Post by Teddy Bear on Dec 28, 2013 20:10:46 GMT
Some may recall, following the Lee Rigby murder by radicalised Muslims, a government funded organisation called Tell Mama, whose purpose was to monitor attacks against Muslims, declared there was a huge rise in these attacks, which were later found to be highly exaggerated. As a result the government decided to end funding for this organisation.
Here's the article back in June from the Telegraph telling of this:
Muslim hate monitor to lose backing
Ministers end funding for body that claimed 'wave of attacks’ against Islam.
By Andrew Gilligan
7:00AM BST 09 Jun 2013
A controversial project claiming to measure anti-Muslim attacks will not have its government grant renewed after police and civil servants raised concerns about its methods.
The project, called Tell Mama, claimed that there had been a “sustained wave of attacks and intimidation” against British Muslims after the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, with 193 “Islamophobic incidents” reported to it, rising to 212 by last weekend.
The group’s founder, Fiyaz Mughal, said he saw “no end to this cycle of violence”, describing it as “unprecedented”. The claims were unquestioningly repeated in the media.
Tell Mama and Mr Mughal did not mention, however, that 57 per cent of the 212 reports referred to activity that took place only online, mainly offensive postings on Twitter and Facebook, or that a further 16 per cent of the 212 reports had not been verified. Not all the online abuse even originated in Britain.
Contrary to the group’s claim of a “cycle of violence” and a “sustained wave of attacks”, only 17 of the 212 incidents, 8 per cent, involved the physical targeting of people and there were no attacks on anyone serious enough to require medical treatment.
There have been a further 12 attacks on Islamic buildings, three of them serious, including a probable arson attack on a Muslim community centre in north London, which burned it to the ground.
Tell Mama supporters launched a furious campaign of protest against The Sunday Telegraph after it disclosed the breakdown last week, with round-robin emails to the newspaper accusing it of behaviour “better suited to the days of 1930s Germany”.
However, The Sunday Telegraph has now learned that even before Woolwich, the communities minister, the Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster, called Mr Mughal to a meeting and said that Tell Mama’s grant would not be renewed.
The organisation has received a total of £375,000 from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) since last year.
“Mr Mughal was giving data on attacks to DCLG which wasn’t stacking up when it was cross-referenced with other reports by Acpo [the Association of Chief Police Officers],” said one source closely involved in counter-extremism.
“He was questioned by DCLG civil servants and lost his temper. He was subsequently called in by Don Foster and told that he would receive no more money.”
A senior Liberal Democrat source confirmed the sequence of events, saying: “There was a bit of a spat. He was called in and told that Acpo had cast doubt on his figures. He was told that he would be closely monitored for the remaining period of the grant and that there would be no more money.”
A DCLG spokesman confirmed that Tell Mama’s funding would not be renewed and refused to deny that officials had raised concerns about its methods.
Tell Mama claimed in March that anti-Muslim crime was “rising”, even though the group had only been in operation at that stage for a year and had no previous figures to compare with.
Other figures, collected by the police, show that hate crime in mainly Muslim areas has fallen in the past 10 years. The only large force that collects figures on specifically anti-Muslim crime, the Metropolitan Police, reported an 8.5 per cent fall in such crimes between 2009 and 2012.
There was a spike in anti-Muslim incidents after the killing of Drummer Rigby. However, contrary to Tell Mama’s claims that it was “unprecedented”, the Met’s assistant commissioner, Cressida Dick, told MPs last week that it was “slightly less” than after previous terror attacks.
“There has not been such a very big increase in attacks as we might have feared,” she said. Mr Mughal himself has now admitted to the BBC that the number of physical attacks was “small”.
Tell Mama has also been using its budget to threaten members of the public with libel actions for criticising it on Twitter.
In mid-May, before Woolwich, one Jewish activist, Ambrosine Chetrit, received a threatening letter from solicitors after she tweeted that “Tell Mama are sitting on Twitter on the EDL hashtag, threatening anyone and everyone whose comments they do not like about Islam”.
Tell Mama also objected to a tweet in which Ms Chetrit said it was “trying to close down pro-Israel accounts daily”.
