Not a one off - more a bigoted way of life!

And before anyone reading this blog comes to the conclusion that what happened to me in the 'Village of Fear' was just a 'one -off ' and these 'happenings' are few and far between; here is an extract from an article in The Observer relating to the house opposite (there are only two in Market Square just off the High Street). I too, was threatened with petrol bombs if I didnt get out of 'Doggie' and I got exactly the same response from John Burton - Blairs agent who told me he was coming to see me the 'back end of next week'.

I'm not holding my breath as that was 2004 - I'm still waiting!!!

`If nobody helps me, I'll kill myself'- By Burhan Wazir. 26 September 1999 The Observer(c)1999

Samina Yunis is 14. Her father's shop was petrol-bombed.

Her family hardly dares step outside the door.

She wrote this plea to her MP.

His name is Tony Blair Locals call West Cornforth `Doggie' the dog's end of Sedgefield borough.

The village, hunkered down in a valley off the dual carriageway to Durham, marks one of the most depressed areas in Tony Blair's constituency.

Mohammed Yunis moved his wife and seven children here in September 1997. A shop in the High Street for #85,000, including the large semi-detached house that cradled it,seemed a remarkable bargain.

The previous owner assured Mr Yunis of the shop's high weekly turnover; the corner-placed, licensed grocery was the sole outlet for National Lottery tickets in the town, averaging #3,000 in ticket sales.

A pub opposite, the Flintlock Inn, would provide a steady stream of customers. After having driven a taxi for a firm in Bradford for most of his working life, Mr Yunis viewed self-employment with ambitious aspiration.

But the cultural differences with their new neighbours were instantly apparent. The taunts began almost immediately minor abuse from locals spilling out of the pub, casual shop-lifting by unruly children.

Then the taunts grew worse, escalating from graffiti scrawled across

the shop's shutter
`Fuck Off Pakis', and `Wogs Out' to windows shattered in the dead of night. Mr Yunis even began to think about returning to Bradford.

His wife convinced him to stay; the locals would tire of intimidating West Cornforth's new arrivals, she told him.

On the morning of 27 December last year, Mrs Yunis awoke at around 3am.

A security alarm could be heard ringing from the shop floor downstairs, so she nudged her husband awake. Mohammed moved to investigate, opening the bedroom door.

`When I opened the door to go down to the shop, there was just black smoke,' he told me. `I couldn't get past the smoke, so I shut the door again and opened the window to shout for help.'

When the fire brigade arrived, they found smoke streaming out of the property and the family huddled into a bedroom upstairs.

All nine family members were immediately taken to Bishop Auckland Hospital and treated for smoke inhalation.

No one has been arrested for the attack. The shop has not reopened for business since. `I just can't bear to open the shop again,' says Mr Yunis. `It has a curse to it now, given that it was burnt down during Ramadan.

Perhaps God intended to tell me something, that the food I was putting on the table was not to be provided by this shop.

The fire has reinforced my belief in Islam. Maybe I am being punished for past mistakes.' The persecution of the Yunis family has continued.

More graffiti, stones hurled through windows, nuisance telephone calls and public taunts from the high street outside mean that the family remain indoors.

Since the fire, locals have walked past the house, yelling `Burn, baby, burn' and `Who was the fire-starter?'

The children now refuse to attend schools; none has entered a playground since May.

Rarely does a family member venture outside on to the street. `We go to visit friends in other nearby areas,' says Mrs Yunis, `but we haveto go carefully.

No one knows what might happen to the house while we're gone.'

A month ago, Mohammed's 14-year-old daughter, Samina, wrote to her local MP.`My life depends on moving from here,' reads her letter to Tony Blair.

`You are the only person I feel can help my family move from here.

Ever since my dad's shop got petrol bombed, I fear to sleep in case they do it again. At this moment, I want to kill myself.

And if nobody helps me and my family, I will kill myself because I am too scared to live this life.

I'd rather die than live this life.

I am going to keep a copy of this letter and if I do kill myself they will know why I killed myself because I didn't get any help off anybody.

I would love to have a free life just like everybody else.'

Dated 26 August, Samina's letter was acknowledged by a four-line response from the constituency office one week later.

John Burton, agent to the Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, wrote: `I am very concerned by the circumstances you describe, and I will make inquiries, as quickly as possible, about whataction might be possible.'

The Prime Minister's constituency dealings in Sedgefield are dealt with from the Blair home in Trimdon.

A scenic mining village only a short drive away from West Cornforth, Trimdon looks much like any other suburb.

The constituency office Myrobella House is an impressive bungalow situated on the periphery of neighbouring fields.

As the Prime Minister visits his constituents roughly once every two months, his agent John Burton tells me, security concerns are paramount. High-line fencing and patrol guards armed with automatic guns disconnect the house from its surroundings.

After clearance at the gate, a short walk to the back of the house reveals an entrance.

Burton's personal assistant arrives at the door and disappears to fetch some coffee. Her boss begins to speak. `I'm being very careful about what I say to you,' he laughs.

Burton admits he has yet to meet theYunis family even after having read Samina's letter.

He has never driven the 10 minutes down the road it would take to visit them. `They can come and see me here,' he says. `They only have to make an appointment and I'll gladly meet them.'

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat at any mention of that invidious word racism. `I don't think that's why the Yunis family have had these problems.

We just don't have a problem with racism here at all I know that. What you're trying to do is tarnish the whole constituency as a breeding ground for racial hatred it's just not like that at all. I think of this family, and I think that maybe they should just up and leave. They're obviously not getting on with the people in that area.'

The Flintlock Inn stands almost directly opposite the Yunis household, a frowning reminder of West Cornforth's cemented attitudes to race.

