A mob attack on three terrified Africans in Delhi has raised new allegations of racism in India
African student leaders have spoken out over the racism they face in India after a video captured an attack on three young African men by a large mob of Indians in one of the capital’s largest metro stations.
The men were forced to climb up on top of a station police booth as the baying mob thrashed at them with sticks and tried to pull them down.
The crowd forced its way into the empty police booth to try to grab the terrified Africans cowering on the roof. They were eventually rescued when a policeman arrived.
Many bystanders filmed the attack on their mobile phones and comments on their YouTube clips suggested they had “misbehaved” with women on a train.
But African students in the capital said it was the latest in a series of racially-motivated attacks based on the colour of their skin.
Warning: this video contains violence
The clip emerged as Delhi’s former law minister Somnath Bharti was charged with harassment of African women in January, when he led a vigilante mob which forced several women from their homes in South Delhi and accused them of being prostitutes and drug dealers. Some of them were forced to give urine samples in public for drug tests.
A few months earlier Nigeria’s high commissioner complained after ministers in Goa said Nigerians living there were drug dealers and “a cancer”. Political leaders waged a campaign for Nigerians to be evicted from their homes as young Africans complained of violent attacks and racist verbal abuse. Dozens were arrested when they protested over the murder of an African by a local drugs gang.
Professor Zubair Meenia of Delhi’s Jamia Milia University said racism was at the heart of the attacks on Africans.
“There is no doubt about it. Indians are racist and the irony is we are not aware of it and hence no sensitisation and acceptance. We have a history of racism. In north India, people from the north-east and south India are treated differently and in some cases racially. We have been marginalising people from African countries to assert ourselves and show our racial superiority.
“Most Indians still have a territorial possessiveness and in urban areas we often see people of other races or communities denied homes on their colour and looks”, he said.
A spokesman for Delhi’s railway police said the attacks were triggered by rumours that women had been molested but there had not been any complaints of sexual harassment. One of the African men was injured in the attacks but later discharged from hospital.
Police had registered a case of rioting and detectives were investigating whether the attacks were “racially motivated”.
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