Fifty refugees, asylum seekers and local residents demonstrated
outside Gill Bridge Police Station in Sunderland, on Thursday 29th August,
angry at the death of their friend, Peyman
Bahmani, and convinced that police indifference
had contributed to it.
Bahmani, an Iranian from the City of Sheraz, came to
Britain two and a half years ago and under the Government’s dispersal
programme was, like many others, sent to the Hendon area in Sunderland.
He was to be stabbed to death just outside his home in Peel Street on
Wednesday afternoon. Two men and woman are helping police with their enquiries,
which a Northumbria Police spokesman has described as "racially motivated"
and are now trying to "contact the man's family who we believe to be Iranian
asylum seekers". The murder hunt is being led by Det Supt Steve Bolam
Peel Street is in a dilapidated state, part of a whole
sprawl of houses which have seen better days. The Hendon area contains
some severe pockets of social deprivation.
Visitors to the local shop on the corner of Peel Street
expressed regret at what had happened. One of them said; "Something like
this was bound to happen. They [the refugees] have been getting terrible
abuse. And there are too many people on drugs round here".
The owner, who is of Indian descent has had the shop
since the mid 1980’s, he cannot remember how many times his property
has been attacked or he has been racially abused. "Sadly, its dozens of
times". He was reluctant to say, but on very few occasions have the police
caught those responsible.
Mohammed, who lives in the same house as the dead man,
was tearful when he said "We have had our windows broken over 25 times.
We now have a perspex window. We asked the police for a security camera,
but they refused. We know the attackers, they abuse us and tell us to
go home. Four weeks ago one of the refugees had his nose broken, the police
came, took a statement and left".
Another refugee, who didn’t want to be named had
approached the police for extra security after being stabbed. Nothing
happened. "They [the attackers] told me that ‘if you go to the police
station we are going to kill you’".
Just recently, figures released by Northumbria Police
have shown that Sunderland Central, which covers Hendon, had the largest
number of racist incidents between April and the end of May 2002. The
increase of nearly 18% on the same period last year was in defiance of
a regional trend showing the figures falling.
Bahram Fasai, one of the demo organisers is determined
that Bahmani won’t be forgotten but said that "we can’t just
blame the police, we have to better organise ourselves". As he spoke the
secretary of UNISON, Bob Scott, promised to get the union to back any
campaign which was formed.
Tehri Khan, the organiser of the city’s longest
running multi-cultural organisation, UNITY, shook his head and said "it’s
as we predicted at the public meeting on July 24th", when over 40 black
and ethnic minority residents had spoken of their fear of going out for
fear of racial abuse and even attack. [**]
Peyman Bahmani,
won’t be forgotten: source: Sunderland AFA
revopermin@ukonline.co.uk
The Independent, 30 August 2002
Police appealed for calm among the ethnic minority communities
of Sunderland yesterday as they began investigating the racially motivated
murder of a 28-year-old Iranian asylum-seeker.
After a march on Sunderland police station by 50 asylum-seekers,
the city's police commander, Superintendent Paul Weir, met community leaders
in what he conceded was a mood of "anger and apprehension" over the murder
of Peyman Bahmani, who was killed by a single stab wound to his chest
on Wednesday afternoon.
The presence of ethnic faultlines in Sunderland has been
graphically demonstrated by the British National Party's eagerness to
exploit them in the past year. The far-right party has staged three rallies
and fielded three local election candidates in the city.
Supt Weir said the murder had strengthened his resolve
to "forge even greater links with ethnic communities". The Monitoring
Group, a race relations advocacy group with links to the National Civil
Rights movement, said Mr Bahmani had complained of racial abuse and demanded
action to halt persistent attacks. Another protest march is planned for
this morning.
Mr Bahmani was visiting friends in Sunderland's multi-ethnic
Hendon district on Wednesday when he became involved in a stand-off between
white and Iranian gangs in Peel Street. At 3.20pm, after a dispute lasting
no more than 15 minutes, he was stabbed and, despite emergency surgery
at Sunderland Royal Hospital, died soon after.
Detective Superintendent Steve Bolam, who is leading the
investigation, emerged from interviews with the victim's Iranian friends
yesterday to say he was convinced the attack was racially motivated.
It is not the first attack on an asylum-seeker in the
city. An Iranian refugee had his face and back slashed after confronting
two robbers in a city subway 18 months ago and swastikas have been sprayed
on Asians' vehicles in the city in the past few months.
But an equally graphic demonstration of the daily reality
of ethnic life in Sunderland was provided by Mike Musonza, a cheerful
29-year-old Zimbabwean asylum-seeker.
He said "The lads on Victoria Road call me kaffir (nigger),"
he said with an air of casual resignation as he walked near the spot where
Mr Bahmani was stabbed. "Funny that — it's an old-fashioned word.
Not the sort of thing you expect to hear. But I've had it four times in
two months. No, you don't go to the police when it happens — just
get on with it, that's what I say."
His wife, Serviria, 36, had her own stories of verbal
abuse — and the rotten eggs thrown at a young male friend of theirs
a month ago. It's hardly what she expected when she left Harare for London
in search of political asylum.
But it's not all bad, she said. Moving houses recently
to a mildly more affluent district brought a sense of "brotherhood and
sisterhood" with whites and Asians, she said.
That is generally how life seems to be for Sunderland's
280 asylum-seekers. Bearable and even decent at times, with the spectre
of racism always there when the local, unemployed, disenchanted white
boys are inclined to lash out.
The targets of mob rule actually transcend race, said
a local Iranian resident, Moses. "You can't really call it racism," he
claimed. "They do these things among themselves too, because they get
depressed. They come out and knife each other — just ask the local
hospitals on Saturday nights."
When the BNP is around, things change dramatically, said
shopkeeper, Dhillon Jaspinder, 45, at the local Mombrays off-licence.
"The white boys will sometimes be fine with me — then look what happened
to me on Hitler's birthday. They were whipped up into mad things," he
said.
When it comes to the crunch, there is not enough raw hatred
to provide a BNP platform. The party lost its deposits in the last elections
and five people showed up at the last rally, when 100 were expected.
Mr Bahmani, who is believed to have been single and unemployed,
had more than his share of abuse. He would "dash" from the corner shop
to his friends' house in Peel Street, according to Mr Jaspinder. One of
his friends said Mr Bahmani had "many bad experiences." The friend, Bolbek,
claimed Mr Bahmani expressed a desire to leave Sunderland altogether.
"He just came here for a safe life, not to be a victim
of something," said Bolbek. "He left Iran because of persecution and fear
of death and wanted to travel to a safe place — any safe place, it
didn't matter where."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=328719