Other recipients of legal threats at the same time include Atma Singh, a former race adviser to the then Labour mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who received a legal letter from Tell Mama after tweeting that it “gives a platform to Islamists”.
Tell Mama did not claim that either of these individuals was racist or anti-Muslim. But it said their tweets were false and “defamatory” of Mr Mughal, had “damaged” his reputation, causing him “distress and embarrassment”, and demanded immediate apologies and damages. Up to four other people are believed to have received similar threats.
The letters were written by Farooq Bajwa, a solicitor who has acted for a number of Islamists and Islamist sympathisers, including the Palestinian radical leader Raed Salah and the Respect MP George Galloway.
The letters to Mr Singh and Ms Chetrit were sent to their private home addresses, neither of which are in the public domain. Ms Chetrit’s lawyer, Mark Lewis, who has acted for many phone-hacking victims, has reported Mr Bajwa and Tell Mama to the police after they refused to say how they obtained the information.
“I have been instructed to resist the claim,” said Mr Lewis. “It has no merit. I have not had any response as to how my client’s name and address were obtained.”
Mr Singh said: “I find it absurd that someone can threaten people on this kind of basis and use libel in this political way. This is nothing to do with Islamophobia – they are just trying to shut down debate.”
Ms Chetrit said: “It is very worrying and scary. All the people who have been threatened by Tell Mama are pro-Israeli.”
The DCLG claimed that Tell Mama’s funding was always due to cease in September 2013 and that Mr Foster was “very impressed” by the “progress” the group had made.
However, the funding of Tell Mama was described as “ongoing” in the Government’s “hate crime action plan” last year and only in November Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced that £214,000 of “new” and “further” funding had been granted to Tell Mama.
Mr Mughal said: “The meeting with DCLG officials related to the publication of 2012 anti-Muslim prejudice figures and having an independent review of those figures, which is good practice.
"This was agreed and has always been part of the process. The 'loss of temper’ did not relate to the methodology of data collection.”
Mr Mughal said that no public money had been used to issue the libel threats.
He said: “We will defend the right of all people to express their identities and their support for countries and groups freely.
However, we have the right to defend the integrity of our work when people broadcast [on Twitter] comments that are simply untrue and highly damaging about us.”
He declined to explain how the private addresses had been obtained, but said it was “within the law.”
So despite the discredited status of this organisation, the BBC is still featuring reports emanating from Tell Mama as though there is nothing suspect about them. We can see in this BBC article from November, not only don't they mention anything about the previous Tell Mama figures that were found to be exaggerated, but even make a point to say in the first line of the article The police are failing to investigate hundreds of cases of anti-Muslim hate messages on the internet, according to a government-funded monitoring group.
Outright lying and pure distortion to fulfil the BBC agenda.
Here's the article back in June from the Telegraph telling of this:
Muslim hate monitor to lose backing
Ministers end funding for body that claimed 'wave of attacks’ against Islam.
By Andrew Gilligan
7:00AM BST 09 Jun 2013
A controversial project claiming to measure anti-Muslim attacks will not have its government grant renewed after police and civil servants raised concerns about its methods.
The project, called Tell Mama, claimed that there had been a “sustained wave of attacks and intimidation” against British Muslims after the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, with 193 “Islamophobic incidents” reported to it, rising to 212 by last weekend.
The group’s founder, Fiyaz Mughal, said he saw “no end to this cycle of violence”, describing it as “unprecedented”. The claims were unquestioningly repeated in the media.
Tell Mama and Mr Mughal did not mention, however, that 57 per cent of the 212 reports referred to activity that took place only online, mainly offensive postings on Twitter and Facebook, or that a further 16 per cent of the 212 reports had not been verified. Not all the online abuse even originated in Britain.
Contrary to the group’s claim of a “cycle of violence” and a “sustained wave of attacks”, only 17 of the 212 incidents, 8 per cent, involved the physical targeting of people and there were no attacks on anyone serious enough to require medical treatment.
There have been a further 12 attacks on Islamic buildings, three of them serious, including a probable arson attack on a Muslim community centre in north London, which burned it to the ground.
