Two women have been arrested on public order offences following a disturbance that interrupted a live television broadcast in Nuneaton, an incident that also involved allegations of racial abuse.
The arrests, made by Warwickshire Police, are part of an investigation into an altercation that was captured on camera and has since been widely circulated on social media and news outlets.
The incident occurred while a Sky News correspondent, Shamaan Freeman-Powell, was conducting a street interview. He was speaking to a 32-year-old man named Zahin about community tensions in the town relating to the housing of asylum seekers.
During the interview, a group of women approached them and began shouting, with audible references to rape. The footage then shows members of the public being subjected to what the police have described as racial abuse, with one individual reportedly being pushed.
In a statement, Warwickshire Police confirmed: “A 30-year-old woman and a woman aged 43 were both arrested on suspicion of a public order offence. The 43-year-old was also arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated common assault.”
The man at the centre of the incident, Zahin, is originally from Malawi but relocated to Nuneaton when he was six years old.
The report being filmed at the time focused on local concerns over the rising number of asylum seekers being housed in the town. Just a few years ago, the figure was in the single digits, but data shows this has grown significantly to 247 as of June this year.
Despite this increase, the latest statistics indicate that Nuneaton ranks 87th in the country for asylum seeker concentration, with 19 asylum seekers per 10,000 residents. The disruption of the broadcast has brought a national spotlight onto the community debates taking place in the Warwickshire town and how easily people who are being screwed by the system use ‘race’ to vent their furies. The problem is that their furies are targeting the wrong people. It is not ethnic minorities who are screwing them. It is wealthy, mostly white people who are out of their reach.
The police have not released the names of those arrested, and investigations are ongoing.
