Brexit vote fuels surge in hate crime
A Polish community centre in England was daubed with racist graffiti and far-right demonstrators chanted abuse outside a mosque amid a surge in suspected hate crimes following the referendum vote to leave the European Union.
Two men were arrested in Birmingham after a protest outside a mosque on Sunday where police confiscated a banner with the slogan ‘‘rapefugees not welcome’’.
The Metropolitan police confirmed they were investigating graffiti on the Polish cultural centre in Hammersmith as a suspected incident of racially motivated criminal damage.
Officers were also investigating reports from Upton Park, east London, where a witness said that he went to the aid of a Polish man and his father who were beaten up on Saturday night.
The witness, who gave his name as Carlos, tweeted about the incident as he came across it: ‘‘Walking home, see these men laid out on the floor, thought they were drunk, took a photo, turns out they’ve been battered senseless by ‘English man, English man’. A son and his dad, dad’s unconscious. Blood everywhere.’’
He waited at the scene until police and paramedics arrived. The older man was said to have suffered a broken arm while his son had severe facial injuries including a suspected broken jaw.
There were widespread reports of people suffering verbal abuse on the streets, in shops and cafes and at railway stations.
In Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, laminated cards reading ‘‘Leave the EU, no more Polish vermin’’ were posted through letterboxes and left near a school.
Shazia Awan, a former Conservative parliamentary candidate and Remain campaigner in Wales, was told online: ‘‘Pack your bags and go home.’’
After collating further incidents of racial abuse, Awan tweeted: ‘‘Wales wanted out, I think they want us all out with non-white skin. The state of abuse in Wales is shocking.’’
The National Police Chiefs Council said that forces had drawn up plans for a possible racist surge after the referendum result and advised people to report all incidents.
Amid rising tension and fear, community leaders called on prominent Leave campaigners to speak out against xenophobia.
Jasvir Singh, a barrister and cochairman of Faith Forums London, said he had received a dozen reports of people from South Asian backgrounds experiencing racist abuse since Friday’s poll. In the most serious case a Sikh builder was set upon in Dagenham, east London, by men who called him ‘‘terrorist scum bin Laden’’ and tried to pull his turban off before passers-by intervened to protect him.
‘‘It feels like the Leave campaign and the fact it has succeeded has legitimised that rhetoric of blaming the ‘other’,’’ Singh said.
Alicja Kaczmarek, a Polish community leader in Birmingham, said that in her 10 years in Britain she had never experienced such overt hostility.
‘‘My first feeling after the referendum was that many people made their decision on the basis of immigration and now they feel they have permission to be abusive. It feels very fearful and we wonder if it will calm down or if it will carry on.’’