Czech ultra-nationalist falsely attributes acid attack committed by native British man to "Muslim immigrants"
Czech MP Tomio Okamura, chair of the “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) party is once again disseminating hatred against Muslims, attacking them by manipulating facts. The MP has published a post to Czech-language social networks warning of increasing numbers of acid attacks in Great Britain and alleging incorrectly that they are being committed by “Muslim immigrants” against women.
Okamura has used a drastic photograph of a woman who was indeed victimized by an acid attack – but it was back in 1991, and the attacker was a native Briton, Kelvin Greenhalgs. The Daily Mirror reported last year that Greenhalgs had disappeared after failing to turn up for a court date and republished photographs of his victim online, which Okamura has now used.
The Czech MP posted to his Facebook profile about the brutality of acid attacks, adding the drastic photograph of the woman, who is now blind and disfigured after Greenhalgs threw acid in her face. “Acid attacks by Muslim immigrants [sic] on women [sic] are becoming a common occurrence. During the last three years, an average of 15 a week have been committed, most in multicultural London, where native Britons are already in the minority,” Okamura posted to Facebook – without explaining what his sources are for those claims.
His social media post is very deceptive. The woman depicted was not the victim of a “Muslim immigrant”, but of a native Briton.
The case of this woman, whose image Okamura is now abusing in order to disseminate hatred, happened long before the recent “migration crisis” that Okamura’s post references. A native Briton ordered the attack on her in 1991, and a native Briton also carried it out.
The dissemination of hoaxes, lies, manipulation and racism is something the entire SPD movement is known for. Okamura’s remarks doubting the Holocaust experiences of Romani victims are infamous, as are those of Czech MP Miloslav Rozner (SPD) about a “non-existent pseudo-concentration camp” for Romani people at Lety u Písku.
This hate-mongering by the SPD also resulted in the radicalization of Czech citizen Jaromír Balda, who was convicted earlier this month of committing terrorist attacks and attempting to attribute them to “jihadis”, for which he was sentenced to four years in prison. The fact that his sentence is exceptionally short, given the nature of his attacks, has been criticized.
Acid attacks in London – the facts
BBC 3 produced a brief online video about a year ago summarizing the facts about acid attacks in London. Okamura’s characterization of this type of violence as perpetrated by “Muslim immigrants” against women is shown by this reporting to be a complete distortion.
According to the BBC, in 2018, 15 years of police data showed that most acid attack victims in London are male, and only 6 % of the suspects committing such attacks have been Asian. Moreover only one such attack in London during that time was proven to have been part of an “honor crime”, a kind of violence committed in order to defend the reputation of a community or family.
