“It’s very important not to forget, for history not to repeat”, underlines Miquel Ramos musician, activist and journalist. His conference in the Social Forum entitled War crimes: against forgetting. Esteban Ibarra, Movement against intolerance, will join the debate on Thursday 18^th too.

“It’s a crime committed against people who consider themselves without dignity, without rights” denounces Esteban Ibarra, who’s often with us here in Benicàssim. Ibarra developed an excellent theoretical definition for hate crimes, all those meaningless/unreasonable murders, which end up taking people’s lives away. Lives that appear “worthless” to them. Because it seems that using the freedom of speech puts you at risk.

According to the estimate carried out by Movement Against Intolerance, with the aid of other activists and collectives here in Spain, almost 4000 assaults of this kind have been registered, a hundred of which went as far as murder; still, only 20 out of 100 assaults get reported by the victims, because of their fear. It’s not been that long that Spain has got a law punishing hate crimes: thus far they were not considered as murderous hate crimes, such as the one which took Guillem Agulló or Aitor Zabaleta’s lives, among the others commemorated in the Social Forum. Even this recent law, still forgets about homeless killed, due to their either cultural or territorial background,

Miquel Ramos launched the project crimenesdeodio.info. A websites aiming to register hate crimes having taken place since the 90’s, filled with a wide range of informations about their development. “It’s an authentic tragedy”, forewarns Miquel. Concerned with noticing the relevant form of “plural and open” anti-fascism, trying to avoid that his real meaning fighting against hate could be affected or misrepresented either by urban tribes, or propaganda with negative connotations. Miquel brought into focus the new shapes through which fascism is spreading, passing unnoticed: “sooner or later we will be affected by all that’s happening”.

Pedagogy and historical memory, in order to avoid that, according to Miquel and Ibarra, “Europe might be scary”.