate crimes.
The distinction can be lost on those not engaged in public security and who see themselves the recipients of hate-inspired bigotry. Aided and abetted by historical and traditional events and responses that take place in the international arena. Exemplified by the increasing in-gathering of people leaving countries where they have been oppressed, yet bringing awkward baggage along with them to their new country.
Previously, the general survey conducted by Statistics Canada discovered that many more Canadians felt themselves to have been victims of hate crimes than were routinely reported to police. "If more are being reported, that's a positive thing"; the message is getting through to people, police assert, that hate crimes "are not tolerated by community members as much as they were previously."
Most hate crimes, it was pointed out, don't involve physical violence, but do represent psychological violence. In the form of graffiti, for example. And surprise, surprise, the group which attracts the most hate appears to be Jews, and there is a huge increase in the reported number of anti-Semitic hate crimes.
Coincidentally, when there are international incidents, particularly those that take place in the Middle East, say relating to Israel and that state's situation in the larger Middle East, the incidences of hate crimes specifically targeting Jews increases exponentially. The Jewish community, it was pointed out, has a long tradition of reporting abuses committed against them.
Whereas, according to Khaled Mouammar, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, the police are not as 'aware', not as frequently approached by members of the Arab and West Asian community in reporting hate crimes. Although the incidents of purported hate crimes against those groups remain infinitely fewer than those directed against Jews.
Mr. Mouammar additionally claims the Canadian government fosters an environment of hostility toward Arabs and Muslims in Canada. That's an interesting opinion, one hardly borne out by fact, unless we bring into the picture the antagonisms expressed by many Arab and Muslim groups toward the State of Israel in their public pronouncements, extending their distaste to Canadian Jews.
Which may very well represent and explain the growing numbers of hate crimes directed toward Jews in Canada.
Labels: Canada, Conflict, Crisis Politics, Culture, Immigration, Islam
posted by Pieface | 6:51 PM
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