Flashback to London bombs aftermath: Police evacuate Birmingham centre

Saturday, 9 July, 2005 - Traffic is not being allowed into the city centre

About 20,000 people have been evacuated from Birmingham city centre amid a security alert. West Midlands Police asked people to leave Broad Street, the main entertainment hub and two other areas. Some city homes were also evacuated. No vehicles are being allowed past the inner ring road into the city centre, and there have also been reports of controlled explosions by police. West Midlands Police said it was in response to intelligence it received. It is an exodus and the lot of roads are like ghost streets, when they normally would be packed with people Police have said it was a "proportionate response" to the intelligence, but were not giving specific details.

Birmingham resident Kenneth Kelsall told the BBC: "There is a lot of confusion, there appears to be no chance of anyone moving back into the city - but people are remaining quiet."

West Midlands Police announced they had received intelligence of a possible threat to the area at about 2015 BST. Initially people were told to be on their guard, and that bars and restaurants were being searched. Motorists were also told not to come into the city centre. However, about half an hour later, police announced that the city was to be evacuated. The BBC's Zoe Gough said there was confusion and people were trying to find out information but there was no panic.

'Gridlocked' streets

"Everybody is just being turned round and the main roads out of the city seem to be gridlocked, although traffic does seem to be moving," she said. "I have seen some cars just pulled up and also people walking along with suitcases away from city centre as if they have been stranded there," she said. She said people were mainly trying to continue with their nights out, but the area being evacuated appeared to be increasing. "People who have come here to have a good time have been trying to carry on with their evening, but the area being evacuated seems to be widening," she said. "I did see a massive queue outside a nightclub, Liberty's in Hagley Street, where people had gone to." "But it is an exodus and the lot of roads are like ghost streets, when they normally would be packed with people. "The traffic is moving the wrong way than it normally would be on a Saturday night, put it that way. "

[the BBC even want to know how the fear is working under the guise of a comment board:]

Have you been affected by the Birmingham security alert? Send us your comments and pictures using the form below. BBC - Tavistock Institute division

The story started when a pirate radio station DJ aired allegations that a black teenage girl had been gang raped by Asian men in a beauty shop near to the Lozells area.

Anger mounted and a public picket outside followed. By the weekend, with no victim having come forward, the mood was sufficiently heated for the police to try to start calming things down.

But by Saturday night, violence hit Lozells' streets as gangs took matters into their own hands. Young black men attacked Asian businesses; Asian youths attacked the black men; both gangs had a go at the police.

Who killed Isiah Young-Sam, a city council IT analyst returning home from the cinema, remains unclear as the police have not publicly confirmed the ethnicity of the mob behind the vicious stabbing.

After a second night of trouble saw more tension (and a fatal shooting that may or may not be related), the police swamped Lozells on Monday to stamp out the trouble.

Warren G, the DJ who aired the rape allegation, has kept quiet. The woman screening his calls told the BBC News website that he had only sought to do the right thing.

Ajaib Hussein, the owner of the beauty parlour at the centre of the allegation, has denied the claims and said his business is the victim of a plot by rivals. - BBC

Blacks angry over Asian rape claim in B'ham

Trouble is brewing in Birmingham it seems, with the black community angry over claims that an Asian shop owner and 18 other Asian men gang-raped a 14 year old African girl at the back of their shop in the Perry Barr area, Birmingham. Last night about 300 black people in the area staged a demonstration calling for justice.

Protestors are vowing to continue the demonstration today and stage a protest march on Saturday. Just about 10 minutes ago, I got an email from Ligali, which said this:

[Link] I can see they are pissed off at such a heinous crime, but it has not been confirmed she was raped by Asian guys and there is no evidence to back up that the Asian community is hiding or protecting these bastards. In fact I'd be happy to see their balls on a plate.

A national boycott is surely taking it too far? Why should Asians everywhere be blamed for the activity of a gang of criminals? Ligali is generalising in a way it warns others against doing so with regards to the Afro-Caribbean community. If you hear anything more on this story, email us.

Birmingham riots update

West Midlands police have made more arrests in connection with Isiah Young-Sam's murder.