Tell Mama supporters launched a furious campaign of protest against The Sunday Telegraph after it disclosed the breakdown last week, with round-robin emails to the newspaper accusing it of behaviour “better suited to the days of 1930s Germany”.
However, The Sunday Telegraph has now learned that even before Woolwich, the communities minister, the Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster, called Mr Mughal to a meeting and said that Tell Mama’s grant would not be renewed.
The organisation has received a total of £375,000 from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) since last year.
“Mr Mughal was giving data on attacks to DCLG which wasn’t stacking up when it was cross-referenced with other reports by Acpo [the Association of Chief Police Officers],” said one source closely involved in counter-extremism.
“He was questioned by DCLG civil servants and lost his temper. He was subsequently called in by Don Foster and told that he would receive no more money.”
A senior Liberal Democrat source confirmed the sequence of events, saying: “There was a bit of a spat. He was called in and told that Acpo had cast doubt on his figures. He was told that he would be closely monitored for the remaining period of the grant and that there would be no more money.”
A DCLG spokesman confirmed that Tell Mama’s funding would not be renewed and refused to deny that officials had raised concerns about its methods.
Tell Mama claimed in March that anti-Muslim crime was “rising”, even though the group had only been in operation at that stage for a year and had no previous figures to compare with.
Other figures, collected by the police, show that hate crime in mainly Muslim areas has fallen in the past 10 years. The only large force that collects figures on specifically anti-Muslim crime, the Metropolitan Police, reported an 8.5 per cent fall in such crimes between 2009 and 2012.
There was a spike in anti-Muslim incidents after the killing of Drummer Rigby. However, contrary to Tell Mama’s claims that it was “unprecedented”, the Met’s assistant commissioner, Cressida Dick, told MPs last week that it was “slightly less” than after previous terror attacks.
“There has not been such a very big increase in attacks as we might have feared,” she said. Mr Mughal himself has now admitted to the BBC that the number of physical attacks was “small”.
Tell Mama has also been using its budget to threaten members of the public with libel actions for criticising it on Twitter.
In mid-May, before Woolwich, one Jewish activist, Ambrosine Chetrit, received a threatening letter from solicitors after she tweeted that “Tell Mama are sitting on Twitter on the EDL hashtag, threatening anyone and everyone whose comments they do not like about Islam”.
Tell Mama also objected to a tweet in which Ms Chetrit said it was “trying to close down pro-Israel accounts daily”.
Other recipients of legal threats at the same time include Atma Singh, a former race adviser to the then Labour mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who received a legal letter from Tell Mama after tweeting that it “gives a platform to Islamists”.
Tell Mama did not claim that either of these individuals was racist or anti-Muslim. But it said their tweets were false and “defamatory” of Mr Mughal, had “damaged” his reputation, causing him “distress and embarrassment”, and demanded immediate apologies and damages. Up to four other people are believed to have received similar threats.
The letters were written by Farooq Bajwa, a solicitor who has acted for a number of Islamists and Islamist sympathisers, including the Palestinian radical leader Raed Salah and the Respect MP George Galloway.
The letters to Mr Singh and Ms Chetrit were sent to their private home addresses, neither of which are in the public domain. Ms Chetrit’s lawyer, Mark Lewis, who has acted for many phone-hacking victims, has reported Mr Bajwa and Tell Mama to the police after they refused to say how they obtained the information.
“I have been instructed to resist the claim,” said Mr Lewis. “It has no merit. I have not had any response as to how my client’s name and address were obtained.”
Mr Singh said: “I find it absurd that someone can threaten people on this kind of basis and use libel in this political way. This is nothing to do with Islamophobia – they are just trying to shut down debate.”
Ms Chetrit said: “It is very worrying and scary. All the people who have been threatened by Tell Mama are pro-Israeli.”
The DCLG claimed that Tell Mama’s funding was always due to cease in September 2013 and that Mr Foster was “very impressed” by the “progress” the group had made.
