Remembering Srebrenica joined Social Housing provider Fortis Living for an event for National Hate Crime Awareness Week, organised in response to the social housing provider seeing the spike in reported incidents after the EU referendum. They surveyed their tenants and one of the findings was that they don’t know enough about hate crime and reporting it.
Hosted by The University of Worcester, Remembering Srebrenica’s Anousheh Haghdadi joined speakers with a diverse range of experiences, whose different perspectives gave the audience much to reflect on and provoked a wide-ranging discussion.
West Mercia Police outlined the legal side of what constitutes a hate crime, then we heard the victims’ perspective with the incredibly moving testimony from Sue Prince, whose daughter Gemma Hayter had a learning disability and was murdered by friends 6 years ago. Her other daughter Nikki Satchell-Reid also spoke powerfully about the need to protect vulnerable people better while debunking the myth that hate crimes are committed by strangers.
Anousheh Haghdadi’s talk “Srebrenica; a Deadly Warning” spoke of the dangers of hatred going unchecked. She told the stories of genocide survivors Nedzad Avdic and Hatidza Mehmedovic through videos of their testimony before looking at parallels between what happened in the lead up to the genocide in Bosnia and examples of hate crime in the UK.
Tom Piotrowski, Diversity and Inclusion Advisor at Fortis Living said afterwards:
“We thank Anousheh from Remembering Srebrenica for a brilliant and genuinely thought-provoking presentation. I’ve already had a number of attendees telling me how it opened their eyes and got them thinking about genocides in a different, deeper way.
“The challenge, of course, is about playing our part in trying to influence those narratives in a positive and objective way. What an important challenge that is, especially today.”
Anousheh Haghdadi of Remembering Srebrenica was equally fulsome in her praise of Fortis Living for putting on the event:
“I was delighted to be asked to speak at such an important event in Worcester. By challenging so many people to think about hate crime in new ways, Fortis Living and the University of Worcester are playing a vital role in helping to tackle this growing problem.
“Remembering Srebrenica’s aim is to teach lessons from the past to avoid hatred taking hold in our society. We work with a number of police forces across the country and hope that more events like this will be held where we can focus on hate crime and preventing more people from becoming victims.”
If you are interested in putting on an event about hate crime and would like our input, please get in touch with us.
