Healthcare professionals in the United Kingdom have demanded an apology from Home Secretary Suella Braverman for making “false, Islamophobic, and racist” allegations about British Pakistanis.
Braverman, who is of Indian origin, stereotyped British-Pakistani men as members of grooming gangs who are involved in “pursuing, raping, drugging, and harming vulnerable English girls” in an interview with Sky News last week.
She suggested that the diaspora “hold cultural values totally at odds with British values” and view women in a “demeaning and illegitimate way.”
Over 30 healthcare organizations have written a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, drawing his attention to the home secretary’s claims that link Pakistanis to sxx grooming gangs, which contradict the government’s own evidence.
According to Geo News, the letter expressed their profound disappointment with the Home Secretary’s recent comments that stereotype and discriminate against the British Pakistani community with false accusations.
The professionals cited a 2020 Home Office report that found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders were mostly white and that it was impossible to conclude that one ethnic group was disproportionately over-represented.
The healthcare professionals expressed concern about the impact of public sector and community service cuts on young people’s vulnerability to child sexual exploitation and called for multi-agency collaboration to protect vulnerable young people.
The letter also chastised Braverman’s use of inflammatory and divisive rhetoric, claiming it was sensationalist and contradicted the evidence. They urged the government to take effective evidence-based actions that require a whole-system response rather than targeting a single ethnic group.
They also reminded the Home Secretary that her words matter, citing Boris Johnson’s comments in 2014, which resulted in a 375 percent increase in hate crimes targeting Muslim women.
The professionals urged the home secretary to reconsider and apologize for her irresponsible framing of the complex and serious issue of child sexual exploitation.