A further two men have been arrested on suspicion of murder and a serious assault. The men aged 24 and 23 both from Birmingham were arrested yesterday (Fri 28 Oct). The three men arrested previously aged 22, 22 and 25 remain in police custody for further detention.

In total five men have now been arrested in connection with the stabbing and a serious assault in Lozells.

On Wednesday evening I was invited to a panel discussion, along with a Ligali representatitve, on the Pakistani channel PTV Prime. You can hear the show from here.

Meanwhile Ligali says Asians were posing as Africans to write racist comments that could be published by the media. Yeah sure.

However, some media outlets refuse to try and defuse the tension, preferring instead to regurgitate rumours and keep talking about boycotting Asian shops. This is the editorial from The Voice newspaper.

Yeah, great one guys. Because only Asians are guilty of racism.

In fact the newspaper's news stories are much worse, with the front page headline aggressively asserting: 'Gang of 19 Rape Teen' - Who cares about the facts when there is an axe to grind?

Ligali respond to what it says is Media stirring

Rival community newspapers stand firm and united

Various media organisations have begun attempting to blame African British community groups by portraying the alleged child gang rape as rumour designed to spark a race riot.

In a collective effort to divert blame from themselves several articles have been published by national newspapers attempting to besmirch amongst others, several community based community radio stations, African focused internet forums and the Ligali Organisation in a concerted effort to apportion blame and deflect focus from the central role that the deliberate news suppression and misrepresentation of the facts surrounding the alleged child gang rape played in inciting community tensions. News reporting has typically portrayed African people as the aggressors and broadcast various CCTV images of criminality where it is said by many that the hooded assailants attacking shops are actually Asian. There are also several attempts to portray this issue as one of jealousy amongst communities citing resentment about socio-economic disparity as the true motivation for 'rioting'.

Many have failed to offer or feign even a token gesture of compassion over community feelings surrounding the alleged rape of a fourteen year old by eighteen men in an Asian hair shop or that of the tragic murder of an African youth who was stabbed during the associated violent clashes. Instead the majority seek the opportunity to characterise the entire incident as race riots and fail to acknowledge the primary purpose of the peaceful protests launched both in Birmingham and London was to seek truth and justice for the silent victims of crime perpetrated against the African British community. - ligali.org

Rape, lies and auntie beeb Innocent Isiah Young-Sam murdered by gang of Asians

Why the Birmingham riots got out of control

25th October, 2005

For the past four days I have been in Paris, attending a conference on ethnic media in Europe and how it can build bridges across racial communities.

So how ironic that I come back to be confronted with a mini-race war between British black and Asian communities. Over in Europe recently arrived immigrants are adapting and trying to build a secure future, while here we are re-living riots that happened 20 years ago.

I first wrote about trouble brewing in Birmingham on Wednesday last week on the Pickled Politics magazine. When I got back on Sunday, nearly 500 comments had been posted in response, many of them sickeningly racist in nature. I had to delete nearly 200.

It is difficult to know where to start when everyone is too busy accusing each other. It seems to be painfully obvious that the black media, in the form of community websites and local radio stations, were instrumental in repeating allegations that a young girl was gang-raped by up to 18 Asian men.

There may be some truth in accusations that local Asian community leaders were painfully slow in responding to initial protests. Once trouble started, they typically scrambled to get to the media and release statements.

It seems that the economic success of Asians in that area of Birmingham, combined with a feeling that many Asian shopkeepers are racist towards black customers has created deep-seated resentement that did not take much to spark off.

But why was a crime that should have been dealt by the police made into a conflict about race? For that we need some background.

In March, the reported crime of a under-10 year old girl being raped by a black man shocked the country. Yet two months later, confirming the suspicions of many within the black community, the claim turned out to be false.

A few months later the hysterical reaction by the Evening Standard that children were being 'sacrificed' in London's (black) churches was also shown to be largely baseless, and so were rumours about rapes and killing in New Orleans post-Katrina.

Whether such media reaction is based on inherent racism or not, people do not forget easily.

