A FAMILY today revealed that they feared for their lives after racist thugs sprayed their house with sickening graffiti.

Law student Waseem Choudhary said his family had been horrified by the incident, when the name of ultra-right wing group Combat 18 was put on their home alongside a Nazi swastika.

Waseem, who lives with mum Irshad, 43, dad Ghulam, 45 and sister Atika, 20, in Cleaver Street, Burnley, said: "It is terrifying when something like this happens and it felt like a threat to us. You get the feeling that someone is threatening your life.

"We have never had anything like this happen to us before and all the neighbours have been very supportive. This is a good area where everyone lives alongside one another without any problems.

"Last week we had a clean-up in the area with everyone taking part to make the place look a bit nicer. That's how communities should live, not by attacking others."

Waseem, 24, who studied law at Manchester Metropolitan University and is currently on a legal practice course at the University of Central Lancashire, said he was happy with the police response to the incident, last Tuesday night.

He said: "They do seem to have taken it very seriously, although I am not sure what they can do. We need a change in peoples' attitudes so everyone of whatever race can live in peace."

Police are investigating the graffiti attack and said they were doing all they could to tackle hate crime.

Chief Superintendent John Knowles, Commander of Lancashire Constabulary's Pennine Division, said racist crime figures had been coming down year on year since the late 1990s.

He said: "At Burnley Police, we've put tremendous effort into the way we deal with racist crimes and incidents since the disorder of 2001.

"The specially formed Hate Crime Unit deals with such cases and ensures a quality investigation irrespective of the ethnicity of the victim. The result is a commendable detection rate of 58 per cent for racist crimes.

"It is true that for the period April to January, racist crimes recorded have increased by 30 per cent from 297 crimes to 389 but this is influenced by more stringent recording practices adopted this year and the growing confidence of victims to report such occurrences.

"It is widely accepted that there has always been under reporting of this type of crime and as confidence grows, levels of recorded crime will also rise. The truth is that we are recording more and detecting more.

"Interestingly, racist incidents, ie less serious matters, have reduced by 56 per cent during the same period from 46 to 20 and even current levels of racist crimes will be less than our comparative baseline year of 1998/99 when they stood at 632."

He added: "In addition to the investigative work of the police, for the past 12 months agencies across East Lancashire have come together under the East Lancashire Community Cohesion Board whose main purpose has been to promote short term cohesion initiatives across the region."

Leader of Burnley council Stuart Caddy said race attacks were on the way down compared to five years ago. He added: "We will have failed if we do not see a decrease, but everyone is working hard to tackle racism."