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4.1.5 Interest in Monitoring and Victim Assistance/Demands and Resources for those Activities
Even though most organizations and groups do not have sufficient financial and time resources to run hate crime monitoring, their leaders or representatives often express interest either in launching a monitoring project or cooperating with other organizations. Usually such interest reflects the local contexts of not just hate crimes but the broader problems of discrimination, including hate speech as well as the »traditions« of prejudice and inter-ethnic stereotyping.
This is evident in the case of the Russian Cultural and Educational Association, whose coordinator, Andrzej Romańczuk from Białystok, thinks about initiating monitoring activities in the region, perhaps in cooperation with other local organizations. Another locally-based minority organization, known as the Lemko Song and Dance Ensemble Kyczera (Łemkowski Zespół Pieśni i Tańca »Kyczera«) from Legnica is also concerned with hate crime and discrimination monitoring. Faced with negative attitudes towards Lemkos as well as institutional discrimination against Lemko cultural activities, the Kyczera’s chairman, Jerzy Starzyński, was thinking about initiating a monitoring project: »We hope to do something. We acknowledge the situation but do not have time to register [incidents of discrimination] in a formal manner.« While answering questions from an interviewer with Nigdy Więcej, Starzyński expressed his will to cooperate with more specialized anti-racist organizations: »We could cooperate with organizations like yours by meeting and sending information and reports.«
Filip Kitundu from the Society for African Affairs also mentioned Nigdy Więcej’s Brown Book and expressed interest in starting a similar initiative or in helping the association by sending information. Kitundu said: »We do not run any system of monitoring of hate crimes, but we would like to establish an African association, which will be focused on the monitoring of hate crimes and on promoting anti- discriminatory activities.«
In some other cases, interest in taking part in hate crime monitoring was expressed with reference to the existing frameworks of particular organizations’ activities. For instance, the Polish Humanitarian Action (PHA) would be interested in the exploration and monitoring of young people’s attitudes within the framework of the organization’s Humanitarian Education Project. A more elaborate explanation was given by Zbigniew Hołda of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights detailing the challenges and possibilities of combining hate-crime monitoring with priority areas of activity:
»As we do not collect any data, I know about such cases from media or from those rare cases we had. But usually we did not proceed with such cases, only gave advice to go to the police, for example. […] However, we are interested in monitoring, insofar as the violation of human rights can be considered part of monitoring.«
Agnieszka Mikulska, another member of PHA, added: »Of course we investigate different cases of discrimination, monitor the human rights situation in Poland, but we have to be focused instead on secondary cases (in the context of the RAXEN project).« This view was supplemented with a remark by Marek Kubicki of the Arabia.pl Association, who emphasized the necessity of practical links between hate crime monitoring and victims’ assistance:
»Arabia.pl lacks financial resources and knowledge to initiate a long-term program on hate crimes and victims’ assistance. It seems that other anti-discrimination NGOs face the same obstacles. There are no NGOs providing psychological, legal or other kind of help to victims of hate crimes in Poland. Some organizations monitor the situation, for example HFHR does it in within the framework of the RAXEN project, but monitoring without assistance can not be helpful.«
PHA is an example of an NGO that is not involved in victim assistance due to their current scope of work, even though they recognize hate crimes as a problem and express interest in cooperation with hate crime monitoring programs. According to Tadeusz Szczepaniak, the PHA coordinator, the organization does »not have any contact with victims of hate crimes […] On the basis of our observation and experience, we know that victims usually contact juridical organizations […] Our activities are concentrated mostly on education and less on help for victims.«
Assistance to hate crime victims also seems beyond the scope of organizations such the Lemko Song and Dance Ensemble Kyczera, the German Students Union and the Mongolian Student Community. Even though all see the problem of prejudice and discrimination as important, their focus is on education and propagating inter-ethnic dialogue, not on hate crimes and victim assistance. Erdenchimeg, a representative from the Mongolian Student Community, stressed the importance of integration programs for newcomers and mentioned the possibility of organizing anti-discrimination trainings for Mongolians (e.g. how to react to discriminatory behavior), but did not consider hate crime victim assistance. According to Erdenechimeg, there were many cases of violent attacks and verbal assaults against the Mongolians a few years ago. Currently, she does not consider it the most pressing problem for the Mongolian community because cases of aggressive violence against the Mongolians are rather rare. Katarzyna Nowak, a member of the Nigdy Więcej Group in Oświęcim, mentioned cooperation with the local police on hate crime incidents, but since there have been no serious hate crime cases for a long period of time in her town, such a cooperation is aimed at providing police officers and educational officials with information about ideologies of hatred, not victim assistance.
