There has been a spike in the number of racist incidents recorded since the London Bridge attack, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has warned last week. Khan reportedly said that the police will take a "zero-tolerance approach to hate crime" as the latest statistics show a rise in hate crime and Islamophobic incidents after the London Bridge terror attack.
Provisional figures released by the Mayor's office show the number of racist incidents recorded on last Monday was 54, compared with a daily average of 38 so far this year. There has also been an increase in Islamophobic hate incidents, with 20 on last Monday, compared with a daily average of 3.5 this year. This is the highest daily level of Islamophobic incidents so far this year, and is also higher than the levels following the Paris attacks in November 2015 and the murder of Lee Rigby in May 2013.
The mayor has called on all Londoners to report hate crimes of any kind to the police.
It is quite apparent that after Brexit, the UK has already witnessed such hate crimes rising, and the diaspora living here have started feeling vulnerable. Suffering such a horrific racial attack, recently was Indian origin couple Sachit Poonekar and Tejal Sonwalkar.
During this election UK born Gujarati boy, Cllr Ameet Jogia who stood in Brent North against Labour's MP Barry Gardiner was made a target of racism. He came across a racist graffiti scrawled on the wall of a voting booth in Wembley. The message read: ‘Vote Labour Barry, not Jogia. Keep p*kis out of politics’.
The 30-year-old was alerted to the message by one of his supporters who spotted it in a polling booth at around 7pm, at The Ascension Church in north London. The photo also made rounds on social media, where Ameet's friends and family tried to comfort the Tory candidate. Jogia, who went to investigate shortly before voting closed at 10pm, said he was ‘saddened’ to see the ‘racist’ message still there.
“There are very strict rules that no messages should be placed anywhere in the polling station let alone the polling booth that would influence anyone’s decision. This message clearly said ‘vote labour…”
He allegedly brought it to the attention of a presiding officer but claims they ‘literally just shrugged their shoulders saying it was 10pm and nothing they could do’, the Metro reported.
Jogia told the Asian Voice, "I have launched a formal complaint with Brent Council and the Electoral Commission as to why such a message was left unnoticed for so long. The authorities are investigating the matter with the police."
Living in the town of Swindon in England's Wiltshire county for about a decade now, Poonekar and Sonwalkar consider England their second home and run a flourishing Indian food joint business there. On October 7, 2016, they were heading out of their restaurant for a delivery when Poonekar had an argument with one Michael Francis Wright over what side of the road to drive on. That's when Wright hurled abuses at the couple calling them a 'f**king Asian monkey'. He fear that the next thing would be a blow coming his way, given the guy's big build, so he refrained from saying anything, and informed the police.
The case was later taken up for investigation by the police and on May 18, the Chippenham magistrate court ruled in their favour and asked Wright to pay up for the harassment.
Since Poonekar had managed to take a picture of the car's number plate, he was able to produce it in his statement to the cops. That is how Wright could be traced. After the court hearing that followed, Poonekar won the case.
He said,"Winning the case was important for me not because I needed the compensation, but because I needed to know that the place I called my second home considered me a part of it, too. There are so many like me who face issues like this on a daily basis. Standing up against the bullies is what they must do, no matter what...Ever since Brexit, there have been several cases of racial abuse. I have myself heard of many that occurred in London. But our neighbourhood mostly comprises Polish and Hungarian people. There aren't many Indians here, so we didn't hear of incidents involving racial slurs on them, till it happened to us.”
In the order that was issued on May 19, the magistrate court sentenced Wright to pay £120 as fine, £400 as compensation, £30 as victims' surcharge and £ 220 as crown prosecution service (CPS) costs.
Chief Superintendent Raj Kohli, who is a Senior Public Order Officer too with the met Police, is qualified to control, order and command big and serious crowds at events. Speaking to the Asian Voice exclusively about a probability of increase in hate crimes, he said, “Usually Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims are targeted after such incidents. Don't accept any misbehaviour towards you and must tell the Police wherever you are. We are there for you.”
