Tabloids Use Thushara Kamaleswaran To Demonise Blacks, Youth And Tories
THUSHARA Kamaleswaran has been shot in the chest by what the Mail says are villains “believed to be members of opposing black gangs.” And 35-year-old Roshan Selvakumar, was shot in the face by the youths who fired into the shop in Stockwell, South London.
Miss Kamaleswaran is 5 years old. As one Anorak reader notes, for a non-blonde, non-white victim to feature on the cover of the Mail, she needs to be either very young or very famous. Or else the perpetrators need to be black.
The Sun sums up what happened:
CCTV footage from a nearby shop showed the two intended victims milling around the food and wine store. Occasionally, they went out into the street and walked up and down. Three minutes before the attack one of the thugs – in a dark hoodie – rolls past on a metal-coloured bike. The intended victims left the scene, only to return being chased by the gang.
The Mail says:
Police believe that the young girl and a shopkeeper were caught in the crossfire of a gang targeting two youths who sheltered in their shop.
Only, later in the same story we read that only one person fired. So. No crossfire.
We do not know how many shots were fired. But the Mail’s Paul Harris writes:
They simply sprayed the shop with bullets and fled.
Let;s stick to the facts. How old were the gang? The Mail has an idea:
Mareh Silva, 34, was coming out of the convenience store with friends at around 9pm and said she saw three black youths aged between 14 and 17 drop their bikes outside.
The Mirror says the shooter is aged 13.
Only, this front-page shocker turns out to be a guess:
…Kamaleswaran was blasted in the chest by teenage gunmen on bicycles, some as young as 13, as her mum watched on in horror.
Gunmen in the plural? But only one person fired.
This is followed by a hideous bit of politicking:
The tragedy lays bare the dangers of David Cameron’s police cuts as critics fear frontline officers will be sacrificed to save cash.
Tom Pettifor and Josh Layton then get into macabre poetry mode:
A bullet ripped through her chest, missing her heart and lungs by ¬millimetres
Because hearing about a child shot in the chest is not bad enough we are invited to imagine how worse it could have been.
It’s almost as awful as Paul Ross, who on ITV’s This Morning told us that young Thushara had been in the shop to buy sweeties, probably. Jacqui Smith, sat by Ross on the comfy sofa, nodded and said something about Tory cuts. Yep, this is same Jacqui Smith who while Home Secretary took a police guard with her to buy a kebab in south London and then told us in response to the question if she ever walked about London at night:
“Well, I just don’t think that’s a thing that people do, is it, really?”
Feel free to puke.
Anyhow, back to the facts. The Sun says the wanted youths may be aged between 13 and 15.
Back in the Mail, we’ve got more on the background to the crime, from Paul Harris:
Their dispute might have been the kind a different generation would have settled in the playground with a bloody nose. But for the youth of modern Britain, gangs champion their loyalties on websites bearing pictures of handguns and violence – and retaliation and ‘respect’ are watchwords.
Which generation? The one in which England used boy soldiers? The knife fights of the 1950s? The generation before blacks arrived? Harris is not specific.
What says the police? This in the Mirror:
Claudia Webbe, chair of the Metropolitan Police’s Trident Independent Advisory Group, said more cash was needed to engage with communities and tackle the “worryingly high” statistics. She added: “Socio-economic problems, the environment, poverty, all kinds of problems allow a ¬vulnerable mindset to be controlled and be engaged in mindless criminal activity.”
Back to Paul Harris:
Barny Stutter, 45, co-owner of nearby Brixton Cycles, said he hoped the police got to the gang of three before residents did. Yesterday it quickly became clear what he meant. Throughout the day, teenagers arrived at the scene in twos and threes. Even after the rain stopped, they still wore their hoods.
Or what another generation may have called “hats”. But that was before all black youth was demonised for the actions of one murderous nutter.
The same Barney Stutter is also features in the Sun. Here he says:
“The truth is the gunman is probably about 15 with a mentality of about five. I am sure they’ll all be caught but we are disgusted at what happened.”
We being blacks, browns and whites – young and old.
The hunt continues…
Posted: 31st, March 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
