A group of anti-immigration demonstrators in southern England descended on a Portsmouth hotel after wrongly assuming Pakistan’s Under-19 cricket team were newly arrived asylum seekers, British media reported on Wednesday.
The confrontation unfolded on Tuesday evening in Cosham, a northern suburb of Portsmouth, just two days after protesters had already disrupted the disembarkation of migrants near the port city and clashed with police in scenes widely condemned across the country.
This time, the target was a coach of teenage cricketers.
Reports circulating online claimed a bus carrying “young Asian men” had arrived at a Marriott Hotel in Cosham. That was enough to draw around 30 protesters to the site, according to local media, amid a climate in which immigration and the arrival of tens of thousands of asylum seekers on small boats from mainland Europe has become one of Britain’s most combustible political issues.
The coach, though, was not transporting migrants. It was carrying Pakistan’s Under-19 squad.
A councillor from the anti-immigration party Reform UK went to the hotel and, after confirming the identity of the group, helped calm the situation and disperse the crowd, The Guardian reported.
While the teenagers were in Portsmouth, Pakistan’s senior men’s team were involved in the third Test against England at Edgbaston in Birmingham, underlining how far from politics the young players’ mission was supposed to be.
Hampshire Police, responsible for the area, confirmed officers were called to the hotel on Tuesday evening.
“We were notified that a group of people were starting to congregate near the hotel,” a police spokesman said. Officers arrived and spoke to those gathered, who were “expressing concerns about a coach that had been seen in the area”.
The officers told the protesters their assumptions were wrong. The spokesman did not confirm that the Pakistan Under-19 side had been the mistaken focus of the protest, but said the group dispersed shortly afterwards and no offences were identified.
For anti-racism campaigners, the incident sounded a familiar and alarming warning.
Michael Bradley, a national organiser for Stand Up To Racism, condemned the scenes as an example of “where the scapegoating of refugees and migrants can lead”.
“When a Pakistan U-19’s team is faced by protests because it ‘might’ in fact be a group of migrants, it means that effectively any group of black or Asian people coming into the city are being seen by the far right as a potential target,” he said.
His conclusion was stark.
“It’s obvious where all this is going to end — racist attacks and more violence.”
