Comment: This story on guardian.co.uk highlights why it is important to tackle racism. If we’d ever have the tools to measure how much racism and prejudice costs society, I am certain that many would think twice about fueling such a social illness. Apart from its high costs and adverse impact, racism can lead to death as was the case of Gary Dobson and David Norris, who were convicted after 18 years of racist murder.
Writes the guardian.co.uk: “The [convicted] pair were part of a group of five white men who were suspected just hours after the murder in 1993, but had escaped justice through police failings and because some witnesses were too scared to come forward. New scientific evidence tied Dobson and Norris to the murder and exposed as lies their claims that they were not present when Lawrence was attacked. A covert video shot in the flat that Dobson rented in 1994 showed him and Norris bragging and fantasising about inflicting violence on ethnic minorities, using explicit racist language, and having close friends who handled knives.”
Certainly the death of an innocent teenager at the hands of a gang of white racists is alarming but what is more alarming is how the police fumbled this case.
The public has every right to be outraged.
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Two men have finally been convicted of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, 18 years after a white gang fuelled by hatred stabbed the black teenager to death. Gary Dobson, 36, and David Norris, 35, were found guilty of murder on Tuesday by a jury at the Old Bailey. The crime had raised searching questions about racism in Britain.
Would this have been treated as a racially motivated offence in Finland?
–Would this have been treated as a racially motivated offence in Finland?
Good question. We have an unresolved death case of a Chinese woman in Tampere.