Human Rights First
report
Human
Rights First report in French
Discrimination
against Jews as a religious, ethnic or racial group has increasingly taken
the form of racist threats and violence in a pattern across much of Europe,
from Russia to the United Kingdom. This disturbing pattern, documented
in a
report released by Human Rights First, has included physical
assaults on individuals – and fire-bombings, gunfire, window smashing,
and vandalism of Jewish homes, schools, synagogues and other community
institutions.
European governments are not accurately reporting or effectively combating
antisemitic violence, creating a climate that has contributed to the rise
of anti-Jewish speech and violence. Often the official response of governments
is silence, or to attribute attacks to political protest. For much of
early 2002, the French government made few public statements about the
rising tide of anti-Jewish violence; the government has now firmly condemned
the violence, but has yet to release official statistics on such incidents
in 2002. The governments of Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and
Russia, where a majority of the other attacks have been concentrated,
have made public statements condemning the surge in violence. But the
governments have released little documentation of anti-Jewish violence,
and have, according to nongovernmental observers, done little to abate
the rising tide.
Coverage of antisemitic violence in Europe by the U.S. Department of
State’s annual reports on human rights conditions and religious intolerance
is also inadequate.
