A memorial for the victims of a knife attack at a children’s dance class in Southport, England. Much of the disinformation after that attack falsely claimed that the suspect was an asylum seeker or that he had come to England illegally. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
THE mob was growing, encircling the hotel near the northern English town of Rotherham where asylum-seekers were living.
Abdulmoiz, an asylum-seeker in his 20s from Sudan, said he watched from an upstairs window with other men trapped inside.
All they could do was pray and wait, he said, as the men outside began attacking the building, throwing objects, breaking windows and chanting, “Get them out.”
Some of the attackers tried to set fire to the building.
“People were in a panic,” said Abdulmoiz, who asked to be identified only by his first name to avoid jeopardising his asylum claim, and who spoke just days after the attack through an interpreter. “If the people outside didn’t kill us,” he feared, “the smoke would.”
The assault in early August came on one of the last big days of riots fuelled by far-right agitators and an online disinformation campaign after a deadly knife attack on a children’s dance class in north-western England.
Much of the disinformation after that attack falsely claimed that the suspect – a teenager born in Britain – was an asylum-seeker or that he had come to England illegally.
Police eventually managed to push back the Rotherham rioters, but not before some had broken into the building, further terrifying the residents, including Abdulmoiz.
He has since moved to another hotel, in Birmingham, but he said the fear has barely abated.
The riots that shook Britain over more than a week have quieted, at least for now. The government has been working to charge and sentence rioters quickly, providing a clear warning to anyone who wanted to continue the violence that left dozens of police officers injured.
Mosques, charities, lawyers that help asylum-seekers, public buildings and businesses have been on high alert since the riots.
Nearly 1,000 people had been arrested and nearly 550 had been charged, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council. But the riots left a bitter aftertaste not just for asylum-seekers, but also for others who felt they were once again the targets of abuse in a country where immigration has become a flashpoint.
Refugees and community organisers said those groups included immigrants and asylum-seekers, but also Muslims, people who speak with a foreign accent and people who are not white.
In Rotherham, in the days right after the hotel attack, wives were asking husbands to accompany them to the grocery store, according to some residents and community leaders.
Some parents kept their children at home even on sunny days. And people said they were afraid to go to the mosque to pray, afraid to go to the town centre to shop and even afraid to go to the park to play football.
“Everybody is scared,” Yaqoob Adam, a refugee from Sudan, said. “All the foreigners, all the refugees. And they haven’t done anything.”
Yaqoob, who was born in Darfur, arrived in Britain in 2016 and has become a leader in the refugee community in Rotherham.
An avid runner and athlete, he was celebrated in The Independent newspaper in 2018 as an outstanding member of British society. He organises a football team and volunteers with several charities. (He also acted as an interpreter for Abdulmoiz.)
The riots have taken a toll on the community. Recently, Yaqoob cancelled a football game. Some of his regular players had lived in the hotel, a Holiday Inn Express, and they – along with other asylum-seekers who had been staying there – had been moved to other locations after the attack.
Other players were just too upset by the riots, he said.
He understands their lingering fears. And he shares them. How, he asked, crying, could people try to burn someone alive?
“We never came here to hurt anybody,” he said. “We came for a good life.”
There had been tensions in Rotherham before, he said, but nothing like this in recent years.
One night, he went to protect a nearby mosque, worried that it might be attacked during anti-immigrant protests planned that evening. They never materialised. And now he feels that he may not know what his neighbours actually think of him.
“I fled war in my country – genocide in my country – to come to England,” he said. But at least until recently, he was too afraid to stay out past 10pm.
“This is not freedom,” he said.
The violence near Rotherham was aggravated by festering racial tensions stemming from memories of widespread sexual abuse that took place in the area from 1997 to 2013, residents say.
At least 1,400 children were abused, an independent report released in 2014 said, while authorities were accused of turning a blind eye to the problem. Most of the victims were white; the perpetrators were mostly of Pakistani heritage.
“The narrative was very much ‘us and them,’” said Abrar Javid, of the Rotherham Muslim Community Forum.
He said that the report’s findings, and the far-right reaction, “radicalised a lot of the white communities.”
He added, “It poisoned a lot of minds in Rotherham.”
For the asylum-seekers at the Holiday Inn Express, their sense of marginalisation was heightened by their isolation; the hotel was far from the centre of Rotherham and far from mosques and halal shops, said Zaid Hussain, an imam at Masjid Uthman, a local mosque.
Phil Turner, 72, who works with an organisation called Stand Up to Racism Rotherham, said he led a counter-demonstration the day of the assault on the Holiday Inn Express and was trying to hold back what he called a “pogrom-style” attack on Muslims and migrants.
The counter-demonstrators linked arms, chanting, “Refugees are welcome here,” but he said they were little match for the attackers.
“They were baying for blood,” he said. “It was a murderous mob.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company
