ISLAMABAD:
The Foreign Office (FO) on Monday strongly condemned the “increasingly racist and Islamophobic” rhetoric directed at Pakistanis in the UK, expressing deep concern at the demonization of the entire community based on reprehensible actions of a few.
The FO’s statement came following a social media controversy involving tech billionaire Elon Musk, who entered into a heated debate over the term “Asian grooming gangs.” Musk’s comments raised concerns about reinforcing harmful stereotypes about Pakistanis.
Using his X platform (formerly Twitter), Musk criticized the UK government for grooming gangs and accused a prominent Labor leader of being a “rape genocide apologist”. He went further and demanded that both the Labor leader and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer be jailed.
The debate intensified when Priyanka Chaturvedi, leader of India’s Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray faction), tweeted: “Repeat after me, they are not ASIAN grooming gangs but PAKISTANI grooming gangs.” Musk responded with a curt “true.”
Foreign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan issued a detailed statement expressing deep concern at the growing tendency to conflate the criminal actions of a few individuals with the entire British Pakistani community.
“As such, we note with deep concern the increasingly racist and Islamophobic political and media commentary in the UK which aims to conflate the reprehensible actions of a few individuals with the entire British Pakistani diaspora of 1.7 million,” Khan said .
He highlighted the long-standing friendship between Pakistan and the United Kingdom, calling it a relationship marked by “warmth, cordiality, strong cooperation and trust.”
“This relationship, cultivated over decades, remains an important priority of Pakistan’s foreign policy,” he added.
