Calm has returned to Leicester, however temporarily, after a massive police operation was launched to quell unrest that has gripped the east of the city for three weeks.
Tensions between “mainly young men from sections of the Muslim and Hindu communities” erupted into what the BBC called “large-scale disorder” at the weekend, as hundreds of people in Covid masks and balaclavas took to the streets as part of an “unplanned protest”.
The Independent reported that police officers deployed to London for the Queen’s funeral on Monday were “diverted” to Leicester to deal with the “widespread disorder” that resulted in 16 officers and a police dog being injured, 47 people arrested and one jailed.
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What did the papers say?
On Twitter the former Independent and Guardian journalist Sunny Hundal set out a timeline of events that culminated in the weekend’s arrests.
He said that tensions kicked off on 28 August after an Asia Cup cricket match between India and Pakistan in Dubai, when Indian fans converged on Leicester to shout “Pakistan Murdabad” (Death to Pakistan). What followed was a series of increasingly tense and violent confrontations between Hindu and Muslim gangs and individual extremists on both sides that played out on the streets and on social media.
Hundal said that tensions reached boiling point at the weekend after rumours began to circulate among Hindus and Muslims that their temples and mosques were being attacked. This led people from outside Leicester to travel to the city, further inflaming the situation.
“For the past few weeks Leicester has become a kind of mini-Kashmir in the middle of England,” said John Connolly in The Spectator, “a remarkable turn of events for a city which has long prided itself on being a functioning multicultural society, a place where Hindus and Muslims live alongside one another in relative harmony.”
The Mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was “baffled” by the events over the weekend but “even though the violence following the cricket match brought the tensions into the consciousness of the wider public”, said the Daily Mail, those working to calm the situation “say there are several complex factors at play which have given rise to the current unrest, which has involved a small minority of each community rather than the silent majority”.
“Some of the issues which give rise to the events at the weekend are undoubtedly international,” said the Leicester Mercury, citing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist rhetoric and increasingly harsh treatment of Muslim minorities. At the same time “there are also a number of more local factors to take into account, including the fact that migration is never static”. Leicester, “famed for its multicultural tolerance, still attracts new people from other countries”, the paper added.
Two other factors are the rise in disinformation and the after-effects of Covid, which hit Leicester particularly hard and “has seen cultural communities become more separated and widespread as a result”, said the paper.
What next?
The heavy police presence appears to have worked in suppressing the unrest for now, while community leaders in the city have joined police and politicians in calling for calm.
The mayor said it was important community leaders continued to try to de-escalate the situation but he acknowledged it was a challenge to get through to young people, with Leicester Mercury reporting: “Younger members of both communities tend not to have the same level of affinity with their respective religious leaders as those from older generations.”
Claudia Webbe, MP for Leicester East, joined the call for calm, writing on Twitter it was vital to “strengthen our dialogue to repair community relations”.
Yet these efforts have been further complicated as the story has taken an international dimension, with Indian news channels claiming that Muslims have been attacking Hindus en masse.
India Today reported one eyewitness to the “attack” on a Hindu temple, who warned of further escalation to other cities around the UK.
“At the moment it is happening predominantly in Leicester,” said Dishita Solanki, but “there are other cities that are being targeted, like Nottingham and Birmingham. I have relatives staying in a lot of cities. I have had messages from all of them that there are spots within other cities as well. So, scared is a bit of an understatement.”
It has led the Indian High Commission in London to issue a statement strongly condemning the violence against the Indian community in the city and demanding “immediate action against those involved in the attacks”.
