One in six Londoners avoid Muslims (AFP) Updated: 2006-09-06 17:12
London - One in six people in Britain's capital have
admitted moving seats on public transport to avoid a passenger they think is
Muslim, according to a survey published.
Commuters wait to board a tube at Aldgate
underground station in East London in July 2006. According to a survey
published one in six people in Britain's capital have admitted moving
seats on public transport to avoid a passenger they think is
Muslim.[AFP]
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Some 35 percent of travellers in London said they had felt nervous or
uncomfortable in the last year because someone of south Asian or north African
appearance had got on their underground train or bus.
Of that number, nearly half said they had moved seats or sat down away from
them, the survey, by pollsters YouGov for London's Evening Standard newspaper,
suggested on Tuesday.
On July 7 last year, 56 people were killed when four Muslim suicide bombers
-- three of them Britons of Pakistani origin -- detonated explosives on three
underground trains and a double-decker bus.
An alleged plot to replicate the attacks was foiled two weeks later and since
then there have been a number of high-profile counter-terrorism operations.
Last month more than two dozen people, most of them British Pakistanis, were
arrested in connection with an alleged conspiracy to blow up US-bound passenger
jets.
Soon after those arrests, which ushered in unprecedented security at
airports, two Urdu-speaking Muslim students from Manchester, northwest England,
were taken off a British charter jet after their fellow passengers voiced
concerns.
There was also concern at an alleged proposal to introduce passenger
profiling along racial and/or religious lines, which one senior Muslim police
officer warned could create a new offence of "travelling while Asian".
The poll said just five percent of respondents backed special checks at
airports on men who appear to be of "Asian or north African origin".
A further 45 percent said they backed random checks of all passengers, with
special attention paid to men with Asian or north African features.
But 46 percent said nobody should be singled out because
of their background or appearance.
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