However, the funding of Tell Mama was described as “ongoing” in the Government’s “hate crime action plan” last year and only in November Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced that £214,000 of “new” and “further” funding had been granted to Tell Mama.
Mr Mughal said: “The meeting with DCLG officials related to the publication of 2012 anti-Muslim prejudice figures and having an independent review of those figures, which is good practice.
"This was agreed and has always been part of the process. The 'loss of temper’ did not relate to the methodology of data collection.”
Mr Mughal said that no public money had been used to issue the libel threats.
He said: “We will defend the right of all people to express their identities and their support for countries and groups freely.
However, we have the right to defend the integrity of our work when people broadcast [on Twitter] comments that are simply untrue and highly damaging about us.”
He declined to explain how the private addresses had been obtained, but said it was “within the law.”
So despite the discredited status of this organisation, the BBC is still featuring reports emanating from Tell Mama as though there is nothing suspect about them. We can see in this BBC article from November, not only don't they mention anything about the previous Tell Mama figures that were found to be exaggerated, but even make a point to say in the first line of the article The police are failing to investigate hundreds of cases of anti-Muslim hate messages on the internet, according to a government-funded monitoring group.
Outright lying and pure distortion to fulfil the BBC agenda.
24 November 2013 Last updated at 01:13
Police 'failing to investigate anti-Muslim abuse'
The police are failing to investigate hundreds of cases of anti-Muslim hate messages on the internet, according to a government-funded monitoring group.
Tell Mama, which records anti-Muslim attacks, says it recorded 1,432 cases of abuse in the last 22 months.
But Tell Mama has told the BBC it has only had a response from the police regarding 70 cases.
The Association of Chief Police Officers said it was working to address the concerns expressed by Tell Mama.
After recording details of the abuse, Tell Mama (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) reports directly to the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) hate crime reporting system.
The group - which was set up two years ago - told the BBC 5 live Investigates programme that the police response has been poor and last month it wrote a letter to the Acpo president Sir Hugh Orde, complaining about the lack of action.
It cited two prolific social media users who promote their anti-Muslim beliefs daily.
Fiyaz Mughal is the founder of the interfaith Faith Matters organisation, which runs Tell Mama.
"It is worrying for us, given that the number of call-backs and subsequently the number of investigations that have moved forward have been extremely small in comparison to the volume of hate crimes we have sent in to police forces," he said.
"They go from harassment and abusive name-calling right the way through to threats - threats to come round to somebody's house and harm them, threats to attack or do something to a mosque, threats even to burn a mosque.
"That's the level of what we are passing through and there have been numerous occasions where we have sent information about direct threats to mosques, which frankly we haven't heard anything about. That is worrying."
Social media abuse
One 25-year-old woman victim told 5 live Investigates she was targeted by a man who posted a photograph of her on Twitter and called her an ugly Pakistani.
His followers commented on her appearance and there were racist overtones in many of the messages. He tweeted that "he lives very close to her" and a supporter of the English Defence League identified where it was.
But when she reported the matter to the police they said they could not do anything.
She told the BBC: "I made a statement and the police said it was quite difficult to do anything because it's quite difficult to prosecute someone when it comes to online abuse.
"They told me the evidence was no longer there, that it was difficult to identify who he was and there was just so much online abuse. The police said they'd be in touch but that was a week ago and I still haven't heard anything."
Anyone posting an offensive comment online can face charges under the Communications Act, or be charged with inciting racial or religious hatred.
The Crown Prosecution Service published guidelines in the summer on prosecutions involving social media and it set a high threshold for prosecution. Simply being offensive, shocking or disturbing is not enough.
But the CPS said any messages that amount to a credible threat of violence, a targeted campaign of harassment against an individual or which breach court orders should be "robustly prosecuted".
Acpo said reports of online hate messages were sent through to individual forces to investigate. Acpo has no role in monitoring how those forces handle those cases - that is a matter for each chief officer.
Supt Paul Giannasi, a member of Acpo's hate crime group, said: "The huge increase in the reporting of hate material on the internet has presented major new challenges for the police. We have met with Tell Mama and have discussed their concerns. In response, we have worked with forces to develop an audit process so senior officers can analyse how their forces are responding to these and similar reports. When it is circulated it will allow all areas to monitor their own performance.
