Racist mental health nurse struck off for discriminatory views of Muslim, migrant, and Polish communities
A misconduct panel has struck off a racist mental health nurse who posted discriminatory materials on social media and made discriminatory remarks in the presence of colleagues, some of whom were of minority ethnic backgrounds.
An Asian colleague of Sarah Hewston, who worked at the Dorothy Pattison Hospital in the Walsall Crisis Team in the West Midlands, gave evidence to the panel and described how the comments negatively impacted them. It included examples of when Ms Hewston made racist comments like “immigrants and Asian males carry out acid attacks and then cry racist without taking responsibility”.
That colleague, identified in the 64-page report from the Nursing and Midwifery Council Fitness to Practise Committee as Witness 2, was also shown a dehumanising and discriminatory meme about the burqa, which Ms Hewston wanted to be banned.
Nor did the panel accept her claim that it was “humour banter” as it was wholly inappropriate.
The panel dismissed her claim that such an opinion was clinical (a desire to see patients’ faces) but between colleagues and discriminatory and not born from a professional judgement.
Other racist and discriminatory comments Sarah Hewston made criminalised Asian, Polish, and migrant communities, including calling for the deportation of Polish communities. She told two colleagues that “Polish and/or foreigners generally come over here with expectations, that there are too many of them, something needs to stop it and send them back”.
Other discriminatory comments included that all Asian males are involved in criminal acts of grooming, which left her Asian colleague (again, Witness 2) speechless and that she blamed Muslim, Asian, and Polish communities for acid attacks. Her colleague, in evidence, described how the harmful comments left him feeling ‘vulnerable’. He said, in evidence, “I am an Asian male, and so I went quiet at this point. I was speechless…I felt really uncomfortable about the whole situation…this conversation made me think about whether she felt the same about me she felt about Asian males in general”.
Other discriminatory comments included, “Eastern Europeans use the UK welfare system to their advantage”.
Hewston shared an antagonistic meme towards Muslim communities, which read, “I am proud to English” with a photograph of a bacon sandwich and “How many people dare to like and share it?”. The panel found this to be racist. Despite not mentioning Muslims explicitly, the totality of their social media conduct pointed to a pattern that “displayed clear prejudicial themes and attitudes towards Islam and members of the Muslim faith,” which Witness 2 also described as racist.
The panel also ruled against Hewston after she shared a dehumanising meme of Muslim women in face veils as umbrellas (such examples Tell MAMA has highlighted previously).
A further ruling concerned a meme posted to offend Muslim communities that read, “Respect Ramadan no bikinis”.
A further racist post linked Muslims to incest as Witness 3, the investigation manager at the Trust oversaw a review of their anti-Muslim posts. The panel agreed with their findings: “He was of the view that your social media posts were racist. This is consistent with the panel’s view, and it further identified a common theme that reflects a racist ideology towards people of the Muslim faith”.
In reaching their misconduct findings, the panel stated that the panel her actions “demonstrated a serious departure from the fundamental tenets of nursing practice”.
The interim suspension order of 18 months appeared online on June 30.
In concluding their findings, the panel revealed the necessity of a striking-off order, adding, “actions were significant departures from the standards expected of a registered nurse and are fundamentally incompatible with you remaining on the register”.
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Categories: discrimination, News, NHS
Former Malaysia PM Mahathir refuses to apologise for France attack comments
Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad defends his widely condemned comments on attacks by Muslim extremists in France, saying that they were taken out of context as he criticised Twitter and Facebook for removing his posts.
The 95-year-old sparked widespread outrage when he wrote on his blog on Thursday that “Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”.
Twitter removed a tweet from Mr Mahathir containing the remark, which it said glorified violence, while France’s digital minister demanded the company also ban Mr Mahathir from its platform.
“I am indeed disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog,” Mr Mahathir said in a statement.
He said critics failed to read his posting in full, especially the next sentence which read: “But by and large Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings.”
He said Twitter and Facebook removed the posting despite his explanation, and slammed the move as hypocritical.
“On the one hand, they defended those who chose to display offending caricatures of Prophet Mohammed … and expect all Muslims to swallow it in the name of freedom of speech and expression,” he said.
“On the other, they deleted deliberately that Muslims had never sought revenge for the injustice against them in the past”, thereby stirring French hatred for Muslims, he added.
On Twitter, however, that sentence was not deleted. A staff member for Mr Mahathir said the entire posting was removed by Facebook.
Facebook Malaysia said in an email that it removed Mr Mahathir’s posting for violating its policies, adding: “We do not allow hate speech on Facebook and strongly condemn any support for violence, death or physical harm.”
The comments by the two-time prime minister were in response to calls by Muslim nations to boycott French products after French leader Emmanuel Macron described Islam as a religion “in crisis” and vowed to crack down on radicalism following the murder of a French teacher who showed his class a cartoon depicting the prophet of Islam.
His remarks also came as a Tunisian man killed three people at a church in the southern French city of Nice.
The US ambassador to Malaysia, Kamala Shirin Lakhdir, said on Friday that she “strongly disagreed” with Mr Mahathir’s statement, adding in a statement: “Freedom of expression is a right, calling for violence is not.”
Mr Mahathir has been viewed as an advocate of moderate Islamic views and a spokesman for the interests of developing countries.
At the same time, he has pointedly criticised Western society and nations as well as their relationships to the Muslim world, while he has been denounced in Israel and elsewhere for making anti-Semitic remarks.
The post Former Malaysia PM Mahathir refuses to apologise for France attack comments appeared first on Faith Matters.
Categories: Emmanuel Macron, France comments, Malaysia Pm Mahathir, News, Nice