The UK government, led by the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, tried this Sunday to cope with the violent demonstrations encouraged by the extreme right against immigration after rumors spread on social media, spread by extremist influencers, about the nationality and religion of the alleged aggressor who killed three girls on Monday in the city of Southport, in the northwest of the country.
Anti-immigration protesters wearing masks Several windows of a Holiday Inn Express hotel were broken employed to accommodate asylum seekers in Rotherham, in the north of England. Images broadcast by the BBC showed People breaking into the building and pushing a burning container inside. It is not known whether there were any asylum seekers inside.
“I assure you that they will regret having participated in this disorder,” British Prime Minister Starmer declared at a brief press conference in London, adding that his government will do “everything necessary to bring these thugs to justice.”
In the city of Middlesbrough (northeast), hundreds of protesters They clashed with riot police, some throwing bricks, cans and pots at the officers. More than 90 people were arrested on Saturday following clashes at far-right demonstrations in Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Blackpool and Hull, as well as Belfast (Northern Ireland).
Protesters threw bricks, bottles and flares at police, injuring several officers, looted and burned shops, and shouted anti-Islamic slurs as they clashed with counter-protesters. The country had not seen such a outbreak of violence similar since 2011, after the death of a young mestizo, Mark Duggan, killed by the police in the north of London, British media highlights.
The murder of three girls in Southport sparked a wave of far-right protests in the UK
Last Monday, a young British man, the son of two immigrants from Rwanda, entered a dance workshop with a knife and stabbed the three girls. “A British businesswoman falsely reported on her social networks that this boy was an asylum seeker,” explained journalist Gabriela Carchak in Argentina Live by C5N.
The woman said the 17-year-old had arrived in Britain on a boat through the English Channel seeking political asylum and was on the list of those under surveillance by MI6, the British ultra-secret service. He later deleted the message, but the damage was already done because it unleashed total chaos,” Carchak pointed out.
At least Two mosques were attacked and Britain’s Home Office announced Sunday it was offering new emergency security to Islamic places of worship.
One month after taking powerStarmer thus faces his first crisison a particularly sensitive issue since during the campaign the Conservatives accused Labour of being lax on security and immigration. Since Monday, he has multiplied his messages of firmness and guarantees of support for the police forces against what he describes as “extreme right-wing hatred”.
After an emergency meeting with his top ministers on Saturday, he warned that his government would support police in taking “all necessary measures to keep the streets safe.”
Asked about the possibility of using the army, the minister in charge of the police, Diana Johnson, told the BBC on Sunday that the police forces “have all the resources they need.”
At the demonstrations, organised under the slogan “Enough is enough”, anti-immigration and Islamophobic slogans were shouted while British flags were waved. Although there was unanimous condemnation of the violence, criticism of the government was beginning to emerge.
Former Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel told X that the government “risks appearing to be swept away by events rather than in control.” “In the last two weeks under Labour we have had knife attacks on innocent people, street fights with machetes, riots and violence at demonstrations,” anti-immigration party Reform UK said on X, accusing Labour of being “lax on criminals.”
Source: Ambito
