Rights leaders warn new spike in US hate crimes

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US president, the financial crisis and immigration have formed a lethal cocktail leading to a spike in hate crimes, rights leaders warned.

"This toxic combination of the financial crisis, a significant political change, and concern about shifting demographics has created what could be a combustible combination," Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, told reporters.

"There has been a documented rise in these threats of violence" which have been "stoked by extreme political rhetoric... sensationalism and irresponsibility that we've seen on talk-show radio and other forms of communication, like the Internet," he said.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the number of hate groups operating in the United States increased more than four percent in 2008 and has grown by 54 percent since 2000, a report issued Tuesday by the Leadership Conference showed.

"Barack Obama's election has inflamed racist extremists who see it as another sign that their country is under siege by non-whites," said Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report published by the SPLC.

While many thought the election of Obama had signalled an end to racially divided America, a report issued Tuesday by the Leadership Conference painted a different reality.

"The spate of racially-motivated hate crimes and violence against minorities and immigrants that occurred before and after Election Day makes clear that a final victory over prejudice and racial hostility remains elusive," the report said.

A hate crime occurs at least once every hour in the United States, said Henderson.

Henderson cited the example of the elderly self-avowed white supremacist who last week gunned down an African-American security guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to prove a point that vitriolic speech fuels hate crime.

"The shooter had been promoting his white supremacist views online for years. Last week, words turned to hate," he said.

Attacks against Hispanics, who make up the largest immigrant group in the United States, have increased in number and sometimes in brutality as the debate over immigration reform has become more heated and "anti-immigrant vitriol on radio, television, and the Internet" have increased.

A group of teens who last year beat to death Luis Ramirez, a Latino father of two, will be sentenced Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Henderson said.

Meanwhile, Obama of all recent presidents has received the most threats of any recent US leader, the Leadership Conference said in its report, calling on US lawmakers to pass hate crimes legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowed Monday that lawmakers would vote before the August recess on a key piece of legislation which would provide special funding to state and local law enforcement to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, and expand protection for the first time to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals and the mentally and physically disabled.