DERBY Indian Workers’ Association and Vox Feminarum: Women’s Voices express deep concern at a disturbing rise in racially motivated violence and the growing visibility of far-right groups in Britain.

What alarms both organisations most is that these attacks are now seemingly targeting women and girls, exposing the way racism and misogyny collide, and how the far right exploits that collision.

In the Midlands, a young Sikh woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by two white men who told her: “You don’t belong in this country. Get out.” 

In separate incidents, two young girls, aged just six and nine, were subjected to violent attacks that left them traumatised. Police are treating all three cases as racially aggravated crimes.

“These attacks are not isolated,” say Derby Indian Workers’ Association and Vox Feminarum. “They are part of a wider pattern where women are targeted at the fault line between racism and patriarchy. We are deeply concerned that sexual violence is being weaponised by the far right, men who claim to ‘protect women and children’ while silencing survivors and scapegoating migrants.”

Derby Indian Workers’ Association and Vox Feminarum reject the dangerous myth that asylum-seekers are sexual predators. This narrative has been deliberately spread to fuel violent protests outside refugee accommodation and to stigmatise already vulnerable communities. The organisations also highlight the staggering hypocrisy of far-right leaders who posture as defenders of women when many have convictions for domestic abuse and sexual violence themselves.

The current climate echoes the 1970s, when far-right activity brought fear and violence to Britain’s streets. Union Jack and St George’s flags, used not as symbols of pride but as signals of exclusion, are once again being waved to intimidate communities. Counter-protesters and ordinary bystanders have faced racial abuse, often without adequate police protection.

Derby Indian Workers’ Association and Vox Feminarum stress that the far right thrives in moments of social and economic crisis. Nearly one in four people in Britain now lives below the poverty line, including more than four million children. Families struggle with rent, bills and food. Instead of demanding accountability from government, far-right factions exploit people’s anger and redirect it at immigrants and refugees, while women and girls of colour bear the brunt.

Sexual violence must be condemned unequivocally, irrespective of the perpetrator’s race, class or religion. It is not the crime of one community but a universal expression of patriarchy, a global system of power and inequality. Justice demands that we fight both racism and misogyny together, because one without the other will always leave women unsafe.

Derby Indian Workers’ Association and Vox Feminarum call on government to abandon policies that stigmatise and punish migrants and instead adopt approaches rooted in anti-racist and feminist principles. Both organisations urge communities and anti-racist movements to resist division, stand with survivors, and build a vision of justice, safety, and dignity that protects all women and girls.