JUSTICE FOR THE SURVIVOR OF THE OLDBURY ATTACK! FASCISTS OFF OUR STREETS!

As organisations representing South Asian, Black, migrant, and refugee communities and those fighting racism, we are horrified and enraged by the attack on Tuesday 9 September on a Sikh woman in Oldbury, Sandwell,  in what police are describing as a racially motivated attack. The 20 year-old woman was raped and viciously beaten in broad daylight by two white men who reportedly told her: “You don’t belong in this country, get out.”

We express our deepest solidarity with the survivor and pledge to stand by her unconditionally. We acknowledge her tremendous courage in coming forward to report this horrific crime of sexual and racial violence.

We pledge to work together to get justice for the survivor, and to counter the rise of the far-right, facilitated by successive governments, which has given rise to this heinous crime. Our long history of fighting racism in Britain has taught us that we can only resist and prevent such attacks if all communities facing racism act unitedly. The British state has made every effort to divide us in recent decades but we must not allow this strategy to succeed, or succumb to racist ‘good/bad immigrant’ narratives.

Misogyny and gendered violence has always been deeply embedded in racism and white supremacy. There are numerous instances of sexual violence against Black and racialised women by the police and other agents of the state, which go unreported or the survivors are not believed. In the last few years we have also seen the far-right weaponizing women’s and children’s safety to spread racist and Islamophobic myths such as the tropes that ‘grooming gangs’ primarily consist of Muslim men and that migrants, refugees and trans people are the source of sexual abuse. They have used these myths to organise the racist violence which is now happening on a huge scale. Meanwhile, while the far-right claims to be ‘protecting’ (white) women, it is no surprise that at least two in five of those arrested for participating in last year’s racist riots had previous convictions for domestic violence. The far-right racists, like fascists everywhere, target racialized women for particularly vicious violence, viewing them as dehumanized symbols of their communities. This is what has led to the horrific Oldbury attack.

We also hold Keir Starmer’s government responsible for facilitating this ongoing violence by pandering to the far-right. He has embraced the far-right narrative that migrants are responsible for what are in fact the effects of successive Tory and Labour governments’ policies of austerity. Starmer’s notorious ‘island of strangers’ comment inspired by Enoch Powell, his repeated dog-whistle invocation of ‘small boats’ and his government’s increasingly oppressive immigration policies have fuelled the racist and misogynistic violence that we are now experiencing on our streets.

It is shameful that, at the time of writing, no government minister has made any statement of condemnation or concern about what happened in Oldbury. On the contrary, the Home Office appears to have instructed the police not to use live facial recognition (which is routinely used for surveillance and harassment of Black communities) on the participants in the massive fascist demonstration in London just four days later, despite the fact that police are still searching for suspects in the case.

We demand justice for the survivor of the Oldbury attack! 

Fascists off our streets! 

Keir Starmer: stop pandering to the far-right!

Signed

South Asia Solidarity Group
Million Women Rise Movement
Black Lives Matter UK
Birmingham Black Sisters
Indian Workers Association (GB)
Nijjor Manush
Women of OWAAD
Migrants’ Rights Network
Shaheed Udham Singh Welfare Centre – Women@theCentre Group
Women Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Migrants (WARM)
UK Indian Muslim Council
Castewatch UK
Strive UK
ROT Collective
South Asian Liberation Movement
Birmingham Asylum & Refuge Association
Women Asylum Seekers Together (WAST Manchester)
Camden United against Racism
Muslim Social Justice Initiative
Birmingham Race Impact Group
India Labour Solidarity (ILS)
Hindus for Human Rights UK
UK Is Not Innocent
Communities for Holistic Accessible Rights Based Mental Health
United Domestic Workers Association
Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association
The Muslim Voice
Ad’iyah Collective
The Apna Project
Anti-Imperialist Front (Sheffield)
Camden Friends of Palestine
Camden Muslim Network
Trubys Garden Tea Room Interfaith Café, Milton Keynes
Haringey Welcome
Camden People’s Alliance
Anti Raids Sheffield

Painting by Sarbjit Johal, No Turning Back (2020)