UK tourists stage mutiny over Asian passengers
Even after all the talk of ID cards, CIA “rendition” flights, Guantánamo and the like, this is one of the most frightening domestic news stories I’ve heard in a long time. When even the Daily Mail reports the story without a hint of anti-Muslim spin, you know something is very wrong. It’s one thing for a government to create policies that marginalise and oppress minority groups, but when members of the general public conspire, of their own volition, to act upon this ridiculous paranoia… well, we’re one step closer to Kristallnacht.
From the Independent’s report…
*Thought* to be Arabic. It might have been Turkish. It might have been Maltese. It might have been Farsi, Urdu or Sylheti. To particularly untrained ears (which seems likely in this case, given the brains involved) even Hebrew could potentially be mistaken for Arabic. Mr British Bulldog Bigot is not a discerning customer, as Jyoti Mishra points out…
Or, for that matter, any number of peoples who might have dark skin and black beards… Brazilian, perhaps?
[EDIT: Another good response from Chris at qwghlm]
The Mail on Sunday’s story was interesting because it failed to condemn the hysteria, interviewed some of the unrepentant hysterical scared bigots, but seemingly didn’t try to contact the two men detained. Its odd that we know nothing about these men s of yet.
Oh well- probably just as well I have no flight travel plans for the rest of the year.
Just as well they weren’t on my flight into the UK, then.
There were two blokes wearing turbans in the queue for the check-in, and this on the day before all the fracas.
We’ve just had a big shock over here, because one of the train-bombers has been arrested, and he was a student at Cologne Uni, which reminds me of when I was a student at Staffs Poly, visiting friends at the Coach & Horses, when a police terrorist squad descended on the place and arrested one of the student residents. This was during the Staffordshire attacks.