New Delhi: Pakistan’s U-19 cricket team arrived in Britain on Tuesday to play a match. Little did they know they would become the target of anti-immigration protesters. Masked men barged into the Marriott hotel in Cosham, Hampshire, and labelled them asylum seekers, demanding that the “young Asian men” be thrown out.
The incident occurred two days after demonstrations erupted near the city’s port over the arrival of migrants who had crossed the English Channel in small boats.
George Madgwick, a local councillor from Reform UK, an anti-immigration political party, went to the scene and helped disperse the protesters after establishing the group’s identity, The Guardian reported.
Pakistani cricket commentator Salman Sikandar called it a case of racism in a post on X.
“If you want to learn what racism is, how it is empowered and how it is used in practice. This is a tiny example. *Freedom of racism*,” he wrote.
Earlier, Madgwick said he was at home when he received a call about a group outside the Marriott hotel, with many wearing balaclavas and other face coverings, arriving at the spot after reports claimed asylum seekers were staying at the property.
According to Madgwick, protesters had noticed that the coach carrying the players belonged to the same company that had transported asylum seekers who arrived by boat a few days earlier.
“I also spoke to the coach of the team, who was very understanding,” Madgwick said. “I went out to the protesters and told them, ‘You’ve got it wrong, guys, it’s a cricket club.’ They left within a couple of minutes. It was a massively unfortunate incident. From the perspective of the people of Portsmouth who are already on high alert, this was a coach from the same company which was turning up with about 40 foreign men,” he told The Guardian.
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‘Refugees and migrants could become scapegoats’
Hampshire Police said officers had been alerted that a group of people was gathering near the hotel.
“Officers subsequently spoke to members of the public who had gathered and were expressing concerns about a coach that had been seen in the area,” a police spokesperson said, adding that the officers explained that the protesters’ concerns were unfounded.
He did not specifically confirm that the people inside the hotel were Pakistani cricketers.
The crowd of around 30 people dispersed shortly, with police confirming offences had been identified.
The episode drew criticism from anti-racism campaigners, who said it illustrated the consequences of increasingly heated rhetoric surrounding immigration.
Michael Bradley, a national organiser with Stand Up to Racism, said the incident showed how refugees and migrants could become scapegoats amid public anxiety over immigration.
The fact that a group of Pakistani teenagers could be mistaken for asylum seekers, he argued, raised concerns about the treatment of Asian and Black people in Britain.
Pakistanis on social media did not like the incident, but chose to respond with humour. “Goray pagal ho gaye hain (the Whites have gone crazy),” Instagram user Mohammad Ahmed Ghafoor remarked.
Another user, Wahab Irshad, chose to give them some leeway. “Apna image hi aisa hai (we have such an image),” he said.
Others, however, were angry. “Leave it to the native english to act like inbred barbarians,” a user called ‘weeping somnambulist’ remarked on Instagram.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)