Equality Commission Northern Ireland

Social media can be a wonderful thing. Every day I am bombarded with stories, experiences, pictures, quizzes to take and amazing “facts”  - many of which need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Thing is, as humans we like a good story and at times we’re not too worried if we add something extra to that story in our re-telling. Some stories are simply based on people’s opinions  - such as the story that leaving a tooth in a glass of Coke overnight will make it dissolve. Others are based on observable fact. So although it might seem hard to accept, we can re-cycle the same amount of gold from 41 mobile phones as we can extract from 1 ton of ore.

So it goes on, dealing with the past. It seems we are destined to live a ground-hog existence when we try to address our legacy issues. But when does the past stop and the present begin? Does it stop in 1998? Or does the past inhabit our present and, in that sense, is the past never truly gone?

Hate crime is nothing new. Ancient Chinese texts recorded that General Ran Min ordered the extermination of all people with racial characteristics of high-bridged nose and bushy beard during the fourth century AD - and reportedly 200,000 were massacred. In the 13th century Jews were removed from many countries across Europe on the basis that they murdered Jesus Christ. In the last century, Nazi’s tried to wipe out entire groups of people based on their identities – Jews, Communists, members of the Gay community, those with mental impairments. Closer to our own time, we have only to think of Pol Pot’s killing fields, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia to remind ourselves of the depravity which can be demonstrated and sadly “justified” just because one group hates another group.