Indians in Birmingham express outrage over UK riots; say they are being targeted

Living under a shadow of fear since the last few days, Indians living in Birmingham expressed their outrage at the ongoing spiral of riots in the United Kingdom on Wednesday.

Since Saturday, violent riots have broken out in several cities of England, with irate demonstrators setting buildings on fire and looting shops with brazen impunity.

Till now, London and other neighbouring areas have been hit by four consecutive nights of riots, looting and arson by masked youths who have wrecked shopping streets in parts of the capital.

From London to Liverpool to Birmingham, rioting miscreants have ransacked stores, carting off clothes, shoes and electronic goods, torched cars, shops and homes causing tens of millions of pounds of damage in Birmingham.

Caught in the midst of the violent unrest, Indians residing in Birmingham, voiced their dismay, stressing they no longer felt safe in the otherwise quiet town.

“No, we are not feeling safe here. We are scared. We have not slept since two nights. We do not know what has gone wrong here. Everywhere, people are fighting, they are vandalizing our shops. We are feeling very bad,” said Manmeet Singh, an Indian shop owner in Birmingham.

The riots are the worst the UK has seen for decades. British government officials have promised to prosecute rioters and have called them opportunistic criminals.

The level of violence has clearly taken the police by surprise and officers have repeatedly described the scale of the riots as 'unprecedented.' The talk is now of a tougher response.

Some 16,000 police personnel were deployed on duty in London on Tuesday night, far in excess of the 2,500 that would normally be in place with another night of widespread violence predicted.

Police also said they had arrested a total of 770 people, one as young as 11, since the unrest began.

However, many Indians remained wary of the assurances given by the police, highlighting their failure to book the violent miscreants in several cases with a palpable sense of fear.

“I am not feeling safe at all due to the events that have unfolded in the past few days. I had heard that the police in Birmingham was very effective in curbing crime, but it is being felt that it has failed to control the criminals. It cannot prosecute or take action against the culprits who have been found creating trouble,” said Suman Sharma, an Indian.

The riots began in Tottenham town of north London, after a peaceful march to protest the death of 19-year-old Mark Duggan in a police shootout turned violent.

What began as a spark transformed into a blaze of violence, spreading to surrounding regions and even to cities and towns outside the capital, London.

Meanwhile, many Indians said they were being ‘targeted’ by irate mobs because of their ‘financial prosperity.’

“Nothing is safe in this, riots and mobs like these, nothing is safe. But the Indian community, you know, is a successful community. Anywhere in the world they go, they are successful. So, they are always targeted. We are not violent people. So, they always target Indian community or the Pakistan community or the Bangladesh community,” said Harjeet Bhambra, an Indian businessman.

The unrest poses a new challenge to Cameron as Britain's economy struggles to grow while his government slashes public spending and raises taxes to cut a yawning budget deficit -- moves that some commentators say have aggravated the plight of young people in inner cities.

It also shows the world an ugly side of London less than a year before it hosts the 2012 Olympic Games.