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:43
Racist murde shocks Scotland
National protest planned in Glasgow Words: Mark Brown
he murder of a 22-year-old I Kurdish asylum seeker in
Glasgow on Saturday 4 August has shocked Scotland. Frightened and angry refugees and their supporters protested outside Glasgow City Chambers in the days after the suspected racist killing of the man known to Glasgow asylum seekers as Firsat Yildiz.
On Sunday 5 August. 350 refugees marched from the Sighthill area of the city, where Firsat was murdered, to George Square. The following day more than 1,000 protestors. including trade unionists and anti-racists from across Glasgow. gathered to demand justice for the dead man and an end to racist attacks.
Representatives of the Glasgow Refugee Action Group and the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees were joined by Bill Speirs. general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and Paul
McDonald of the Fire Brigades Union.
McDonald. whose union is affiliated to the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees and the Anti-Nazi League. called for a campaign to drive back the fascist British National Party. which has sent activists into Sighthill.
Speirs condemned the Labour government's policies of voucher payments and the dispersal of asylum seekers as contributing to the atmosphere of racism. He reminded the crowd that Glasgow welcomed refugees from Chile following Pinochet's coup in 1973. and he called for the same solidarity today to isolate the racist minority.
Leading anti-racist campaigner Aamer Anwar supported the call for a national demonstration against anti- refugee racism in Glasgow.
In a separate development. The Daily Record newspaper found itself widely criticised for a report it ran on Wednesday 8 August claiming that the murdered refugee was ‘a conman who came to this country to make a fast
buck'. Following the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees' announcement that it would be submitting a complaint about the article to the Press Complaints Commission, the paper faced the anger of major figures in Scottish society.
Glasgow City Councillor Bashir Maan, head of the Glasgow Police Board. said the Record was ‘putting the whole question of asylum seekers in the lap of racists; giving them suppon of their views'. Two former editors of The Scotsman, Magnus Linklater and Tim Luckhurst, condemned the article as threatening to inflame the tensions which followed Firsat's murder. Luckhurst said the reporting was ‘racist'.
The date of the national demonstration against racism had yet to be confirmed as The List went to press. See the Anti-Nazi League's web- site for details: http://www.an|.org.uk I Mark Brown is a freelance journalist and secretary of the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees.
4 l AVALANCHES
‘ Music The cut-up kings do it live. And very direct. Arches, Glasgow.
FIRST PERSON W Documentary-maker extraordinaire Errol Morris gets under the skin of America's most horrid in this dark series of first- hand accounts of chaos. See review, page 43. Channel 4.
FINAL FANTASY Film Animation takes a quantum leap with this CGI sci-ii hit based on the Japanese video game. General release. Glasgow.
SPOOKS
Music En masse funky shenanigans from this US collective who blend hip hop attitude with soulful R&B grooves. Garage, Glasgow.
FRANKIE’S PICK OF THE
FRINGE
Comedy The thoroughly laconic Arnold Brown heads the cast for this gig hosted by Frankie Boyle. The Stand, Glasgow.
Yu-Gi-Oh put their cards on
Coming quite soon . . .
the table
2 TNE LIST 16—23 Aug 2001
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet? More like, hiya and wahay. pet. as the united kingdom of brickies reform for more jaunts to insult the locals or lust after their womenfolk. This time though, they're on the Beeb not lTV, and it's not Germany, but Arizona which will be invaded by
the albion
marketeers. And yes.
the original gang are getting back together after fifteen long years: Jimmy Nail. Kevin Whately. Tim Neely and Timothy Spall should have a blast making it. Will it be as much fun watching it? . . . Can you imagine a
Japanese animation craze bigger than Pokemon? Well, there is one and it's coming our way in the autumn thanks to Sky One. The Yu- Gi-Oh game has sold 3.5b cards in the last three years compared to Pokemon's mere 300m and the animated story of a young boy who
beats rivals with an ancient deck is aimed at the ten to fourteen-year-old boy who will be gagging on some scary monsters and super ladies . . . Hot gig dates expected for the end of the year include Basement Jaxx. P.J. Harvey. Bjork and Tindersticks . . . The expected
success of comic book-turned movie Ghost World may open up the filmy floodgates to similar transfers. Well, here's one anyway: Clive Barker‘s Ecto-Kld. whose hero is the love child of a psychic woman and the ghost of a murdered man. Those PTA meetings must be tricky.