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08-08-2024
LONDON: The United Kingdom is bracing for another day of unrest with more far-right race riots reportedly planned in several cities.
Riots have erupted at anti-immigration protests in towns and cities across Britain in the last week, with attacks by far-right groups on hotels housing asylum seekers and mosques.
Activists monitoring far-right communications fear that racist mobs could target at least 30 locations. They say solicitors and advice groups which support migrants and refugees across the country as well as immigration centres could be attacked.
Police are preparing for more violence after several days of unrest which have already seen more than 400 people arrested.
The far-right riots erupted after three girls, aged between six and nine, were killed during a stabbing attack in Southport on July 29.
During the attack, eight other children and two adults were hurt.
At the time, local Merseyside police announced that a 17-year-old male was arrested as a suspect in the attack, and no other information was given due to UK laws making it an offence to identify a suspect who is a minor until legal proceedings begin but in the absence of information, false information spread online that the suspect was a Muslim immigrant who had come into the country via small boats from across the English Channel.
While the suspect was later named Axel Rudakubana, born to Rwandan parents in Cardiff and not Muslim, anti-immigration protesters used the false information to link up with far-right Islamophobic groups.
Violent anti-Muslim protests took place in Southport the following day, and an attempt to attack the town’s mosque.
Since then, more than 20 places across the UK, from Sunderland in northeast England and Manchester in the northwest to Plymouth in the southwest and Belfast in Northern Ireland, have experienced violent far-right riots.
Thousands of riot police are on alert for disturbances during the far-right protests, which have been planned in more than 30 locations.
According to Telegram posts leaked to the British media, the protesters are planning to target Immigration lawyers and buildings hosting asylum seekers.
The government has said 6,000 specialist police are on standby to deal with the disorder.
So far, more than 425 people have been arrested and at least 120 charged with taking part in the racially charged protests, which began last week after the death of three girls in Southport.
During nightly riots, mosques and migrant businesses have been attacked.
Meanwhile, angry protesters took to the streets in the British seaside town of Southport and at the official residence of the United Kingdom’s prime minister after a stabbing attack killed three girls this week.
In Southport on Tuesday, protesters hurled bricks at police officers and at a local mosque, injuring more than 50 police officers.
In London on Wednesday, similar protests occurred with demonstrators near Downing Street chanting, “Save our kids,” and “We want our country back.”
At the core of the protests was the belief that the suspect, identified as Axel Rudakubana, 17, and born to Rwandan parents in Cardiff, was a Muslim immigrant, which he was not.
On Thursday, Judge Andrew Menary at Liverpool Crown Court lifted an anonymity order on Rudakubana’s identity due to the unrest erupting. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
