12 May, 2006
A US congressional committee has been told that efforts to combat hate crimes and anti-Semitism in Europe are in dire need of funding. Speaking at a hearing of the US Helsinki Commission, Paul Goldenberg, a special adviser on hate crimes to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said "We need financial support. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and rightfully so, on things that help us enforce the law".
Kathrin Meyer, an adviser on anti-Semitism to the 55-member OSCE, said 10,000 euros had been spent developing guidelines on teaching Holocaust commemoration and contemporary anti-Semitism, but that there was not enough money available to make copies for distribution. Noting that whilst it was possible to make the material available on the internet, she added "Teachers in the U.S. and France and Germany, they can easily download documents, but when it comes to Ukraine, Belarus, Russian Federation, these people do not have access to the Internet".
The Helsinki Commission is a bipartisan body monitoring human rights.
