LONDON: Adil Ray, the host of ITV’s breakfast show Good Morning Britain, has called out the racism he faced on social media following comments made by UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman about British Pakistani men.
Appearing on Sky TV’s “Sophy Ridge on Sunday” show, Braverman singled out British Pakistani men while speaking about the government’s efforts to protect children from sexual abuse.
She said there was a “predominance of certain ethnic groups — and I say British Pakistani males — who hold cultural values totally at odds with British values, who see women in a demeaned and illegitimate way and pursue an outdated and frankly heinous approach in terms of the way they behave.”
Discussing the government’s new refugee policy on GMB on Thursday, Ray said he had “suffered, since last Sunday, since Suella Braverman going onto breakfast television and labeling British Pakistani men — with no caveats, no kindness, no compassion — simply labeling British Pakistani men (as having) an issue when it comes to English white girls.
“I have suffered nothing but racism for the last seven days.”
The presenter said that such comments were causing rifts in society.
“We had another divide this week … with her comments about the community that I belong to, the British Pakistani community,” he said, adding that what “needs to be really looked at in this country right now, that we are divided.”
Citing his 2011 documentary about grooming by Pakistani men, Ray said: “Yes, there is an issue. But statistics now have proven, the Home Office’s own report has proven, that they’re not overrepresented.
“It’s still white majority people who are responsible for sex abuse.”
Braverman also said during the interview: “What we’ve seen is a practice whereby vulnerable white English girls — sometimes in care, sometimes who are in challenging circumstances — being pursued and raped and drugged and harmed by gangs of British Pakistani men who’ve worked in child abuse rings or networks.
“We’ve seen institutions and state agencies, whether it’s social workers, teachers, the police, turn a blind eye to these signs of abuse out of political correctness, out of fear of being called racist, out of fear of being called bigoted.”
The home secretary, who was reappointed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after being sacked from Liz Truss’s government for a security breach, was accused of “dog whistle” politics, according to The Independent.
Braverman’s rhetoric against migrants has on several occasions caused outrage. In November, after she described asylum-seekers entering the UK as an “invasion,” government lawyers warned that her inflammatory rhetoric could potentially inspire a far-right terror attack.
