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Sikh women in the Midlands have told how a spate of religiously motivated attacks have caused fear in their community, forcing some to “change everything” about their daily routines.
Two rapes of Sikh women, both in their 20s, in Walsall and Oldbury, have been reported in recent weeks. John Ashby, 32, has been charged in connection with a religiously aggravated rape in relation to the alleged Walsall attack.
Those incidents, as well as a violent attack on two elderly Sikh taxi drivers in Wolverhampton, prompted a meeting in parliament at the end of October about anti-Sikh hate crimes in the region.
Sukhvinder Kaur, the chair of Sikh Women’s Aid, a domestic abuse charity in the West Midlands, said women were changing their daily routines to protect themselves.
“The fear, the now complete changing of your day-to-day living, that is real. I have not seen that before,” she said. “This is the first time since I’ve set up Sikh Women’s Aid where women have said to us: ‘We are no longer doing the things that we enjoy because we might get harmed doing them.’”
Women were “not comfortable” going to the gym, or going for walks or runs now, she said. “They are doing this in groups. They are sharing their location with their friends or a family member.
“An attack in Walsall is going to make women in Coventry feel scared because it’s the Midlands,” she said. “There has definitely been a shift in the way women think about their own safety.”
Earlier this week, police confirmed a woman in her 50s was the victim of a racially aggravated assault in Wolverhampton in which an electrical stun device was used. The Labour MP Preet Kaur Gill wrote on X that the victim was Sikh. When approached, West Midlands police declined to confirm this information.
Sikh places of worship across the Midlands have begun distributing rape and security alarms to women in an effort to keep them safe.
At the Nanaksar gurdwara, in Walsall, Kam Kaur, a regular attender, said the incidents had “changed everything” for Sikhs living in the area.
In particular, she said she did not feel safe going to the gurdwara on her own, and she had told her elderly mother to be careful when opening her front door. “We’re all targets,” Kaur, 55, said. “Anyone can be attacked day or night.”
Another attender, Inderjeet Kaur, 32, said she was taking extra precautions when going to work. “I try and find parking nearer to the bus station,” she said. “I put paath [prayer] in my headphones but it’s on a very low volume, to the point where I can still hear cars go past, I can still hear surroundings around me.”
Surinder Kaur, 57, who has three daughters, said: “We go for walks, the girls and I, and it just feels very unsafe at the moment with all these crimes.
“We’ve never thought about taking these precautions before,” she said. “I’m looking over my shoulder constantly.”
For Surinder Bajwa, 55, who grew up in Walsall, the atmosphere is reminiscent of the racism older generations faced in the 1970s and 80s.
“We’ve experienced all this in the 1980s when our mums used to go past where the community hall is,” she said. “We used to have the National Front and all the people sat there and they used to spit at them, call them names or set dogs on them. For some reason, I’m going back to that. In my head, I think those times are almost back.”
A Labour councillor, Simran Cheema, echoed this, saying people felt “we’ve gone back in time … where there was a lot of open racism”.
“People are scared to go out in the community,” she said. “People are scared to wear the artefacts of their religion; turbans or head coverings.”
Cheema said Walsall council had provided extra CCTV around gurdwaras to reassure the community.
West Midlands police said they were holding meetings with local politicians, women’s groups and community leaders, as well as visiting faith establishments, to discuss women’s safety.
“It’s been a very difficult week for the community,” Ch Supt Phil Dolby told the Walsall gurdwaras committee on Sunday. “No one deserves to live in a community feeling afraid.”
Walsall council said it had been “actively working alongside the police with the Sikh community and our communities more widely to provide support and reassurance”.
The leader of Sandwell council, Kerrie Carmichael, said: “We were all shocked by the awful incident in Oldbury.” She added that the council worked with the police as part of the Safer Sandwell Partnership to tackle violence against women and girls and hate crime.
