Pakistan calls Braverman’s remarks about British Pakistani men discriminatory

Pakistan’s foreign office has called British Home Secretary Suella Braverman “discriminatory and xenophobic” for saying that British Pakistani men have “cultural values that are at odds with British values.”

Braverman also said that British Pakistani men operated in child abuse rings or networks that targeted “vulnerable white English girls” in an interview with Sky News on Monday.

Mehnaz Baloch, a spokesman for Pakistan’s foreign office, said on Wednesday that Braverman’s comments were “highly misleading” and showed a plan to target and treat British Pakistanis differently.

The grooming gangs scandal is one of the greatest injustices in modern Britain.

Home Secretary @SuellaBraverman on government measures to put an end to the abuse. pic.twitter.com/2gCPJ1DG0K

— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) April 4, 2023

Baloch added that Braverman had “incorrectly said that the criminal behaviour of a few people was typical of the whole community.”

“She doesn’t recognise the huge cultural, economic, and political contributions that British Pakistanis continue to make in British society,” Baloch said in her weekly briefing in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

The British Home Office report on group-based sexual abuse of children, which came out in 2020, said that research on the ethnicity of offenders is scarce and often based on bad data.

But it did talk about research that suggest that white men are more likely to commit crimes than Asian or Black guys.

During the interview, Braverman was told about the report’s conclusions. However, she went on to remark that British Pakistani men “look down on women in a demeaning and illegitimate way and act in a way that is out of date and frankly horrible.”

People on social media are upset with Braverman’s words, arguing that they would mislead the public and “incite violence against people with certain racial characteristics.”