Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Just a pointless killing?

Last year, a group of four West Indian youths were walking home from a demonstration in Birmingham when they were spotted by three young white men. They stop their cars just in front of them and get out, intent on causing trouble. The white youths verbally abuse the West Indians as they approach them, one of them even produces a knife.

Both groups throw punches before the West Indian youths finally flee for their lives down a street. The white youths chase after them and manage to trap one of them. He is stabbed through the heart and dies later that night.

A racist murder? Not at all, it's just a "pointless killing".

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Werent the guys who killed him Asian? I seem to remember this being all part of the race wars in Lozells.

Snafu said...

Eric, they were! I can't understand why it's only described as a "pointless killing" when it clearly seems to be racially motivated murder!

Alfie said...

I wrote to the BBC news complaining about the original reporting of this story. At the time, they seemed to go out of their way to say that it was not a racist murder. I asked why they did not refer it as 'The racist murder of .......' - Like they always do when talking about Anthony Walker's murder.

They emailed me back to tell me that there was no evidence that the murder in Birmingham was racially motivated..... Which was an utter joke of a thing to say - even by the BBC.

Interesting to see that the guy firebombing Asian shops in London last week - until he was clearly identified as a black man, the attacks were described as 'racially motivated' .... Once the identikit was published, the BBC dropped this descriptor faster than you could say 'massaging the news'