Regarding the Indian student who was murdered in Manchester
slick1two
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Why did the police stop short of calling it a racially motivated attack and instead called it a hate crime. Surely if this hate was towards his ethnicity or race then should it not be called as such?
Still it was a cold blooded murder and the perpetrators need to to brought to justice.
Still it was a cold blooded murder and the perpetrators need to to brought to justice.
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Any legal people here??
, hate is a strong word. You don't just hate someone for a petty reason. Envious of someone yes, but given the context of the killing it does point to racism or xenophobia. Of course we don't know a great deal but you can't rule that out as a motive.
My understanding is that a hate crime is a crime committed against anyone affiliated to a particular group. So that could include race, gender, sexuality, religion, polictical - any affiliation you can think of really. A racially motivated attack is just one of many categories.
Edit: oops, already answered by Wonkey.
So in today's update:
"The Lancaster University student was shot by a white man in the early hours" ~ BBC
On reflection perhaps the more interesting part is calling the victim a 'student', as he certainly wasn't killed for being a 'student' (well, presumably). So impliedly he was killed 'by a white man' for reasons of race. To me it's more likely if someone immature is looking for an excuse to use a gun it would be that he was a foreigner, ie had a foreign accent. Salford and Manchester are very multicultural areas, the idea that someone would kill someone for being Asian seems far-fetched to me.
By way of unhappy symmetry there was another recent shooting in another part of the world, British Aid worker Khuram Shaikh, a Salford Uni graduate, killed in Sri Lanka. It's interesting to see how the British media report the two cases.
To link a racial aspect to the murder is spot on in my opinion. Racially motivated killings aren't fat fetched at all. People still get beat up for being an ethnic minority. I've been subjected to racial abuse literally every time I have left London, even if it's just a few miles outside, in parts of Essex for example. There are many pockets of racists who have nothing better to do than racially abuse people verbally or physically. Racism is very much alive and kicking in the UK and I talk from experience.
So yeah I can totally believe someone getting shot, stabbed, murdered for being non white. Cos when you have that level of hatred inside you, which many folk still do, then they are capable of anything.
Is gender covered by hate crime law? And there was me thinking that women and children were the only groups excluded from these laws.
Can't even go on a day trip somewhere without some racist making a comment on a train or something. Of course killing someone whilst holding their race against them is am extreme example but there are many ways to torment someone. It's just sad that in the 21st century people are still so narrow minded and prejudiced.
People need to accept that racism and xenophobia is still very much a problem, not just gloss over that fact and make excuses for this scum elements in society. When you still got youngsters and kids spouting racial abuse at people then you know that racist attitudes are being transferred from generation to generation. A person does not deserve to be singled out for abuse when they done nothing wrong, for just being who they are like our Northern Irish poster has just described.
because witnesses to the murder perceived it as one..
thats the law of the land
the police have not finished investigating so don't want to jump to a conclusion, it still may turn out to be a racist attack, who knows. in this scenario when there is no clear motive, they look to the witness statements.
I think the point is that when there is a hate crime, the only provocation was that the victim was black, or gay or presumed to be of a particular religion, or disabled etc. That's not to say that other murder victims aren't innocent, but generally there is some kind of motive linking the perpetrator with the victim. In the case of a hate crime, that connection is that they are, for example, Asian.
Because as of yet the police do not know , they have classified it as a hate crime as the local community have bascially asked them to.
Personally I think its right for the police until they know not to classify anything, it can be detrimental to an enquiry to classify it without full knowledge.