The English riots one year on: 'I live in fear of being stopped again' →
Schon faszinierend, dass ein Jahr nach den “London Riots” wirklich kaum ein Wort in den Medien darüber verloren wird. Die Ereignisse selbst und ein nochmaliges Reflektieren, warum es dazu kam und was insbesondere seitdem geschehen ist, werden komplett von den olympischen Spielen verdeckt. Im Taumel sportlichen Ringens und glitzernder Medaillen lassen sich lästige Debatten wie die um Alltagsrassismus ja auch so hübsch politisch korrekt überspielen und verdrängen.
Daniel Edu wurde letztes Jahr im Zuge der Ausschreitungen festgenommen. Schon davor war er mindestens einmal die Woche Opfer von “Racial Profiling”. In seinem Artikel für den Guardian beschreibt er, wie das aussah und wie der Umgang mit den Riots sich auf sein heutiges Leben auswirkt:
With that cheap tracksuit, trainers and hoodie came routine stop and searches. Weekly, sometimes daily, if I walked with my black friends. But with that came a weird sense of pride. I thought that if the tracksuit pissed the police off I’d keep wearing it and it seemed that being black to them was like showing red to a bull. But one month in prison, eight weeks on an electronic tag and the possibility of spending five years in a jail quickly turned any sense of pride into fear.
I was released in the end after being found not guilty on all charges. That was 10 months ago and my life hasn’t returned to normal. The tracksuit’s gone and I always wear jeans and a shirt now and never walk down side roads through fear of being stopped again. In many ways I still feel like I’m tagged.
Like many of my friends, I still feel the police represent a community that doesn’t include me. No one could understand why rioters targeted their local areas, but on that night the shops were owned by the police who had forever targeted us with stop and searches. On that night, the shop I went into wasn’t the shop I know well where I regularly speak to the owner.