It is frustrating then that some from the Afro-Carribean community can be accused of exactly the same behaviour - jumping on the bandwagon of accusation and conjecture before establishing the facts of what happened with the young girl (who incidentally is still nowhere to be found).

If the crime did indeed take place, then it should be fully dealt with and the perpetrators caught. Anyone trying to build a "wall of silence" should be fully challenged as rape should have no place within any society.

Neverthelessm organisations such as Ligali asked for all Asian businesses to be boycotted on the basis that it was legitimate to encourage Afo-Carribeans to only support businesses run by them. So much for racial solidarity and building bridges. How that will reduce suspicion within communities is beyond me.

Moving forward There is little use in finger-pointing right now. Once again tense relations have been hijacked by criminal elements and people have been killed. For that, both the Asian and the Afro-Carribean communities have to take responsibility - specially the so-called local community leaders.

I would go as far as saying that those commentators or radio DJs who encouraged racial violence should be charged for doing so in the same way as the BNP.

The vast majority of people from both communities who are happy to live peacefully together are being drowned out by hotheads who have their own agendas, and once again the media has played a vital part in all this.

This incident has also once again exposed that race-relations for community leaders has become a sideshow about radio and TV soundbites. There seem to be no channels of communication and little willingness to nip potential problems in the bud.

Yet, many seem to be privately discussing revenge attacks. Unless more responsible groups in Birmingham, who are in touch with events on the ground and able to speak to these youths, take charge, we will not move forward. - asiansinmedia.org

Politics of the ghetto

The Handsworth riots could be the prelude to deeper segregation, something Tony Blair is abetting

Nick Cohen Sunday October 30, 2005 - The Observer

When I was a reporter on the Birmingham Post & Mail, I could guess anyone's politics by how they described the looting and murder that overwhelmed Handsworth in September 1985. If they talked about the 'Handsworth riots', I knew they were conservatives who had seen criminals going berserk after the police arrested local dope traders. Thugs of all creeds and colours had joined the fun. It was a yobs' orgy, not a political protest. As I'd ducked and dived to escape machete-wielding rioters, I took the point. When a couple cornered me and demanded my money, I was saved only by the honest conviction of my junior reporter's cry: 'But, but, I don't have any money!'

On the other hand, people who talked of the 'Handsworth rebellion' were clearly from the left. Before they became respectable, Herman Ouseley and Keith Vaz were fire-spouting revolutionaries who declared in a report for the old West Midlands County Council that the word 'riot' didn't begin to describe what had happened in Handsworth. 'The never-employed black under-class, interned in the workless gulags of Britain' had risen up against their oppressors, they insisted. Birmingham was seeing 'violent resistance' by blacks who believed they were being forced to live under 'a form of apartheid'.

The charred bodies of two Asians were found in the wreckage of the Lozells Road post office, but Vaz and his colleagues warned that you were falling for the ruling class's old 'divide and rule tactic' if you said there were divisions between ethnic minorities.

For all the hyperbole, I had sympathy for them as well. In Brixton, Tottenham and Handsworth, the classic riot of the period began after a real or rumoured assault on a black woman by the police. The rioters were poor young men without a future. To say the violence had nothing to do with racism and the mass destruction of manufacturing jobs in Margaret Thatcher's first recession was wishful thinking or Tory propaganda.

Twenty years on, I am back on the Lozells Road after another riot. Nothing has changed, but everything is different. The red-brick terrace houses are as pokey and dilapidated as ever. It remains a place where you can catch the smell of disappointment; a place where people stay because they've nowhere else to go.

Yet little else was familiar. The arguments of the Eighties about why young men took to the streets felt antique and irrelevant. Beyond repeating the platitude that workers with good jobs tend to be law-abiding, you couldn't pretend the 2005 riot was a protest against unemployment. The economic and law enforcement policies of official society - 'white society', to stretch a point - had nothing to do with the violence. Racism was on display, but not between blacks and whites. So were religious tensions, which I'd never given a second's thought in 1985.

