BRIDGE BUILDERS
PAST EVENTS

PEACE PROCESS

Held at Newham Town Hall, East Ham, Bridge Builders have staged two public forums on the theme of Peace In Our Borough.

The first meeting was a response to a spate of youth murders – often schoolchild killing schoolchild, sometime just for a mobile phone.

Keynote speeches were by Sara Ruiz, Director of the Newham Voluntary Sector Consortium, and Councillor Unmesh Desai, Newham Council’s member for external affairs and community intelligence.

Councillor Unmesh Desai

Chaired by the Rev Bruce Stokes, of Woodgrange Baptist Church, Forest Gates, a panel of five Newham leaders took questions from the floor:

Yunis Dudhwala, Multi-Faith Manager at Newham General Hospital;

Yunis Dudhwala

Canon Ann Easter, ceo of the Newham Renewal Progamme;

Ann Easter

Ray Lewis, founder and director of the Eastside Young Leaders Acadamy;

Ray Lewis

Chief Inspector Carl Lindley, of the Metropolitan Police, Newham;

Chief Inspector Carl Lindley

and Vanessa Wiseman, headteacher of Langdon School, East Ham.

Vanessa Wiseman

The second meeting featured three victims of violence in Newham – one who survived and two who did not.

The survivor was Asif Shakoor, a young Muslim who suffered a severe racial attack at the hands of a white gang.  Asif was lucky.  He told the moving story of how he found his way back to a normal life by joining Bridge Builders.  But he recognised that he could have well gone the other way, plunging into bitterness, depression and isolation.

Asif Shakoor

The meeting then heard the story of Rizwan Darbar, a 17-year-old A-level student who was stabbed to death in West Ham Park as he tried to stop a gang stealing his friend’s mobile phone.  His father Ayub told how Rizwan was the ideal son – courageous, respectful, a devout Muslim, and working towards a university degree in economics.  To this day nobody has been charged with Rizwan’s murder.

Rizwan Darbar

The third story was of a young Tamil, a refugee in the UK from the civil war in his homeland of Sri Lanka.  He died at the hands of another Tamil youth, a former friend.  The victim was 22-year-old Praba Krishnasamy.  His story was told by his older brother Kamal who is now an outreach worker in Newham.  As part of his work as a prison visitor, Kamal met his brother’s murderer.

Finally, in a question-and-answer session, Deputy Borough Commander Gary Buttercase said that the cases just heard were the reason he was a police officer.  Chairman for the evening was Abas Aziz.

Abas Aziz