Seven Days Of Hatred

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The number of racist and extremist crimes investigated by the Czech police has been rising steadily, from 131 in 1996 to 473 last year. Police attribute this to better law enforcement, but Ondrej Cakl, chairman of Tolerance and Civil Society, which monitors neo-Nazi activity, disagrees. He says police complacency explains why the Czech Republic has one of the biggest skinhead populations in Europe as a proportion of the population: some 7,000 members and sympathizers, according to Czech police.

9:45 P.M., FRIDAY
DEVIZES, U.K.
A 16-year-old performing-arts student walked briskly through the center of Devizes, 155 km west of London, to meet her stepfather. Clara (not her real name) passed a group of 11 young women near a pub, some of whom she recognized. One of the girls was staggering, so Clara offered to help. But the girls suddenly circled her menacingly, she says. One teased Clara, who is openly gay, about her girlfriend. When Clara tried to move on, one of the girls lunged at her, bruising her face around the eye. Then the group pushed her against a wall, punching and shoving her, she says. Eventually, she squirmed her way along the wall and into a fish-and-chip shop, where the staff drove her attackers away. "The incident is being treated as homophobic," says Sergeant Guy Williams of the Devizes police force.

Starting in January, the U.K. will include offences targeting gays and people with disabilities as hate crimes, making perpetrators eligible for longer sentences. Detective Inspector Kevin Concannon, who heads the London borough of Camden police team investigating hate crimes, says such legislation is proving effective. "Race crime in the past was often not reported, but now people know that incidents believed to have a racist element carry tougher sentences," he says.

Of all the misconceptions about hate crimes in the U.K., the most common is that people who commit them are always hardened extremists, says Paul Iganski, a criminology and sociology lecturer at EssexUniversity who has co-authored books on the subject. The truth is more mundane, but no less chilling. "The offenders are basically people engaged in anti-social behavior, but at times drawing on cultural bigotry." That populist bigotry — the idea that it's O.K. to target certain kinds of people — represents the real danger. What Yonathan Arfi, president of the Union of French Jewish Students, says about anti-Semitism in France could apply to prejudices underlying other hate crimes: "It's become a banality, part of the atmosphere."

Five days before the fire that ravaged the Merkaz Hatorah school in Gagny, a group of students was taunted by a teenage girl in the subway: "The Jews, we have to eliminate you," she sneered. Says Jacques Benisty, the school's director, as he looks out over the charred remains of his building: "These are idiotic expressions. We are used to that." Rooting out this kind of casual bigotry may be key to protecting students at Merkaz Hatorah — and targeted minorities throughout Europe.