Racist firebugs target Asians in London

Houses and cars are being deliberately set on fire across London and many of the victims are the minorities, a new study shows.

As many as 62 per cent of all fires in London last year were started deliberately, according to the report by the London Fire Brigade. These cases of arson occured largely in areas where London’s minorities live.

The report brings new fears about arson attacks with a racial motive. In Lancashire in north England, arsonists attacked the house of a Bangladeshi family on Saturday. The family members escaped unhurt. Earlier an Asian greengrocer’s shop was fire-bombed.

Lancashire has seen a summer of racial violence in Oldham and now Burnley. But members of the community fear that many of the arson attacks being reported in London and elsewhere could be racially motivated.

“A significant number of these attacks came in areas of deprivation,” a spokeswoman for the London Fire Brigade told rediff.com. These are areas with a high concentration of minorities, particularly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

Tower Hamlests, with a high concentration of Bangladeshis, reported 255 arson attacks. Newham with a large Pakistani population reported 254 attacks. Comparatively, there were fewer attacks in boroughs that are affluent and with a predominantly white population. Kensington reported just 72 incidents, Hammersmith 95, Westminster 129 and the City of London (the commercial square mile) just 16.

Sixteen people were killed in such arson incidents in London last year. The loss to property and business runs into hundreds of millions of pounds.

“The arson blueprint reveals that a shocking 30,000 fires in London -- 62 per cent of all fires dealt with by the Brigade in a year -- were started deliberately,” the report by the Fire Brigade says.

Last year, arsonists targetted an estimated 5,000 properties, 7,000 cars and 18,000 other structures such as derelict property. The figures are “staggering”, says Val Shawcross, chairperson of the London fire authority.

Very few of the arsonists have been caught for their crimes.