British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that adequate police force will be deployed on the streets to deal with the situation. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant riots He sought to reassure communities bracing for more violent protests on Wednesday, citing fears of violence in the coming days.
After this incident, riots broke out in many cities and towns. Three girls killed at a Taylor Swift-themed event in Southport, A terrorist attack in a seaside town in northwest England occurred after a false message on social media identified the suspected killer as an Islamist migrant.
Unrest has spread, with rioters targeting mosques and smashing windows at hotels housing refugees from Africa and the Middle East as they chanted “get them out!” – the first widespread violence in Britain in 13 years.
Online messages said immigration centres and law firms assisting migrants would be targeted on Wednesday, prompting anti-fascist groups to say they would protest any protests.
Speaking after an emergency meeting with ministers and police chiefs on Tuesday, Starmer said police would be there to deal with any disorder.
“Our first duty is to make sure our communities are safe,” he told broadcasters.
“They will be safe. We are doing everything we can to make sure that where police response is needed, it’s there, where assistance is needed for particular locations, it’s there.”
He said it had become difficult since the protests were taking place at multiple locations, but he had been assured that the police could handle any disruption.
The government has increased the capacity of prisons to deal with the large number of arrests made during the riots, leading several countries to warn their citizens about the dangers of travelling to the UK.
Starmer said more than 400 people had been arrested, 100 had been charged and he expected sentences to be handed down soon.
“Anyone found complicit in this disorder will face the full force of the law,” he said.
Three men will be sentenced on Wednesday after being found guilty of violent disorder in Liverpool, northwest England, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
The Justice Department, which is set to release some inmates early as it grapples with prison overcrowding, said about 600 prison spots had been reserved for those accused of violence.
This unrest has prompted India, Australia, Nigeria and other countries to make moves. Warned its citizens to remain alert.
Saminata Bangura, a 52-year-old support worker at a care home in Liverpool, said she had loved living in the UK since moving from Sierra Leone. But she is now scared and stays at home most of the time.
“I’m so scared, even walking now, because everywhere, we’re scared, especially us Black people,” she said, describing how a library near her home was vandalized.
racial hatred
Starmer has vowed to hold to account those who rioted, threw bricks at police and counter-protesters, looted shops and burned cars.
Police on Tuesday charged a 28-year-old man with inciting racial hatred through a Facebook post. A 14-year-old juvenile pleaded guilty to violent disorder.
Trouble also broke out on Monday night in Plymouth in southern England and in Belfast in Northern Ireland, where hundreds of rioters hurled petrol bombs and heavy stones at police officers and set a police vehicle on fire.
Police have blamed online misinformation spread by high-profile personalities for the violence.
At the end of December 2023, there were 111,132 people receiving asylum assistance in the U.K., of whom 45,768 were in hotels. During that year, the government’s statistics office estimated net migration into the country was 685,000.
Experts on extremism and social cohesion say far-right agitators have used the Southport massacre to incite violence.
Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank focusing on migration and identity, said the killings were used “specifically to mobilise against refugees and Muslims, and this continued even when there was evidence the person was neither a refugee nor a Muslim.”
Police have said the attack was not terrorism-related and that the suspect was born in Britain. Media reports said the suspect’s parents came to Britain from Christian-majority Rwanda.
In a YouGov survey on Tuesday, three-quarters of respondents said the rioters did not represent the views of Britain as a whole, while 7 percent said they supported the violence.