Muslim Hong Kong migrants to Britain fear for their safety after a string of anti-immigration riots swept England, although most Hongkongers in the country have been unaffected by the large-scale disturbances.
Adeel Malik, the chairman of the Muslim Council of Hong Kong who now lives in Birmingham, told the Post the organisation was checking on family members and friends of the community over the past few days to make sure they were safe.
“These kinds of things are of course 100 per cent very disturbing for us and worrying to see and we are just taking it on a daily basis,” he added.
“We are advising community members everywhere to stay calm and if somebody is trying to provoke you, don’t let them provoke you, just walk away.”
Malik said his son’s activities at a mosque were cancelled after a protest was planned for the area and that the family were avoiding crowded locations.
He added he had also reminded his brother and mother-in-law to take extra care when they went to work and to use trains instead of buses to avoid attacks on vehicles.
Hongkongers of Chinese ethnicity said they were largely unworried by the unrest, despite the spread of messages among the community that they could also be singled out.
“Life goes on as usual – we are more cautious, but we won’t avoid going out,” said Benson Wong Wai-kwok, a former assistant political science professor at Baptist University, who now lives in Woking in Surrey, near London.
Violence erupted in Southport, Lancashire, and spread across the country over the last week after a man arrested in connection with the fatal stabbings of three children and wounding eight others and two adults was falsely said to be a Muslim and an immigrant to the UK.
A number of ‘influencers’ have been making clickbait remarks … saying Hongkongers will be targeted, which was exaggerating and groundless
The alleged attacker was later identified as Axel Rudakubana, 17, who was born in Cardiff, Wales, to Christian parents who were originally from Rwanda.
Protesters, including far-right thugs who used social media to organise, clashed with police, attacked mosques and hotels used to house refugees seeking asylum and looted stores.
Wong said the towns and cities where Hongkongers were clustered did not appear to be targets for protests.
He added there were barely any reports of Asians being assaulted.
“Noticeably quite a number of ‘influencers’ have been making clickbait remarks on their channels, saying Hongkongers will be targeted, which was exaggerating and groundless,” he said.
“If some Hongkongers only receive information from those channels, they would get a serious misinterpretation of what’s going on in the UK … they better diversify their source of news.”
Hong Kong’s Security Bureau on Tuesday reminded people that an amber travel alert for Britain was still in force because of the unrest. Travellers to the UK were urged to watch out for their safety and avoid large gatherings.
Wong said it might be too early to comment on whether the British government was capable of dealing with the situation, but it appeared that police had insufficient manpower and had struggled to handle some outbreaks of violence.
Gary Tsui, a 37-year-old Hongkonger who lives in Leicester, where a dispersal order was imposed in the city centre after protests over the weekend, said he was not worried about his personal safety.
The dispersal order gave police extra powers to order people involved in antisocial behaviour to leave the designated area and not return for up to 48 hours.
There was quite a lot of fearmongering online, with messages asking people to stay at home – just like sharing ghost stories
Tsui, a legal consultant who moved to Britain in 2021, said he had not seen any protests. He added people had nothing to worry about if they did not live or work near mosques or hotels housing refugees, which were often targets for violence.
“There were no attacks against East Asians or Hongkongers at all – instead the anger was mainly vented at illegal immigrants,” Tsui said.
“But there was quite a lot of fearmongering online, with messages asking people to stay at home – just like sharing ghost stories.”
Tsui added that he had little confidence in the government’s ability to handle the crisis, which he said was the result of more than a decade of policy failures by the Conservative Party. The party was ousted from government last month in a Labour landslide.
“I could feel the anger of locals towards the inaction of the government in handling the influx of immigrants,” he said.
