British Hindu, Sikh Groups Hail Home Secretary Braverman’s Stand Against ‘Pakistani Grooming Gangs’

Hindu and Sikh organisations in the UK hailed home secretary Suella Braverman’s “brave and principled” stand on addressing the serious issue of the “predominance” of British-Pakistani men in grooming gangs operating in the country.

The joint faith group also urged the government to acknowledge the motivation of such gangs, which according to them specifically targeted non-Muslim (Sikh, Hindu and white Christian) girls. The group released a statement responding to the issue of “religiously and racially motivated” sexual grooming gangs and said it was in support of Braverman’s comments.

Last week, the home secretary had said perpetrators of such crimes were “groups of men, almost all British Pakistani”. She also called out the authorities for turning a blind eye to abuse incidents out of “political correctness, out of fear of being called racists, out of fear of being called bigoted”.

In their statement, the faith group stated that it “unequivocally supported the home secretary’s brave and principled stand in addressing this serious issue”. “As UK faith representatives, we support the ongoing efforts of home secretary Suella Braverman, who, in the face of some considerable hostility, has courageously spoken out about the over-representation of British Pakistani men in sex grooming gangs operating around the UK,” the statement addressed to Braverman read.

The statement explained its stand by saying there was ample evidence in a number of independent probes in cases – Rotherham, Telford and Rochdale – that supported the Conservative Party MP’s position on what was a “sensitive and difficult” matter.

“We as faith communities want the government to acknowledge one of the motivations behind these gangs. We believe evidence points to an inconvenient truth. That is: non-Muslim girls (this includes Sikh, Hindu, and White Christian girls) have been systematically targeted in Britain due to a form of religiously and racially motivated hatred. We believe the ‘othering’ of these victims should be considered as an aggravating factor for the purposes of sentence uplift when perpetrators are brought to justice,” the statement read.

The group also asked the government to help the Pakistani Muslim community tackle this “stain” on an otherwise majority law-abiding community. It said a survivor in the Rotherham case had confirmed she was targeted for being a “white slag” and a “non-Muslim”.

The statement also pointed out that Judge Gerald Clifton, who sentenced men in the Rochdale case in 2012, made a similar observation. He had said the Muslim men targeted their victims because they were not part of the offenders’ ‘community or religion’, it added.

“British Sikh and Hindu communities have been complaining about Pakistani grooming gangs since the 1980s, prior to high-profile cases like Rotherham, Telford and Rochdale, but complaints have fallen on deaf ears. A television report on BBC1’s Inside Out programme in 2013 was the first high-profile media to cover the targeting of Sikh girls, as was coverage in the Times following sentencing of men in Leicester. In recent years, Hindu and Sikh community groups have attempted to highlight the targeting of girls within their communities,” the group said, claiming that a proposed television report by the BBC on the issue was pulled in 2018 due to the “fear of offending the Muslim community”.

The group further said government and police inaction had led to the “unfortunate consequence of a hate-filled narrative driven by far-right groups”. It also said police failures in protecting girls from the grooming gangs had contributed to rising communal tension, which “negatively impacted social cohesion”.

“Although it is good that the ethnicity of offenders is now being recorded, we believe the racial and religious-based motivations behind a significant proportion of perpetrators sentenced in places like Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale, needs to be further explored and openly discussed. Victims deserve justice and deserve to be heard. The first step is being able to discuss the various motivations behind this pattern of criminality freely and fearlessly. Discussion should not be censored by fear of being labelled ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’,” the statement read.

The statement of supported was signed by Lord Singh of Wimbledon, who is the director of the Network of Sikh Organisations; Mohan Singh Khalsa of Sikh Awareness Society; Dal Singh Dhesi of Sikh Youth Movement; Anil Bhanot, who is the interfaith relations director of the Hindu Council UK; Satish K Sharma, who is the director of the Global Hindu Federation among others.

Braverman’s comments, however, have been slammed by the British Pakistani community and were rejected by Pakistan as being “discriminatory and xenophobic”. In an interview last week, where she was talking about the government’s plans to tackle child sexual abuse, Braverman told Sky News that British-Pakistani men “hold cultural values at odds with British values”.

“[British-Pakistani men] see women in a demeaned, illegitimate way, and pursue an outdated and frankly heinous approach to the way we behave,” Braverman said even after she was informed that a home office report from 2020 had concluded that most child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men aged under 30. There was not enough evidence to suggest members of grooming gangs were disproportionately more likely to be Asian or Black, as per the report.

Braverman, however, proceeded to point at reports from Rotherham’s child sexual exploitation scandal, in which five British-Pakistani men were convicted of grooming, raping and exploiting young girls.

A day after Braverman’s comments, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to form a new task force to go after grooming gangs. It will have specialist officers parachuted in to assist police forces with live child sexual exploitation and grooming investigations for stricter action against those who groom children for sexual abuse, as per a report in news agency PTI.

The report said Britain is home to the largest Pakistani community of about 1.5 million; most of them are second-generation citizens born and brought up in the UK.

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