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Asylum-seekers arriving in Britain are being met by
violence and hostility - but it comes from
established ethnic minority communities, not
far-right white groups
THE ghost of Christmas Past haunts Mahmoud Mustafa.
An Iraqi Kurd asylum-seeker who has lived in
Cambridgeshire for the past three years, he was with
friends last Boxing Day when they were set upon by a
gang of young racist thugs.
He and his friends were strolling through the city
centre when a car carrying a group of youths sped
up, forcing them off the pavement and into a pool of
water.
“When my friend shouted at them, the boys got out
and started beating us,” Mr Mustafa, 49, said. “They
were punching and kicking. One friend was badly hurt
(and) has since left Peterborough. Some locals here
are very angry with us. They are not always
friendly.”
Mr Mustafa’s bloody lesson in local community
relations was an early indication of rising tensions
and simmering racial feuds that climaxed with a
series of pitched street battles during the summer.
Rival gangs fought with sticks and knives, windows
were smashed and houses and cars set alight before
police restored order. On one side were groups of
young, male and predominantly Kurdish
asylum-seekers. What made the wider world sit up and
take notice was that their antagonists were not the
stereotypical white yobs of the far-right fringes.
They were young Asians.
The city’s May riots were initially dismissed as a
localised problem, but Peterborough’s experience of
a violent antagonism developing between rival ethnic
minority communities is increasingly finding echoes
in towns and cities across England.
The new racial tensions pit Pakistani against Kurd,
or West Indian against African, while the white
majority focuses on the cleaning of its own Augean
stable. In Woolwich and Plumstead, southeast London,
where young West Indians have been at war with their
Somali neighbours, a black youth speaks of the
African newcomers as being “a different kind of
black, like dirt”, and a West Indian grandmother
wishes the Somalis would “go back where they came
from”.
In Harringay, North London, a man was killed during
a street fight between Turkish and Kurdish groups.
In the West Midlands, successful Asian businessmen
casually dismiss local blacks as lazy and
drug-ridden. And in Peterborough, designated as a
cluster area for the dispersal of asylum-seekers,
the greatest resentment of the newcomers — who
include an estimated 3,000 Kurds — is to be found
among the city’s 10,000-strong Kashmiri population.
Across England, ethnic minority communities formed
at the tail-end of the British Empire — West
Indians, Pakistanis, Indians and Sikhs — seem to
have discarded the immigrant solidarity that once
united them against white oppression. To some
extent, the long-term victims of racism have become
the new model racists.
The growth of inter-ethnic hostility has outraged
veteran race campaigners, including the broadcaster
and writer Darcus Howe. He argues that ethnic
minority groups who arrived in Britain in the 1950s
have forgotten the persecution that they initially
suffered.
“They have become too middle-class,” he says.
“Remember that West Indians and Asians were loathed
when they first arrived here. How can they then dish
out the same treatment to newcomers? There is a
collective memory loss in some parts of elderly
Asian populations in this country. They forget what
it is like to arrive here with nothing. Integration
has that effect on some people.”
Peterborough is a curious mix of old and new. An
ancient city with a 12th-century cathedral, it was
designated a new town in 1968 and saw its population
double from 75,000 to 150,000 in 20 years. It has
low unemployment and the region’s highest per-capita
GDP, but also features pockets of severe
deprivation. Drugs are a major problem and violent
crime has doubled since 2000.
The first Asians, Kashmiris who came to the city in
the 1960s, were hard working and put down roots to
form a cohesive and settled community. In recent
years they have found themselves living alongside
fellow Muslims, asylum-seekers and migrant workers
from Iraq and Afghanistan with whom they have little
in common.
The new arrivals are viewed with suspicion and
blamed for severe overcrowding problems, rising
crime rates and the stretching of public services to
breaking point. They seek the acceptance that the
Kashmiri community earned over decades.
Instead, they feel rejected by the very people they
believe should most appreciate their sense of
isolation.
Humayun Ansari is the author of The Infidel Within:
Muslims in Britain 1800, a recently published
analysis of Muslim immigration to Britain. He
believes that intercommunal ethnic violence is far
more widespread in Britain than was thought.
“There is a general trend towards older, more
established Asian communities in Britain taking on
the fears of the host nation,” he said, suggesting
that newly arrived single men were particular
targets for demonisation.
“Asian communities pride themselves on extended
family traditions. To them, the solitary
asylum-seeker or migrant worker, more often than not
a young man in his late twenties, provides an
example of predatory behaviour.”
The Kashmiri enclave around Gladstone Road,
Peterborough, is a street of Victorian semis
littered with the detritus of an impoverished
underclass. Mohammed Choudhry, 45, director of the
Gladstone Community Association, a local support
group, delivers a withering denunciation of his
Kurdish neighbours. “There are some serious cultural
differences,” he says. “The newcomers have a lack of
commitment. Asians who arrived here 50 years ago
were very hard working. They assimilated into the
community and have made some notable achievements.
“The Kurds, for the most part, are single young men.
They are aggressive and at times arrogant. They
refuse to move from street corners; they are
disrespectful to our women. This has led to
tensions. The newcomers should be restricted to
certain areas.”
The disturbances in May and a further outbreak of
hostilities in July, when a hundred youths fought in
the streets, were sparked by claims that a group of
Iraqis had been harassing local Pakistani women.
The anti-Kurd sentiments of Peterborough’s Pakistani
population are partly fuelled by a perception that
the newcomers are moving solely into areas of the
city that were historically Kashmiri.
Imam Abdul Rashid Nomani, of the Islamic Centre on
Gladstone Road, said initially that the summer’s
problems had all been resolved and that many Kurds
worshipped at his mosque. Later, however, he
complained that some houses in “Kashmiri” streets
were now being occupied by up to ten Kurds. “They
want to be near us so that they can get access to
the halal food stores — but that sometimes leads to
differences. They hold more liberal values.”
Peterborough’s Kurds have the sympathy of Yassin
Ismail, 38, director of the Somali Refugee Action
Group in Woolwich, which is home to thousands of
Somalis who have fled their homeland since the
country’s civil war.
Some have found themselves in open confrontation
with members of the established West Indian
community who, like the Kashmiris of Peter- borough,
have found it tempting to blame all their ills on
“parasitic” refugees.
“The Somalis are the newcomers,” Mr Ismail said.
“They tend to face persecution and alienation. Even
now, there exists a number of stereotypes about us:
that we are people without principles and live like
warring tribes.”
Many outbreaks of violence are caused by fundamental
misunderstandings, he said. “When people from other
cultures see a group of Somali men walking down the
street, they get scared. They never stop to think:
why are the men walking in a big group? It is
because they are scared. As a newcomer to this
country, doesn’t it make sense that we would find
comfort in numbers?”
Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
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