Racial Hatred

A leading member of Germany's far-right National Democratic Party, or NPD, has been charged with inciting racial hatred after he called Germany a "Jews' Republic" and attacked Turks in a speech. State prosecutors in the southwestern city of Saarbruecken said they had charged Udo Pastoers, NPD parliamentary leader in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The charge followed a decision by the state parliament to strip Pastoers of immunity after his speech in Saarbruecken on Feb. 25. If convicted, Pastoers, 56, could face up to four years in prison.

The tension in our city is very high, but I don't see anything being done by our political leaders to douse the flames of racial hatred. On the contrary, I see some people fanning the flames. That's wrong. We should be working with one another for harmony, peace and successful relations--not only for racial groups among the poor and the disenfranchised--but for people in communities throughout the city. We need to ferret out those who are making inflammatory remarks.

A West German schoolteacher, accused of telling pupils that Nazi concentration camps were a fabrication, Friday received a nine-month suspended prison sentence for inciting racial hatred and insulting behavior. A court in Koblenz heard that Rudolf Koch told classes that no more than 400,000 Jews died in World War II and that the Auschwitz concentration camp was an invention of the United States.

President Clinton, asking the nation to join his prayers for a beaten Chicago boy, called on Americans this Easter weekend to reject racial hatred and to remember that Christ died to redeem all people--black and white. "In this season of renewal, we must renew our pledge to make America one nation under God," the president said Saturday in a radio address that focused on the attack last week on 13-year-old Lenard Clark.

Three skinheads, wearing masks to conceal their identities, were charged in court Friday with desecrating about 100 graves at a Roman Catholic cemetery and trying to make it appear that Jews committed the crime. Police said the three wanted people to believe the vandalism Wednesday night in Nantes was committed in revenge for the gruesome desecration last week at a Jewish cemetery in Carpentras. A corpse there was dug up and impaled on an umbrella handle.

A "festering hatred" of racial and ethnic minorities drove Patrick Purdy to massacre five children in a Stockton schoolyard last January, an extreme example of a growing trend of hate crimes, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp said Friday.

Testifying Wednesday via videotape, Michael A. Thornton told jurors he and one of his white supremacist friends beat an unarmed homeless man because he was black. Thornton, the key witness in the Lancaster murder case, said he threw the first punch but then tried to stop Randall Rojas from attacking the man with a board. "I can't hold it in me no longer," Thornton said, according to a transcript of the tape. "It is tearing my whole soul apart, ripping my family apart.

The racial drama "Black Water Risin' " is to theater what the pulp novel was to literature. That is, it's lurid, raucous, melodramatic and visceral. Those are qualities hard to resist, making this play at the Company of CharActors Theatre in Studio City a barn burner from beginning to end, despite its flaws.

Black and white clergy and civil rights leaders linked arms Saturday and led thousands of marchers into the neighborhood where a week ago a black man was chased to his death by a gang of white teen-agers. The estimated 5,000 marchers were heckled by counterdemonstrators as they marched through the predominantly white Howard Beach district. Police officers lined the route, and police helicopters hovered overhead.

Police discounted racial hatred Monday in the slaying of Tustin honors student Thien Minh Ly and said they firmly believe the motive was robbery in the brutal knife attack. Meanwhile, Gunner J. Lindberg, 21, and his 17-year-old roommate and co-worker at a Tustin Kmart remained in custody as prosecutors reviewed the case against them. Deputy Dist. Atty. Debbie Lloyd said she expects to file charges against the suspects today in connection with the frenzied Jan.