Swansea humanitarian calls for unity against hate after National Action verdict
Video report by Swansea correspondent Dean Thomas-Welch
A humanitarian from Swansea is calling for change after a 27-year-old man was found guilty of being a member of a banned neo-Nazi group.
Nizar Dhan has fought against far-right groups and individuals. He says those with extreme views are in the minority, and is appealing for people to think before they take part in any form of hate.
Nizar said: "We need to unite. We all live on this beautiful earth together and there is room for everybody to live here in happiness and in peace.
"So our message to you all is just please, use your minds, use your logic and let's spread positivity and peace and unite as one human race, which we are."
Alex Davies, 27, also from Swansea, was today (Tuesday 17 May) convicted of being a member of National Action (NA) after it was proscribed by the government in December 2016.
A jury at Winchester Crown Court had heard that the UK government banned the group after it had “terrorised” towns across the country with its call for an “all-out race war”.
Former PPI salesman Davies was convicted of setting up NS131 – which stood for National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action and which itself was later banned by the government – as a continuity group.
He told the court that NS131 was not set up as a continuation of NA and had different aims and processes.
The court heard Davies was the “founder, galvaniser and recruiter” of the white supremacist terror group, and was judged by an expert to be “so extreme you can’t go any further”.
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Nizar explained that nationalism isn't alway a bad thing and you can be a nationalist without being racist.
He said: "There are people that are nationalist - but there is nationalism in a good way, where you actually care for your country and the people in your country, and I'm sure no one has an issue with that.
"But when you have nationalist groups calling for violence and setting up training camps in the forest in our beautiful country, training people to get ready for war, that's no different to terrorism.
"I work with refugees; I work with asylum seekers; I work with the homeless here in Swansea. I work with families in Swansea that are deprived and are living below the poverty line.
"I work with food banks, and the support we get from the local community - from all religions, all races, all colours, all backgrounds - is overwhelming, and it just shows the social fabric of our society; how good it is and how welcoming and how kind people are.
"There are always going to be bad people, but we need to eradicate even giving them air time."
Nizar Dhan is a humanitarian from Swansea who campaigns against far-right groups and individuals
It comes after an ITV News investigation in 2017 revealed that members of Britain’s first far-right terrorist group were still meeting in secret “training camps” despite the ban.
The group had celebrated the murder of the MP Jo Cox by a far-right terrorist and had its own Strategy and Promotion document calling for "extreme forms of racism and anti-Semitism".