Kutina Anti-Racism Week

21 March 2006

The Centre for Peace Studies, Brunkovac Online, Kutina Youth Cultural Centre(KCM), Independent Youth Kutina and Baraka in Kutina organize the marking of the International Anti-Racism and Xenophobia Week, which started on March 18 and will end on March 26, 2006.
The programme of events includes an exhibition �Asylum as a Human Right�; the Arcus Club will participate in the round-table discussion �Stranger in my Yard� (Tuesday, March 21, Arcus Club) and learn more at the info-point located on the plateau in front of the �Lonia� General Store and the City Market in Kutina.

�Asylum as a Human Right� Exhibition Gives Asylum its Human Face

Including both the cultural and sociological approach in a single event, the organizers attempted to add a fresh, new discourse to the legal and political discourse that dominate this topic, a discourse used to implicate existence to the public through its presentation. The exhibition arose as an idea of sensibilization, direct impact on reduction of xenophobia and intolerant forms of verbalized and, slightly more rare, physical labeling that is everpresent in Croatian society. The exibition intends to directly influence the public through the story of asylum of wider proportions.

Stranger in My Yard

The Temporary Asylum Seeker Collective Centre will soon move to Kutina. It will house the foreign citizens to whom Croatia offers protection from torture and abuse and violations of their human rights. To what extent this is the real situation, you can find out at the �Stranger in My Yard� debate. What is the situation with prejudice in this environment and what do we do when we learn strangers will live with, or in reality next to us? What actions are taken by municipal and national authorities, associations, citizens, the media and others?

Davor Zmegac, Mayor of Kutina; Miroslav Horvat, the Head of the Temporary Asylum Seeker Centre; Gordan Bosanac, the Programme Leader with the CPS, as well as members of the local community and activists will participate in the discussion.

March 21 is the International Day for Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, declared by the UN to commemorate the murder of 70 anty-apartheid protesters in Scharpeville, South Africa, in 1960. The week between March 18 and March 26 is marked as the Anti-Racism Week of Fight Against Racism, Xenophobia and Discrimination, when thousands of people engage actively all over Europe for tolerance and equality, and celebration of diversity. This campaign has as its goal to bring to the fore the problem of racism from the perspective of citizens and civil society, on all levels: local, national and international.

Racism can�t be tolerated or justified, it has to end!!!