What started the riot was not a bungled police round-up of drug dealers, but a racist rumour which swept black Birmingham. Everyone knew someone who could swear that an Asian shopkeeper had locked up a 14-year-old black girl he had caught shoplifting and then raped her with the help of his friends. The police have been investigating for a week. They haven't found the girl or the crime scene or the rapists. Unless that changes, and my guess is it won't, the rumour will be a grotesque libel that painted Asian shopkeepers as the bestial abusers of feminine innocence.

Warren G spread it on his show on a pirate station. Mr G isn't a standard DJ. He's a religious man and left the studio for a meeting about the rape at the New Testament Church of God. It stands on the other side of Lozells Road from Handsworth's mosque and it was hard to resist the illusion that they were glaring at each other like two fighters after a brawl.

The meeting ended and the riots began. Gangs hit each other and passers-by with petrol bombs and guns. One police officer and 35 civilians were injured. An Asian gang murdered Isiah Young-Sam, a 23-year-old black man, who, by a stroke of capricious fortune, was a school friend of Warren G.

As striking as the violence were the wild statements on the radio and in internet chatrooms. There was plenty of talk of Asian racism, and all sides accepted that there are racist Asians as there are racist blacks, whites and whatever. Ligali, a black African pressure group, went further and damned everyone. It called for a boycott of Asian shops. Not of the shop where the crime took place - no one knew where it was or if it existed - but of all Asian shops. Pickled Politics, a website run by a sharp team of Asian writers, picked up an email which was doing the rounds.

Tellingly, it, too, was about Asian shopkeepers. When I knew Handsworth, there were black traders. But while many Hindu, Sikh and Muslim families have followed the classic immigrant path of sticking together and building a business, many blacks have fallen behind. The emailer blamed a conspiracy. Asians succeeded in taking over hairdressers for black women by forcing them 'to buckle under unreasonable' competition. 'Black people need to realise that they are been shitted on by Indians who now supply them with the very food they eat, their cosmetics and health care.'

Theodore Dalrymple, the pseudonym of a Birmingham doctor and writer, noted recently in the Telegraph that the shopkeepers were facing a modern variant of European (and now Middle Eastern) anti-semitism. Once, white Christians accused Jewish traders of kidnapping their children and draining their blood; now, black Christians accuse Asian traders of kidnapping their girls and raping them.

These prejudices are incredibly powerful because they combine race hatred of the alien, class hatred of the prosperous and religious hatred of the infidel.

In World on Fire, published two years ago and which deserved far more attention than it received, Amy Chua showed how globalisation had created an explosion of racism in the anti-semitic tradition. The new wave of capitalism had raised the living standards of ordinary people by a little and the rich by a lot, her argument ran. The supporters of free markets and democracy thought everyone was benefiting and hadn't noticed that their ideas helped fuel resentments in those countries where ethnic minorities dominated business.

Sectarian leaders from the Slobodan Milosevic mould were exploiting the double antipathy of race and class. Across the planet, you heard the same demonic accusations of blood-sucking, corruption and secret influence about the Chinese business class in south east Asia, the white farmers in Zimbabwe and South Africa, the Spanish 'whites' in Latin America, the Jews in Russia, the Ibo in Nigeria, the Croats in Milosevic's Yugoslavia and the Americans everywhere.

I said earlier that the 1985 Handsworth riots had nothing to do with government. That was true in all respects but one. With unforgivable recklessness, our leaders aren't diminishing the importance of race, but fuelling sectarianism.

In Handsworth, blacks complained that Asians were doing too well from the government's SRB6 grants programme. The naive might imagine that the job of government is to promote common citizenship. Yet in Birmingham, you see projects for the black unemployed, not all the unemployed; for disadvantaged Asians or Indians or Muslims, not all the disadvantaged. Across the country, wherever the BNP makes gains, you can guarantee it has been the beneficiary of white anger at grants and services dispensed on communalist lines.

As I'm sure you know, state-sponsored sectarianism is about to take off. We're to have religions redefined as races, which they're not, and opposition to religion redefined as race hatred, which it isn't. Meanwhile, the only coherent part of Tony Blair's education white paper is his promise to build faith schools that will segregate children and their parents by religion and race and, indeed, class in the case of top-end church schools.

