The ongoing anti-immigrant protests in the United Kingdom took a bizarre turn on Tuesday. Interestingly, Pakistan’s senior men’s team is also in England, currently playing the third Test at Edgbaston in Birmingham. Demonstrators gathered outside a hotel in southern England where Pakistan’s Under-19 cricket team were staying, mistakenly believing them to be asylum seekers, according to a report. The incident occurred on Tuesday evening in Portsmouth, just 48 hours after protesters disrupted the disembarkation of dozens of migrants near the port city and clashed with police in scenes that were widely condemned.
The demonstrators gathered outside a hotel in southern England where Pakistan’s Under-19 cricket team were staying, mistakenly believing them to be asylum seekers.
Tuesday’s incident came after reports online about a coach with young Asian men on board being seen at a Marriott Hotel in the Portsmouth suburb of Cosham drew protestors to the venue, according to media reports. A councillor from anti-immigration party Reform UK went to the scene and helped disperse the crowd after confirming the men were in fact members of Pakistan’s teenage cricket team, The Guardian newspaper said. A spokesman for Hampshire Police — which is responsible for the region — said the force “were notified that a group of people were starting to congregate” near the hotel Tuesday evening. “The officers explained that their concerns were not correct,” the spokesman said, without confirming the Pakistani cricketers were the mistaken target. “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.