Its patrons are rowdy and physically intimidating; in stark contrast to the nervously polite Pakistani family. But on 8 August, Mr Yunis was charged with assault and the possession of an offensive weapon after a fight near some local shops. Several weeks earlier, he had been surrounded by three youths, and he turned home for help.

He returned with a broom handle and in front of a jeering audience, he beat one local to the ground. Last week, Mohammed was given a 12-month probationary order. `I'd do it again,' he says angrily. I just lost it; I felt like killing that man. If no one had stopped me, I don't know what would have happened.'

The police have become regular guests in the Yunis household. In February last year, Sedgefield police posted two uniformed policemen in an upstairs room in an attempt to monitor their attackers.

The family find their dealings with the police a constant source of frustration.

With only a basic grasp of the English language, both parents struggle to make themselves understood. A marked car sat in a lay-by outside the Flintlock for 10 days.

The threats returned as soon as the police retreated. `We know it was cos of you that the police have been here,' said one caller. `Now you're all fucking dead.'

A letter from the local acting chief constable to the constituency office, dated 9 April 1998 summarises the official opinion on the police initiative.`I believe that as the result of police action, the situation has improved substantially and the confidence of the Yunis family in the police has been restored.'

Each night, around 7pm, Mohammed Yunis and his wife settle down for their evening meal. Their three young sons have to be bullied down from an upstairs bedroom where they sit arguing over video-game scores.

The four daughters giggle into their hands in the kitchen, trading insults in English which their mother can't understand. Boys feature highly in the muffled conversation. Throughout dinner, nervous ears listen for any disturbance on the high street.

The meal is enjoyable but the atmosphere strained. Mr Yunis talks excitedly over dinner of relocating his family back to Pakistan both he and his wife have family back in Mirpur, a poor agricultural belt of land almost untouched by industry since partition.

The Yunis parents can boast little education themselves; their daily executive decisions are based almost solely on moral assumptions and religious directives. Religious inscriptions are mounted on all walls.

The living-room and the house have a temporary air, as if the family might flee in an instant. Denis Brokes is chairman of the Durham County Racial Equality Council, a voluntary organisation based in Darlington.

The DCREC has been counselling in the area for seven years, but the initiative is poorly funded by the local council, and meagre grants from the Commission for Racial Equality ensure only scant resistance to the kind of harassment suffered by families like the Yunis.

Racism doesn't seem to feature high on the list of local priorities: `Ethnic people probably don't even make up 0.009 per cent of thelocal population,'

John Burton had said. Brokes, 47, has lived in Darlington for nearly a decade.

Well regarded as an expert in race relations in Sedgefield, he explains that the DCREC havepresented the Yunis case to all tiers of local government. `You hear all about these so-called no-go areas,' he says. `Parts where ethnic people will be horribly exposed. West Cornforth is a good example a depressed former mining town.

No wonder the Yunis are in such danger; many of their neighbours have only ever seen Asian people on TV. To them, multiculturalism is just a buzz word the city dwellers talk about; it doesn't mean anything here.'

On Thursday night at the Flintlock Inn, locals sit in huddles discussing Tony's People, a Channel 4 documentary on Sedgefield previewed in the local paper, the Northern Echo.

The paper has also splashed a story on the Yunis family's continuing isolation from their neighbours.

The pub's patrons nearly all men, most of them former engineers in nearby steel plants complain bitterly about the media circus bearing down on them from the restof the country. `

It's hard enough to make a living as it is,' says one. `Not much money around, but you probably guessed that, right?' `I'm not a racist,' shouts one man.

`You could sit here all night, and I'd have a proper crack with you. But if you said the wrong thing, I'd bat you one.

Not cos you're Asian, mind, but cos I'd bat anyone who said the wrong thing.

'His companions nod in agreement.

`They're a strange family anyway,' says another. `I found them really creepy. Always talking in their own language; they never speak English.

And they changed the shop as well it wasn't as good as it was before.

We used to spend a lot of money there.

They ruined it for themselves by not wanting to know us.'

The men are insistent in their denial of any racial disharmony in the village: `Look at the Sikh family up the road.

And the guy who owns another shop nearby. They never have any problems. Go ask them. They'll tell it to your face.'

But the Sikh family at the top of the high street, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, look like the model of Anglicised ethnicity West Cornforth would like its people of colour to aspire to. And the Asian owner of Charlie's Grocery, another grocery store only minutes away from the Yunises, can complain of little harassment during his time in the village; he lives in nearby Middlesbrough and ventures into the village only to open the store and deliver stock from the local cash and carry. A white woman serves from behind the counter throughout the day.

The Yunises, meanwhile, wear their faith like a protection. `Why should we change?' exclaims Rubina, the eldest daughter, who is 21. She is dressed in the traditional shalwaar-kameez, a knee-length black top complemented by loose bottoms. Her hair is tied back into a pleat; she has an unaffected face with only the lightest trace of make-up. `Why should we wear trousers and T-shirts?

My dad's religious is that wrong?So are my brothers and sisters is that wrong?' She shakes with rage. `Tell you why they don't like us here cos we're giving them lip back. Someone tells me to fuck off and I'll say it back louder.

We're not just victims.'

A police car cruises past the Flintlock at 6pm, slowly arcing away from the pub to rest outside the Yunis property. Two uniformed officers sit attentively for around 45 minutes, their blunt, expressionless faces trained on the pub. Mr Yunis opens his front door and stands watching the marked car, a cigarette smouldering in one hand.

He occasionally steals a glance atthe pub. `There's a bleedin' cheek,' says one man in the Flintlock, his neck straining to look at the police car. `It's like suddenly we're all being watched like we're suspects.

What about our rights?
We're the ones that grew up here.
And we'll be here when everyone else has gone.'

Of course you will - you're trapped and too dumb to know it!