We received the following call from Cornwall Resists. Please share or copy far and wide…
COUNTER PROTEST: Sunday 26th March, 9:30am, Beresford Hotel, Newquay. We stand with refugees and survivors. We will resist racism in Cornwall – again!
Content Warning: rape
We’re devastated that a man raped a Newquay woman. We stand with her. We support her. We believe her.
We’re devastated that bigot Mylo Gregory is using this rape as and excuse for another racist protest outside the Beresford Hotel. There’s no evidence the (alleged) perpetrator is a refugee or a resident at the hotel, and a local refugee support group has confirmed the perpetrator was not a resident.
If he had been, we still oppose this racism and the scapegoating of a diverse group of people from different backgrounds.
Police fanned the flames of this racism by publishing the perpetrator’s address as Narrowcliff: a long road with two postcodes. This doesn’t mean the (alleged) perpetrator was a hotel resident. Police have escalated the situation, giving racists another excuse to push vile hate.
We are people from all walks of life, including women, trans folk, and queer folk. We are survivors and fight for survivors everywhere.
We are anti-racist, as well as anti-rapist. We won’t allow the far-right to weaponise trauma for a racist agenda, scapegoating refugees and creating a narrative of hate. We won’t allow people in the hotel to be targets of that hate.
Organisers claim to defend women and children. But where are they when cops assault women inĀ Cornwall? Or in 2021 when the most common crime in Newquay was sexual assault? Or when the organiser of this protest assaulted women?
We stand with survivors, but the people organising this protest do not. We won’t allow them to use survivors’ trauma against refugees.
Their idiocy pitches white men as ‘defenders’ of white women, who they see as property to protect. They don’t care that white men make up 90% of the UK child sex abuse register and 57% of convicted sex offenders.
Exaggerating the threat from refugees shifts focus away from actual causes of sexual assault: a police force that doesn’t protects us and decades of public service cuts.
We are survivors. And we will not be your cannon fodder. Racists, get your hands off our trauma and get out of our Cornwall!