I can see no more urgent task than taking the fight to those on the right and the left who are busily piling bricks on ghetto walls. If they're not stopped, I don't like to think what Handsworth or the rest of the country will be like in 20 years. - guardian.co.uk

Observer targets Ligali as community media unravels

Mon 31 October 2005

The Ligali organisation was smeared in the Observer newspaper as several community radio stations have gone off air following sustained accusatory media attention.

Several community stations have stopped broadcasting following the shut down of various community websites after the national media held them indirectly responsible for the murder of Isiah Young-Sam to deflect their own culpability. As a result, Ligali is now one of the only independent African owned online media organisations reporting on this issue.

No one knew where the shop was?

The Observer newspaper is the latest in a line of national media organisations attempting to besmirch Ligali's reputation with the wider community. Through an article written by Nick Cohen it states; "Ligali, a black African pressure group, went further and damned everyone. It called for a boycott of Asian shops. Not of the shop where the crime took place - no one knew where it was or if it existed - but of all Asian shops. Pickled Politics, a website run by a sharp team of Asian writers, picked up an email which was doing the rounds."

The 'sharp team of Asian writers' at Pickled Politics website now also accuse Ligali of stating that "Asians were posing as Africans to write racist comments that could be published by the media".

LIGALI Comment

1. A 'black' African pressure group?

2. Damned everyone??

3. No one knew where it [the shop that we boycotted] was or if it existed??

4. Pickled Politics, a website run by a sharp team of Asian writers?

5. [Subscribers to our newsletters mysteriously] 'picked up' an email which was 'doing the rounds'?

In a section consisting of only sixty six words, how could anyone possibly get everything so horribly wrong?

"The more you stretch the truth the easier it becomes be to see through the lies."

- www.ligali.org more Ligali media news here

This statement was distributed by the South Asian Alliance at Saturday's demonstration.

South Asian Alliance condemns violence against women

The South Asian Alliance is shocked by reports that a young 14 year Jamaican girl was allegedly gang raped by Asian youths in the Perry Bar area. This unconfirmed attack and the subsequent rumours that are going round have led to shops being closed, police being drafted into the area and increased tensions between African Caribbean and Asian Youths.

The South Asian Alliance calls on all sections of our community, both Asian and African Caribbean to come together and stop the situation from escalating and getting out of hand. We need to work together to establish the facts, at the same time we call on our youths to remain calm and exercise restraint.

We reaffirm our solidarity with our African, Caribbean Sisters and Brothers and stand united with them, we need to establish the truth of what took place, and if the allegations are proven to be correct our sympathises go out to the victim and her family. We call on the authorities to remove any constraints and provide immediate reassurances that no action will be taken due to her alleged illegal status.

The South Asian Alliance unequivocally condemns any forms of violence against women across all communities. Any perpetrators of such crimes need to be punished and brought to justice. - south asian alliance.org

The Aims of the Organisation are: 1. To work in partnership with individuals and organisations for a fair and just society which gives African Britons an equal chance to work, learn and live free from negative discrimination and covert and overt prejudice based on gender, race, culture and/or class. As such, we seek to; Increase employment opportunities for African Britons Increase access to higher education for African Britons Increase access to quality health care for African Britons Reduce civil rights violations by police and other associated central and local government institution on African Britons. more of the Ligali Constitution

Ligali have links to the 'Africanisation' agenda, one which wishes strength through an economic autonomy.

see this page for the Ligali team with prominent mention of the Insaka group

Insaka Movement For Africanisation

is a charitable organisation, created by, and for, young Africans. When we use the term African we mean all people of African descent, whether 'African-Caribbean', 'African-British', 'African-American' etc. and all African nationals. Insaka is a word from the Bembe language spoken in Zambia, meaning: 'to hold council'. Our primary aim is to encourage and facilitate the Africanisation* and unity of our people. Although based in London we have international connections. All five members of the current Management Committee are in our early twenties, and though we do not exclude older people, our attention is focused mainly on those our own age and younger.