<p>Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople</p>

Part of 3. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children – in the Senedd at 2:34 pm on 24 May 2017.

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Photo of Bethan Sayed Bethan Sayed Plaid Cymru 2:34, 24 May 2017

And my third question is something that has animated my mind since Manchester, and many of us here today as well, with regard to extremism, not only on the side of how we would see minority groups, but also far-right groups as well, who are attacking anybody at the moment who are Muslim in our society, even before they know what the religion of that potential perpetrator is. We had a debate last week on online abuse and we’ve seen a rise in that type of abuse by people who live amongst us. Quite frankly, I’m embarrassed by some of the things that I’ve been reading, attacking people in communities who don’t deserve to be attacked because they are no more guilty of this than any of us are.

So, I was wondering what you would be able to do in relation to talking to the education Secretary about having discussions with her about having more education, at an earlier age, about how we can be respectful of one another, how we can use online media, but also, in relation to terrorist activities, how we can understand what it is. For example, I studied at Aberystwyth university and there was no course on terrorism until 9/11 happened, and they put a course on especially for us to understand what that meant and how we could understand the world stage in relation to that. I don’t know if that’s happening for our young people and I think it’s turning communities against one another instead of uniting our communities. So, I know that it’s a complex issue, but how are you going about trying to unpick some of these very complex reasons for why people are taking to attacking others who have nothing to do with the awful acts that are taking place on the world stage?