‘ALL WHITES ARE RACIST’
Cambridge University chiefs probe student equality leader from £36,000-a-year school after he praises London rioters and rants...
CAMBRIDGE University was last night investigating a student after he praised rioters who threw petrol bombs at police in East London – claiming that ‘all white people are racist’.
Jason Osamede Okundaye, who runs the student union’s Black and Minority Ethnic Campaign, said that white people had ‘colonised’ Dalston in Hackney – and suggested they ‘go back’ to areas like ‘Exeter and Solihurst’ [sic].
The Pembroke College student, a former pupil at a £36,000-a-year private school, also urged the rioters to ‘smash everything’.
The protest on Friday night over the death of Rashan Charles turned violent, with rioters throwing bottles, lighting fires and barricading a road close to where the 20-yearold fell ill last week following a struggle with a police officer.
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott was also criticised for saying she understood the protesters’ anger. But a spokesman added that she had made clear that Rashan Charles’s family had called for calm and ‘we must respect their wishes and any protests must be peaceful’.
A vigil yesterday passed off peacefully as crowds chanted ‘No justice, no peace’ .
They called for the police officer who tried to arrest Mr Charles to be suspended.
Critics accused student Mr Okundaye of encouraging hatred.
‘That is stirring up racial hatred unnecessarily’
Cambridge University told The Mail on Sunday it was ‘looking into the matter’ and would ‘take appropriate action’.
London Conservative MP Bob Blackman said the student should be ‘prosecuted for inciting racial hatred’. Mr Blackman added: ‘That is stirring up racial hatred unnecessarily – and completely without justification.’
In a rant on Twitter, posted during Friday night’s protests, Mr Okundaye, 20, told his thousands of followers: ‘ALL white people are racist. White middle class, white working class, white men, white women, white gays, white children they can ALL geddit.’
The student also claimed it was ‘absolutely delicious’ to watch ‘middle-class white people despair over black people protesting in their colonised Dalston’. He continued: ‘Just catching up on the rioting, excellent stuff, smash everything #No Justice No Peace.’
He also posted a meme, an internet image, under the heading: ‘Me@ these rioters in Dalston’ which read: @you’re doing amazing, sweetie.’
Mr Okundaye, who has been involved in a series of anti-racism initiatives, was born in South Lon- don and says he is a member of the Edo tribe in Nigeria. He was educated on an academic scholarship at the independent Whitgift School in Croydon, which was founded in 1596 and charges fees of up to £36,400 for full boarders.
Last year, the sociology and politics student was part of a Cambridge campaign calling for a bronze cockerel, which was the symbol of Jesus College, to be ‘repatriated’ to Africa. The newlyelected president of the Black and Minority Ethnic Campaign was among students demanding that the sculpture, which had pride of place in the college’s dining hall, be handed back in a ceremony to Nigeria, from which they claimed it had been looted.
The campaign, which was likened to one at Oxford University over a statue of Cecil Rhodes, forced the college to remove the cockerel.
Mr Okundaye, an outstanding student at Whitgift who won an Oxford theology prize and the Harvard Book prize in 2015, has since criticised public school colleagues for narrow mindedness and has claimed that ‘white men’s obsession with my skin meant I was made to feel naked’.
Mr Charles died after he was chased by an officer who attempted to remove an object from his throat, according to an initial inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. His death angered the local community after social media footage, which was not verified, appeared to show at least one police officer attempting to restrain him in a shop. Video from Friday showed more than a dozen officers retreating from protesters who launched missiles.
The violence drew parallels with the London riots in 2011, sparked by the police shooting of suspect Mark Duggan in Tottenham.
Police warned that anyone using Mr Charles’s death ‘as an excuse to commit crime’ would be ‘dealt with robustly’.