Zarah Sultana hits back at ‘anti-migrant rhetoric’ on Question Time

Zarah Sultana hit back at ‘anti-migrant rhetoric’ on Thursday’s Question Time programme

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ZARAH Sultana has hit back at “anti-migrant rhetoric” during an appearance on the BBC’s Question Time programme.

The Your Party co-leader branded language which aimed to “demonise” migrants and asylum seekers as “sickening”, after a woman in the audience asked the panel about an “increase in attacks” on women and girls from male migrants “coming illegally to this country”.

Sultana appeared on Thursday evening’s programme alongside Welsh Labour MP Alex Davies-Jones, former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke and Reform UK MP Danny Kruger.

The audience member first addressed Davies-Jones: “You said you support victims, especially women and children.

“So what’s your thoughts on the male migrants coming illegally to this country, being housed in local hotels and the increase in attacks on women from them?”

Davies-Jones responded: “I’m generally worried about the attacks on women from everyone, the levels of violence against women and girls in this country is intolerable.”

She added: “I’m worried about the levels of violence against women and girls everywhere. Three women a week on average are killed.”

The audience member interrupted: “We don’t know the background of these people.”

Davies-Jones replied: “We don’t know the background of anyone working in our society.”

The woman in the audience then said: “When there’s loads of people attending, living in a hotel locally to us, then it’s a threat to our women and children when they’re walking around in groups and we don’t know their backgrounds.”

Davies-Jones responded: “We know that women and girls are more likely to be attacked or injured by someone they know, actually, and domestic abuse is probably the highest issue we have at the moment in terms of violence against women and girls.

“I’m not disputing that there’s a problem here, of course there’s a problem here, but it’s about looking at this as a whole.”

Sultana then intervened: “I do find that some of the rhetoric around safety, around women and girls, really concerning when in my home region of the West Midlands, two Sikh girls were raped in racially motivated attacks by far-right individuals.

“We find very few kind of media coverage of stories like that, and we have to highlight that some of the anti-migrant rhetoric and rhetoric that demonises asylum seekers is sickening.

“It has led to racial violence in our towns and cities where women and children, based on the colour of their skin and whether they wear a headscarf or not, have been targeted.”

Sultana added: “This rhetoric has been drip fed. It’s on our front pages, it comes from the highest offices in the country. And what we have to recognise is that the issues in our country, whether it’s underfunding of the NHS, the fact that we don’t have council houses, low wages and insecure work – those are political decisions made by politicians.

“They are not the fault of some of the most vulnerable people fleeing war and persecution and put up – not in the Ritz hotel as some people might want to portray – really shoddy accommodation, rats in the corridors, poor food.

“They are being demonised and people are being told they’re the people taking your jobs, they’re the people taking your housing.

“Please look up. Look at the super-rich, look at the landlords hiking your rent, look at the energy CEOs making millions of pounds, look at the politicians who are happy to get millionaire donors and freebies but are taking away opportunities from the rest of the country.”