"Acpo and the College of Policing have also developed new guidance to colleagues about how to respond to these issues. We have heard the concerns of Tell Mama and we are working with them to address their concerns and improve communications."
He said some forces had problems keeping on top of the sheer number of reports coming in and, because many social media companies were based in the US, there were also difficulties in securing evidence such as details of the IP address, which identifies the computer of the alleged perpetrator.
Acpo has its own website for reporting hate crime and the police urged anyone who thinks they are a victim of hate crime to report it.
Police 'failing to investigate anti-Muslim abuse'
The police are failing to investigate hundreds of cases of anti-Muslim hate messages on the internet, according to a government-funded monitoring group.
Tell Mama, which records anti-Muslim attacks, says it recorded 1,432 cases of abuse in the last 22 months.
But Tell Mama has told the BBC it has only had a response from the police regarding 70 cases.
The Association of Chief Police Officers said it was working to address the concerns expressed by Tell Mama.
After recording details of the abuse, Tell Mama (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) reports directly to the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) hate crime reporting system.
The group - which was set up two years ago - told the BBC 5 live Investigates programme that the police response has been poor and last month it wrote a letter to the Acpo president Sir Hugh Orde, complaining about the lack of action.
It cited two prolific social media users who promote their anti-Muslim beliefs daily.
Fiyaz Mughal is the founder of the interfaith Faith Matters organisation, which runs Tell Mama.
"It is worrying for us, given that the number of call-backs and subsequently the number of investigations that have moved forward have been extremely small in comparison to the volume of hate crimes we have sent in to police forces," he said.
"They go from harassment and abusive name-calling right the way through to threats - threats to come round to somebody's house and harm them, threats to attack or do something to a mosque, threats even to burn a mosque.
"That's the level of what we are passing through and there have been numerous occasions where we have sent information about direct threats to mosques, which frankly we haven't heard anything about. That is worrying."
Social media abuse
One 25-year-old woman victim told 5 live Investigates she was targeted by a man who posted a photograph of her on Twitter and called her an ugly Pakistani.
His followers commented on her appearance and there were racist overtones in many of the messages. He tweeted that "he lives very close to her" and a supporter of the English Defence League identified where it was.
But when she reported the matter to the police they said they could not do anything.
She told the BBC: "I made a statement and the police said it was quite difficult to do anything because it's quite difficult to prosecute someone when it comes to online abuse.
"They told me the evidence was no longer there, that it was difficult to identify who he was and there was just so much online abuse. The police said they'd be in touch but that was a week ago and I still haven't heard anything."
Anyone posting an offensive comment online can face charges under the Communications Act, or be charged with inciting racial or religious hatred.
The Crown Prosecution Service published guidelines in the summer on prosecutions involving social media and it set a high threshold for prosecution. Simply being offensive, shocking or disturbing is not enough.
But the CPS said any messages that amount to a credible threat of violence, a targeted campaign of harassment against an individual or which breach court orders should be "robustly prosecuted".
Acpo said reports of online hate messages were sent through to individual forces to investigate. Acpo has no role in monitoring how those forces handle those cases - that is a matter for each chief officer.
Supt Paul Giannasi, a member of Acpo's hate crime group, said: "The huge increase in the reporting of hate material on the internet has presented major new challenges for the police. We have met with Tell Mama and have discussed their concerns. In response, we have worked with forces to develop an audit process so senior officers can analyse how their forces are responding to these and similar reports. When it is circulated it will allow all areas to monitor their own performance.
"Acpo and the College of Policing have also developed new guidance to colleagues about how to respond to these issues. We have heard the concerns of Tell Mama and we are working with them to address their concerns and improve communications."
He said some forces had problems keeping on top of the sheer number of reports coming in and, because many social media companies were based in the US, there were also difficulties in securing evidence such as details of the IP address, which identifies the computer of the alleged perpetrator.
Acpo has its own website for reporting hate crime and the police urged anyone who thinks they are a victim of hate crime to report it.
