Thousands of protesters took part in anti-racism rallies on Saturday, August 10, in response to the far-right riots that have rocked the United Kingdom for a week. The last major clashes between police and rioters were on Monday evening, but the police remain on alert for this weekend.
At the end of a week marked by a very firm judicial response with hundreds of appearances and first convictions as well as a first wave of anti-racist rallies on Wednesday, new demonstrations took place in many cities to denounce the recent xenophobic and Islamophobic violence.
The largest brought together several thousand people in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, where the police denounced several acts described as racist this week. A mosque in Newtownards, east of Belfast, was again targeted during the night by a Molotov cocktail – which was not lit – and was vandalized, the police saying they were treating the case as a racist crime.
A thousand people in London
Rallies of hundreds of people were reported across the UK: Newcastle (northern England), Cardiff (Wales), Glasgow and Edinburgh (Scotland). In London, nearly a thousand people gathered outside the headquarters of the anti-immigration and anti-establishment party Reform UK, carrying placards “No to racism, no to hatred”without incident.
“I don't like the right taking to the streets in my name”Jeremy Snelling, 64, who was present at the rally, explained to Agence France-Presse: “I am for open borders and refugees are a good thing”. “It's very important for immigrants in this country to see us here, white British people, saying: no, we don't tolerate this.”insisted Phoebe Sewell, a 32-year-old Londoner, about the violence.
The violence, which targeted mosques and migrant shelters, broke out following the knife attack that killed three girls on July 29 in Southport (north-west England), against a backdrop of online rumours about the suspect.
The authorities attribute the calm over the past five days to the very firm judicial response, with more than 700 arrests, 300 indictments and the first prison sentences for rioters or online publications stirring up violence.
Source: Lemonde
