US ‘neo-Nazis target Somalis’ sparking Maine council outrage

A metropolis council within the US state of Maine has authorised a decision condemning “hate and violence” after a neo-Nazi rally within the city earlier this month.

On 2 October, a gaggle of greater than 20 members of the Nationalist Social Membership-131 gathered at an area park in Lewiston and walked by means of close by neighbourhoods, in accordance with native information stories.

A picture posted on-line confirmed a demonstrator holding an indication studying “Finish Somali Violence” in entrance of Lewiston’s Metropolis Corridor.

Town council’s condemnation of the latest white supremacist demonstration was largely praised by civil rights advocates, together with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“We thank the Lewiston Metropolis Council for standing by the Somali group and different minority communities in opposition to white supremacist intimidation and hate,” stated CAIR Nationwide Communications Coordinator Ismail Allison, noting that yesterday the group had urged town council to undertake the decision.   

Nonetheless, a number of members of the native authorities have criticised the wording of the decision and described it as a “watered down” model of the unique which referred to the latest neo-Nazi gathering.

Others, nevertheless, noticed the revised wording of condemning “all types of hate and violence” as augmenting the message in opposition to hate.

The state of Maine, the whitest state within the US in accordance with a latest census, has seen an inflow of Somali refugees over the previous twenty years.

Lots of them, together with a number of native politicians, have relocated from the bustling Atlanta metro space to settle right into a quieter life in Maine. Many Somali households have been interested in the state’s good colleges, low crime charges, and comparatively reasonably priced housing.

Maine’s Somali group, which is essentially concentrated in Portland and Lewiston, has been credited with serving to to revive the state’s getting older inhabitants with their youthful households and serving to increase the economic system with their new companies.

Whereas many Somalis have been welcomed in Maine, there have additionally been cases of hostility to their rising presence.

In 2002, Lewiston’s then-mayor Laurier T. Raymond wrote an open letter discouraging extra Somalis from shifting there. Extra just lately, in August, police in Portland stated they have been investigating a sequence of anti-Muslim assaults, which primarily focused the world’s Somali group.