Multicultural centre fire being treated as hate crime in Belfast

Police believe a fire that extensively damaged a multicultural centre in Belfast was started deliberately.

Officers are treating the blaze at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association property on Donegall Pass in the south of the city as a hate crime.

Vehicles belonging to people working at the centre have previously been vandalised in hate crime incidents.

More than 50 firefighters fought the blaze, which started at around 9pm on Thursday. Seven fire appliances were used to bring the flames under control.

The damage to the property was visible on Friday, with much of the roof of the historic building destroyed.

No-one was inside when the fire started and there were no injuries reported.

The building was being used as a food bank, with volunteers distributing packages to vulnerable people during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a statement, the association said it had been on the “receiving end of a lot of hostility and Islamophobia for years”.

It added: “We are heartbroken and shocked by these events but it will not deter us from any of our work. Our volunteers, despite shaken, are determined not to let down the communities we support.

“Thank-you to everyone who have been in contact to check up on us and extended their support and solidarity. We are immensely grateful for it all.”

Stormont Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey visited the centre on Friday afternoon to view the damage and speak to members of the association.

Ms Hargey, who is also an MLA for the area, said she would work to find a temporary home to allow the association to continue its work.

“My concern now as Minister for Communities and also as a local MLA is turning to support the organisation, who are carrying out vital work in south Belfast and indeed across the city, supporting minority ethnic communities but indeed the whole community with essential frontline services, and particularly in the midst of a public health pandemic,” she said.

“I want to work with them in terms of what the department can do to support them and working with other agencies such as Belfast City Council to look at relocating them on an interim basis and to ensure that they can continue the support that they’re providing to the community in the time ahead.”

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Categories: Belfast, Belfast multi-cultural association, hate crime, Multicultural centre, News, Stormont

Women face new trial in Egypt for ‘indecent’ videos on TikTok

An Egyptian judge overturned an acquittal verdict of two young women who were jailed last year for posting “indecent” videos on the social media video app TikTok, ordering their pretrial detention for 15 days over fresh charges of “human trafficking”, a judicial source said.

A Cairo court has accused 20-year-old student Haneen Hossam and 22-year-old Mawada Eladhm of recruiting young women for “indecent jobs that violate the principles and values of the Egyptian society”, the judicial official said.

Thursday’s motion came just two days after an appeals court had acquitted the two women and ordered their release.

Last summer, an Egyptian court of first instance sentenced Hossam and Adham along with another three women to two years in prison for “violating the values and principles of the Egyptian family”, inciting debauchery and promoting human trafficking.

The verdict came after the two women had vaulted to TikTok fame, amassing millions of followers for their video snippets set to catchy Egyptian club-pop tracks.

In their respective 15-second clips, the women wearing makeup pose in cars, dance in kitchens and joke in skits — familiar and seemingly tame content for the platform.

The two women were also fined 300,000 Egyptian pounds (nearly 19,000 US dollars).

Their case drew the ire of Egyptian feminists who dismissed the prosecution of Hossam and Adham as another example of their conservative society’s encroachment on women’s freedoms.

At the time, women’s rights advocates circulated an online petition describing the arrests as a “systematic crackdown that targets low-income women”.

Although Egypt remains far more liberal than Gulf Arab states, the Muslim-majority country has swung in a decidedly conservative direction over the past half-century.

Belly dancers, pop divas and social media influencers have faced backlash for violating the norms.

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Categories: Adham, Belly dancers, Egyptian feminists, Egyptian judge, Hossam, News, TikTok

Security company wrote ‘Allahu Akbar’ on fake bomb in Heathrow exercise

One of the UK’s biggest security firms planted a fake bomb at a Heathrow airport train station with the words “Allahu Akbar” written in Arabic on it during a training exercise.

Redline Assured Security, which counts the Ministry of Defence and the British Transport Police as clients on its website, defended the decision at an employment tribunal, saying it was used to make the package look “suspicious”.

The company subsequently stopped using the phrase after a Muslim member of staff complained that it was discriminatory.

A tribunal held in December 2020 found that the practice did not constitute direct discrimination but called the decision to no longer make the association between Islam and terrorism in exercises as “sensible”.

Anis Ali, a train driver for Heathrow Express and NHS volunteer, took the company to a tribunal hearing last month claiming religious discrimination over the incident in 2017.

The tribunal also heard that a train driver, duty station manager and Mr Ali’s then-employer, Heathrow Express, unlawfully harassed him, related to religion and belief, after colleagues told him that Muslims “groom and rape Sikh and white women”. They were ordered to pay compensation totalling £4,000.

The complaint against the pair and Heathrow Express was upheld, with the tribunal saying that their actions created a “hostile and degrading environment”, in a judgment published this week.

Redline’s decision to use the wording in a bomb exercise came less than a year after Greater Manchester Police were forced to apologise after a fake suicide bomber shouted “Allahu Akbar” during a simulated terrorist attack at the city’s Trafford Centre shopping complex.

The company’s operations director, Mark Rutherford, told the employment tribunal in a witness statement: “The only purpose of the note is to ensure that the package looked obviously suspicious and was added by the covert team leader to reflect just one of the current threats that were present in the UK at the time.”

He added: “We would often use English words and text that is designed to raise suspicion too, e.g. ‘Animal Testing must STOP now’ or ‘No Third Runway’.”

The judges at the hearing said it was legitimate to “reinforce the ‘suspicious’ nature of its packages by referring to known threats and matters connected with previous terrorist incidents”.

But they welcomed Redline’s decision to stop using the phrase in exercises as a “sensible precaution against further complaints being made”.

The tribunal did however find that Heathrow Express failed to protect Mr Ali from harassment from two members of staff – Davinder Hare and Narinder Rai.

Mr Hare, who is Sikh, initially made a complaint against Mr Ali, claiming he should not continue wearing a Sikh bracelet – a Kara – because he is a Muslim.

In a complaint presented to the tribunal, Mr Hare drew comparisons between the convicted grooming gangs in the north-east of England and Mr Ali.

Mr Hare told his employer, according to tribunal documents, to “look at the grooming cases recently in the north of England in the last few years where white girls were being groomed and raped”.

He subsequently shared what the tribunal described as “inflammatory material about Muslims” saying “Muslims are sons of the devils”.

His colleague Mr Rai, who was also found to have unlawfully harassed Mr Ali claiming, according to the tribunal ruling, “Muslim individuals wearing (sic) this symbol to seduce Sikh girls to groom them”.

The judgment found both respondents had made complaints against Mr Ali “in a manner which invokes the grossest stereotypes of why a Muslim may be wearing a Kara”.

Mr Rai is now a union representative for Aslef and works for Great Western Railway as a train driver instructor.

Mr Hare remains in his position as a duty station manager for Heathrow Express.

A GWR spokesman said: “We are committed to a working environment where we expect colleagues to be treated with respect and dignity at all times. Bullying, harassment, victimisation and discrimination are not acceptable and will not be tolerated.”

A Heathrow Express spokesperson said: “Heathrow Express is committed to providing an inclusive working environment where everyone feels valued and respected.

“We apologise that we didn’t live up to that commitment on this occasion but we will review and fully address and implement the findings of the tribunal.”

Redline and Aslef declined to comment.

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Categories: Allahu Akbar, Anis Ali, fake bomb, Heathrow Airport, Heathrow Express, News, Security exercise, UK's biggest security firm