E/CN.4/2002/24 page 10 1. Australia 13. The Australian Arabic Council informed the Special Rapporteur that following the 11 September attacks, “Muslim communities have increasingly been at the receiving end of a frightening and extreme level of racial abuse, attack and vilification. Children, women and men are all subject to this increase in racial vilification. Community centres, places of worship and businesses are being vandalized, covered in graffiti and damaged.” The Australian Arab Council added that “some media reports have been extremely worrying, with the nature of reporting and headlines being used verging on the hysterical. Of great concern are the cartoons and images being used, as well as the tone of many letters and talkback callers, which only simplify and exacerbate stereotypes and the racial hatred of Arabic Australians and can legitimize and increase vilification on the street”. 14. The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission also reported that “All available evidence confirms that there was an anti-Arab/Middle Eastern and anti-Muslim backlash in Australia in the period following 11 September. In New South Wales, the Community Relations Commission established a 24-hour bilingual hotline - at first only in Arabic then, subsequent to a tabloid front page photo showing a Sikh man being detained in New York allegedly in connection with the attacks, also in Punjabi. A recent report back from the Commission advised that more than 400 calls were received, principally to the Arabic hotline, in the five weeks after 11 September. Callers reported verbal, physical and verbal/physical-combined ‘assaults’, significantly heightened fear and avoidance (e.g. women not leaving their homes to go shopping) and slow or insensitive police or other service-provider responses. Some of the physical assaults reported were serious and caused injury, even hospitalization. Calls tapered off after five weeks.” The Commission noticed from media reports that “there were also some arson and graffiti attacks on mosques and an early incident in which stones were thrown at a school bus transporting children to an Islamic school”. 15. Political and other community leaders acted quickly to show support and solidarity with Middle Eastern and Muslim communities in Australia and to remind the community not to retaliate against fellow Australians. Photo opportunities were organized in most states and federally with a Premier or the federal Minister for Immigration at an Islamic school or visiting a mosque. 2. Canada 16. The Special Rapporteur has been informed of one incident, the “racist and hate-smashing, vandalization and destruction of the Alrasoul Islamic Society mosque on the Bedford Highway, at the city of Bedford within the Halifax regional municipality in Nova Scotia”. 3. United States of America 17. On 20 November 2001, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) released a fact sheet in Washington in which it confirmed 520 violent incidents directed against Arab Americans, or those perceived to be such, since 11 September. These were defined as acts