TOWN leaders are hoping a photo montage will drive home a unity message to residents.

A poster has been designed to be displayed in libraries, public buildings and shop windows across Middlesbrough.

It features photographs of 56 faces, representing the 55 different nationalities living in Middlesbrough, with its 20 to 25 different cultures and 365 languages.

More than 300 copies of the poster are to be put up in the multi-cultural community.

Tee Liburd, diversity officer with Middlesbrough Council, said: "It is just to ensure everyone is aware that we all have a right to live in peace, with safety and security.

"I am sure when some people see people from a different race they automatically think they are an asylum seeker or refugee, when they have been born in this country.''

Mr Liburd, who was a racial harassment officer with the council, until last October, said: " I had, in a year, between 50 and 60 cases reported but I think a lot of cases out there will go unreported.

"You get attacks on taxi drivers and they are not always reported."

Middlesbrough Crime Reduction Partnership is looking at ways of improving security for taxi drivers, a number of whom are of Asian origin.

In common with colleagues from other towns and cities, he is concerned at animosity being displayed towards asylum seekers.

"There seems to be a trend especially among young people who believe asylum seekers are encroaching on their standard of living.

"A lot of the misconceptions have been fuelled by stories in the right-wing Press.''

Abdul Rasool, chairman of the Academy of Asian Arts and Literature, in Middlesbrough, said: "Any effort to promote relations between the different communities is a very good thing.

"It is of benefit to everyone, creating more harmony and rubbing away the barriers so we become one community."

Pete Widlinski, area manager of the North of England Refugee Service, said: "I think all initiatives that help to raise awareness of the fact we all live on this small earth are welcome. We are all inter dependent on each other.''

A Palestinian was recently beaten up as he walked through a Middlesbrough park one morning - after first being asked if he was an asylum seeker. His jaw was broken in three places and he lost a tooth in the attack.