Two men were approached by two others today in a San Fernando car park, in Plaza de El Hierro, and violently attacked after a brief exchange of words. The victims appeared to be two of the homeless individuals who often stand there, wearing hi-vis, to act as unofficial parking attendants, in the hope of earning tips for finding spaces for drivers in the often crowded parking area not far from the San Fernando and La Ronda commercial centres. Police are looking for the perpetrators of the savage, brutal and unprovoked attack.
In a video currently being shared on social media, the first clearly belligerent individual appears to approach a man in hi-vis, and after a few words suddenly launches a vicious unprovoked attack, with his fists, as a second assailant starts to move quickly towards the second victim and then starts to attack him also without provocation. We don’t know what was said, or why the attackers approached the two victims, but what ever happened they seem to be caught completely off guard. Another man then approaches the altercation, shouting, apparently in Arabic, and trying to stop the attack, though two or three others seem willing to join in.
Policia nacional were called to the scene and attended quickly, there has been no information yet as to what became of the victims, how badly they were hurt after being so violently attacked, nor indeed whether a good description of the perpetrators was successfully passed to the police.
If we want to stop violence in our streets, we must not let our disgust or anger blind us to how we deal with it.
There can be no justification for what we see on the videos, but there are some deplorable racist rhetorics being fed by irresponsible online publications who are trying, repeatedly, to claim that these sorts of scenes have been witnessed again and again. That is plainly not true. While there have been a small number of fights reported between migrants, there are dangerous liars out there who will try to tell you that there is constant violence in our streets. That is just not the case.
While people jump to conclusions without knowing what happened, and try to blame migrants, en masse, for the actions of a criminal few, we are likely to see more of this sort of thing, if people continue to be ostracised and automatically treated as suspect, simply based on assumptions about their origins.
While there will, undoubtedly, be those among the arrivals with not a care about how many people hate them simply for their nationality, if we want to avoid further brutalisation of our own society we cannot simply assume that everyone is the same, just because we witness violence from an ignorant few.
Let’s help the police to do their jobs, and make sure that violent criminals are caught as quickly as possible, without confusing the issues involved any further.
