Sunday, April 09, 2017

Croydon standing up to racism

Occasionally, Croydon makes national news for the wrong reasons. On Friday 31st March, Reker Ahmed was subject to vicious attack in Shrublands. Friends who live in other areas of London heard about it and contacted me.

On Saturday 1st April the BBC News at 10pm decided to cover stories on
  • Gibraltar/EU 
  • Landslide in Colombia
  • a Nottingham woman abducting her two sons
There was no mention of the incident in Croydon which had left a child fighting for his life. Why did the BBC focus on the Nottingham abduction instead of the incident in Croydon??

On Sunday 2nd April BBC News at 10pm did carry the story. 

Yesterday Stand Up To Racism organised a Unity Protest in Croydon. 

I went along and met some familiar faces, including Elaine Garrod from Croydon Green Party.



Spot the difference


Chair of the local party Peter Underwood, Elaine and I were all uncomfortable about the use of the word 'FIGHT' on placards. I think 'UNITE & RESIST' would have been more appropriate

A local Kurdish speaker at the protest said that he had gone to see Reker Ahmed in hospital. Apparently, he smiled when he told him that a collection had nearly raised £50,000.

Elaine and I were interviewed by a reporter from The Canary. The article mentions a tweet by Katie Hopkins. I now appear in the same article as Katie Hopkins. Beware, I may dine out on this. 




EDIT: 10th April

Prompted by the comment from 'Anonymous' below, I have done some more reading on what happened in Shirley. An article in the Financial Times  discusses how different people are interpreting the attack. Was it racist? Well, one the individuals involved has been charged with 'racially aggravated grievous bodily harm'  Did the fact that Reker identify himself as an asylum seeker make the difference? We will find out when the case goes to court.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

joke ? you should be asking is what are they doing outside the goat at 12 pm more like causing trouble and found it but you people turn it into a race thing what a joke and why dont you march were it happened not threw our town centre dam do gooders have no understanding about the streets

Shasha Khan said...

Thanks genuinely for your comment. This article below explains how different people are interpreting what happened to Reker Ahmed. I think an attack of any kind is more likely to happen in a housing estate than the Webb Estate,for example. I don't want anyone to be caught up in a violent attack anywhere. https://www.ft.com/content/c6727264-1b7d-11e7-a266-12672483791a

Shasha Khan said...

For me the protest was to show people that there is unity in Croydon.

Standing up for what matters