Former British home secretary Jack Straw said on Saturday some young Pakistani men regard white girls as easy targets for sexual abuse, drawing criticism from the Muslim community and other MPs.
The Blackburn MP made his concerns public after the jailing of a mainly Asian gang who raped girls in the Derby area.
On Friday, Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, were jailed at Nottingham Crown Court for raping and sexually abusing several girls aged between 12 and 18.
In an interview with BBC television, Straw said he believed there was a specific problem in some areas of the country, including his own, where Pakistani men were deliberately targeting young white women because they were viewed as morally inferior.
He accused them of treating white girls as “easy meat” ripe for sexual abuse, while women in their own community remained off-limits to them.
“Pakistanis, let’s be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offenses, and overwhelmingly the sex offenders’ wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders,” he said.
“But there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men ... who target vulnerable young white girls,” he said, adding that there was no point in denying it was an issue and had been for years.
“We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is okay to target white girls in this way,” Straw said.
The two jailed men were the leaders in a gang of street groomers who targeted vulnerable girls on the streets of Derby, then abused them. Sentencing them, the judge said he believed this was not a racial crime, but it is the latest in a series of criminal cases involving Asian men and young girls.
Straw’s comments were criticized by Keith Vaz, chairman of the House of Commons home affairs select committee, and some community groups who said they smacked of racial stereotyping.
Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Muslim youth group the Ramadhan Foundation, said in a statement it was dangerous to say such abuse was “ingrained” in Britain’s Pakistani community, but said it had been an issue.
“I have been clear in instigating this debate that these are criminal matters and should be seen in this way; no community or faith ever sanctions these evil crimes and to suggest that this somehow ingrained in the community is deeply offensive,” Shafiq said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not