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Indian origin Labour MP demands British PM’s apology for racist remarks

It’s good to follow Jeremy Corbyn on twitter. And this tweet by the Labour Party of Britain (Rebuilding Britain, for the Many and not the Few) attaches a powerful 1.32 minute video of a member of Indian origin making a powerful, succinct speech. The man is Tanmanjeet Singh Desi. Tanmanjeet is the Labour MP for Slough and the video on twitter has, by now 2.3 million views and 201.7k likes. While Desi has a modest 38.5 k followers on twitter, Jeremy Corbyn has 2.1 million!

Jeremy Corbyn tweeted yesterday, September 4” Everyone should watch this powerful moment.” And powerful and nerve tingling it is as one of our own (a turban sporting Sikh Member of the British Parliament) takes on the most powerful in his country, the prime minister. He was challenging Boris Johnson on his racist remarks on Muslim women.

Says Tanmanjeet Singh Desi,

“Mr Speaker if I decide to wear a turban, or you decide to wear a cross; or he decides to wear a kirpan or a skull cap. Or she decides to wear a burqa or a hijab. Does that mean that it is right open season for members of this Hon’ble House to make derogatory and divisive remarks about our appearance!
“For those of us from a young age have had to endure and face up to being called names such as ‘tower head’ or ‘Taliban’ or coming from Bongo Bongo land, we can appreciate full well the hurt and pain being felt by already vulnerable Muslim women when they are being described as bank robbers or letter boxes! (shame, thumps)..

“So, rather than hide behind sham and whitewash investigations, when will the prime minister finally apologise for his derogatory and racist remarks? (cheers, thumping approval from the House)

“Racist remarks, Mr Speaker, that have led to a spike in hate crime. And given the increasing prevalence of such incidents within his party, when will the prime minister finally order an Inquiry into Islamophobia within the Conservative Party, something which he and his Chancellor promised on national television?

Monitoring group Tell MAMA [Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks] had unveiled research earlier this week which claimed that Islamophobic incidents rose by 375 per cent in the week after Johnson’s references to the burqa as “oppressive” in the newspaper column.

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