Amid an ongoing outbreak of far right riots and street violence in the UK, a number of countries have issued travel warnings and advice for people thinking of heading there, or on the ground already.
Background
Dame Sara Khan, senior advisor to the former Conservative Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and counter extremism commissioner to Theresa May and Boris Johnson, speaking to The Guardian, has said that after around 15 years of governmental anti immigration rhetoric and a policy of “a hostile environment” for so-called “illegal immigrants” to the UK, politicians have “stoked culture wars” and “directly or indirectly undermined social cohesion because they’ve used inflammatory language”.
Violence and unrest is now spreading on the streets of towns all over England and Northern Ireland. The apparent trigger was the murder of three British children at a yoga and dance class in Southport, near Manchester on 29 July 2024. Fake posts and disinformation on social media attributed the attack to an immigrant, but the culprit was in fact a British teenager, who had even appeared in a 2018 advert promoting British charity telethon, Children in Need.
In the days since the Southport attack, far right protesters have paraded in the streets of towns from Bristol to Belfast, setting fire to accommodation housing refugees and fighting police and community members who oppose them. In addition, threats have been made to the lives of lawyers specialising in immigration law.
The British Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, and Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, have promised to deal with the rioters with the full force of the law, noting that CCTV footage, social media accounts, as well as local citizen reports are tools that will be deployed to identify those responsible. Arrests total 428 at the time of writing, with 120 people charged. At least 30 more gatherings are planned, police say.
This is not protest, it is pure violence.
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) August 5, 2024
We will have a standing army of public duty officers.
We will ramp up criminal justice.
We will apply criminal law online as well as offline.
We will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities. pic.twitter.com/C1SmjJjo4R
The travel warnings
So far, Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, and the UAE form the rollcall of nations that are alerting their citizens to the volatile situation in many UK towns, where far right extremists have set fire to buildings, and clashed with police and with counter protesters.
The warnings are all similar in tone, noting the need to monitor one’s surroundings as well as news updates, “exercise the highest level of caution”, as the UAE put it and avoid large crowds due to what Nigeria has called “violence and disorder” that “has assumed dangerous proportions”.
The Malaysian High Commission in London has urged any of its citizens already in the UK to register with it, so that they can receive updates and help if needed.
Kenya’s foreign affairs secretary, Korir Sing’Oei, used social media platform X to communicate concern and a warning: “A deeply worrying situation in the UK. Kenyans are urged to exercise caution.”