Some interviewees expressed the necessity of going beyond a community-based perspective on hate crimes and towards a broader »universal« approach that would link different issues and foster inter-community cooperation for countering hate crimes, discrimination and prejudice. Zbigniew Hołda (HFHR) stressed that »there must be multiple approaches in combating hate crimes« when referring to the fact that hate crime monitoring should encompass diverse groups and categories of people. An example of this more universal approach can be found in a statement made by Jerzy Starzyński of the Lemko Song and Dance Ensemble Kyczera, who is involved in organizing meetings (Pod Kyczerą) in Legnica between European ethnic and national minorities. About his ensemble’s commitment, Starzyński says: »We try to combat not only anti-Lemko sentiments, discrimination, etc., but also those directed against other minorities, and we always stress that.« In a number of other interviews, representatives and leaders of particular communities often noticed discrimination and prejudice directed against other communities, e.g. various groups recognize anti-Semitism or discrimination against Roma or Africans. Anna Mazgal, the representative of the Jewish association Beit Warszawa recognized the problem of homophobia as a significant issue. Mazgal said: » The Beit Warszawa is a minority organization, and all minority groups—ethnic, national, religious, sexual—should talk to each other.«
Resources for Victim Assistance
Besides challenges and obstacles concerning the fight against hate crimes in Poland, it should be noted that a number of representatives have voiced their readiness to cooperate or form networks with other NGOs/groups. They also said they were ready to offer their organizations’ resources to be used to this end. Knowledge and experience in educational work and community organizing/management were among the most frequently mentioned aspects. Some said they could provide aid to minority organizations or individuals with less experience or training. For instance, the Russian Cultural and Educational Association stated that it was willing to assist other organizations in serving as a »complaint bureau« for various minority groups in the Białystok region. Organizations supporting immigrants and refugees also emphasized their readiness to play an active role as cultural agents or intermediaries between their communities (in particular hate crime victims), NGOs and public institutions, especially the police.
Anna Mazgal of Beit Warszawa said that so far her organization had not dealt with cases of violent attacks. Yet if the situation arises, Beit Warszawa will be able to support victims by providing them with contacts from both governmental and nongovernmental institutions that could help in getting a lawyer. It can be assumed that most victims who would contact this organization would be Jewish, but the organization is willing to help non-Jews as well. The Society for African Affairs, even though its current focus does not include assistance to victims of racist attacks, collects materials on discrimination and is interested in expanding their work to victim aid. Filip Kitundu said: »We will readily help as far we can.« He declared that his organization would be able to offer help in establishing contacts with the police or psychologists: »We can direct victims to the relevant institutions.« Balli Marzec of the Kazakh Community expressed great concern about discrimination and attacks on Kazakhs and other minority groups (mainly those »visible« as minorities due to their foreign accent or different skin color). She admitted that her organization had not run any systematic assistance program, although it had attempted to intervene in some critical cases of discrimination. Marzec stated that she could think of numerous cases when intervention and assistance would have been needed, but her organization »does not have enough financial resources and knowledge to deal with those cases. What the organization can do is just to give advice on how and where to write a complaint, how to react in a case of a response, translate it into Polish etc.« The table below presents the major areas for victim support that organizations advocating for marginalized groups believe could be improved in their organizations. Not all needs raised by the organizations’ representatives during interviews were included. General needs, such as additional financial resources or better infrastructure (e.g. office space, Internet etc.) were often mentioned, in particular by representatives of organizations whose work centers on immigrant communities or refugees. Also, the NGOs/groups did not explicitly mention certain demands, but they could be inferred from the way they described their organizations’ general problems, the obstacles they encounter concerning hate crimes etc. As shown in Table 9, the most common suggestion for improving victim assistance calls for access to more detailed information about hate crimes and information regarding existing possibilities of supporting actual or potential victims. Additionally, the demand for general education on anti-discrimination and minority rights figures prominently in the table. This aspect includes needs for training organizations’ leaders and activists as well as community members. In migrant or refugee organizations, essentially any form of victim support is needed. This encompasses not only legal or psychological assistance but also linguistic, cultural and basic legal training to empower immigrants in Polish society. Representatives of immigrant organizations also suggested raising the standards and quality of service among staff in public institutions and NGOs dealing with immigrants and refugees. Also expressed was the need to boost political support for establishing legal status and ensuring the overall security of minority communities.
Table 9: Demand for victim support among organizations advocating for underrepresented communities
| Name of organization/group | Legal assistance | Psychological/Social assistance | Cultural and language education for minorities | Legal training for minorities | Information and education on hate crimes, victim support , minority rights etc. | Qualified staff in public institutions and NGO’s serving minorities, migrants, refugees | Political support |
| LGBT organizations | |||||||
| Campaign Against Homophobia | X | ||||||
| Lambda Warsaw | X | ||||||
| Organizations of officially recognized and registered ethnic or national minorities | |||||||
| Russian Cultural and Educational Association | X | X | X | ||||
| German Students Union | X | ||||||
| Association of Roma in Poland | X | X | |||||
| Lemko Song and Dance Ensemble Kyczera | X | ||||||
| Union of Jewish Religious Communities in the Republic of Poland | X | ||||||
| Social and Cultural Society of Jews in Poland | X | ||||||
| Jewish Cultural Association Beit Warszawa | X | X | |||||
| Organizations of immigrant minorities | |||||||
| Rescue Foundation | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Ingush Unity | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Muslim Centre for Culture and Education | X | ||||||
| Mongolian Student Community | X | ||||||
| Arabia.pl Association | X | ||||||
| Kazakh Community | X | X | X | X |
(OPP)
