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Poland urges UK to keep its citizens safe from xenophobia
Boris Johnson: UK looks forward to welcoming new Polish immigrants
(about 14 hours later)
Poland has urged Britain to keep its residents safe from xenophobia as British police probed the murder of a Pole they believe may have been the victim of a hate crime.
Boris Johnson has said Britain looks forward to welcoming a new generation of Polish immigrants, after visiting a language school in the Polish capital on Saturday.
“We’re counting on the British government and authorities responsible for the safety of British and European citizens, including Poles, to prevent the kind of xenophobic acts we’ve seen recently,” the Polish foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, said in Warsaw on Saturday following talks with his British counterpart, Boris Johnson.
During a media address in Warsaw alongside his Polish counterpart, Witold Waszczykowski, the foreign secretary only briefly alluded to the killing in Harlow of Polish man Arkadiusz Jóźwik.
Six teenagers were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murder of 40-year-old factory worker, Arkadiusz Jóźwik, in Harlow, Essex, last Saturday. The youths are out of police custody on bail.
Johnson said: “London is the most welcoming, multicultural, happening city on earth – no disrespect to Warsaw – and there is no room for xenophobia.”
Investigators say they are looking into whether the killing was a hate crime but stress the motive is still unclear.
In his address moments earlier, Waszczykowski had reminded Johnson of a conversation the two had had on the phone after the British foreign secretary’s appointment: “I mentioned the status of Polish citizens in the United Kingdom and he said ‘whatever you do, don’t take them back, Britain needs them for its economy’.
There was an upsurge in the number of reported hate crimes around the period of the EU referendum in June. Hundreds of people, many of them Poles, gathered in Harlow on Saturday for a vigil to remember Jóźwik. Many waved Polish flags and scarves and laid flowers at the scene of the killing, while the Polish national anthem was sung and a minute’s silence held.
“So I hope the government and security services will make sure there are no manifestations of xenophobia in Britain.”
Speaking in Warsaw, Johnson, said: “We all agree that there is absolutely no place for xenophobia in our society.”
Johnson had earlier visited a British Council language school in Warsaw and said he had been impressed. “Some of them were as young as eight. We look forward to welcoming them to Britain in a few years’ time.”
The National Police Chiefs’ Council has reported that more than than 3,000 incidents were reported to police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 16 June and 30 June – an increase of 42% from the same period last year. But Poland’s ambassador to Britain, Arkady Rzegocki, said this week he had hoped that the situation was stabilising.
He added that he wanted relations between the two countries to go from “good to great”.
Around 800,000 Poles are thought to live in Britain, making them one of the country’s biggest minority groups, under EU rules allowing freedom of movement between member states. Poland joined the EU in 2004.
Johnson is making a short stopover in Poland on his way back to Britain after attending the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Bratislava. He flew Waszczykowski back to Warsaw in an RAF plane and he said he looked forward to having a beer with the Polish foreign minister after “laborious” EU talks in Bratislava.
Many Brexit supporters want to close Britain’s borders to migrants from elsewhere in the EU while the prime minister, Theresa May, has promised that immigration controls will be imposed.
“The Polish contribution to our society and our culture, and above all to our economy, is absolutely immense,” Johnson added.
Waszczykowski insisted that “the huge number of Poles living in Britain constitutes an important area of our cooperation”.
