Interview with Polish woman on racist abuse in UK interrupted by racist abuse
'I just feel like I just want to go back… It breaks my heart,' interviewee comments
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Your support makes all the difference.A Channel 4 interview about racist abuse was interrupted after passers-by making racist comments towards her.
During the discussion with a Polish NHS worker, a group of onlookers can be heard calling her a “f***ing Polish grass” and a “grassy f***”.
Named only as Alexandra, the woman appeared visibly shaken and called the police.
Alexandra explained how racist abuse has become commonplace in her life. In the interview, Alexandra describes how she experienced “stones being thrown at our windows and I’ve been sworn at many times for being Polish.”
In another incident, a Polish man was chased into her front garden and beaten up. “He had blood all over his face, all over his clothes”, she recalls.
“His lips were dark, just because of all the blood drying.”
Alexandra said racist abuse is “getting worse since the Brexit. I just tend to get more people asking me for my nationality.”
The current number of hate crime reports is 14 per cent higher than at this time last year. In the week following the Brexit vote, the number of reported incidents of hate crime increased by 58 per cent.
A number of prominent Leave voters, however, have denied the vote to leave the European Union caused a spike in hate crime. Daniel Hannan, a Conservative MEP, has blamed the media for “jumping on” incidents of abuse that have nothing to do with Brexit.
He maintained it was an insult to the 17.4 million people who voted to Leave to suggest “there is some connection between voting to take back our laws and being unpleasant”.
Alexandra, however, maintained: “I am not wanted here”.
“I just feel like I just want to go back… It breaks my heart."
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