USA Africa Dialogue Series - Archbishop receives racist emails

Archbishop receives racist emails

Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, received threatening messages
prompting police to launch investigation

Ben Quinn
Tuesday February 7 2012
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/07/archbishop-york-john-sentamu-racist-emails

Police are investigating racist emails that were sent to the
Archbishop of York following an interview last month in which he spoke
of his early experiences of being on the receiving end of racial abuse
after he came to the UK from Uganda.

A spokeswoman for Dr John Sentamu, the second most senior bishop in
the Church of England, said: "A large quantity of correspondence was
received in response to the archbishop's interview with the Daily
Telegraph, which touched on a wide range of issues.

"Among many positive emails that he has received, there have been a
small number of abusive and threatening emails of a racist nature
which North Yorkshire police are investigating as hate crimes."

A spokesman for North Yorkshire police said: "We can confirm that a
complaint has been received from the office of Archbishop John
Sentamu, following the receipt of emails containing racially offensive
statements.

"The emails are being investigated as a hate crime."

Sentamu, who trained as a lawyer in Uganda but left after he was
beaten by members of Idi Amin's regime, spoke about racist abuse he
received from some parishioners in south London in the 1980s.

He said: "There was a lady who didn't want me to take her husband's
funeral because I was black. I took one funeral and at the end a man
said to me, 'Why did my father deserve to be buried by a black
monkey?' We received letters with excrement in."

The archbishop was denounced by gay rights campaigners after he used
the interview to speak out against legalising gay marriage [http://
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/28/archbishop-york-legalise-gay-marriage"
title="], saying: He said: "If you genuinely would like the
registration of civil partnerships to happen in a more general way,
most people will say they can see the drift. But if you begin to call
those marriage, you're trying to change the English language."

Peter Tatchell, co-ordinator of the Equal Love campaign, told a
protest at York minster last week: "Archbishop Sentamu is a religious
authoritarian who wants to impose his personal opposition to same-sex
marriage on the rest of society."

guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2012

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