Racist, Threatening Letters Sent to Asian-Owned Businesses in Burnley

A letter framed with Swastikas, threatening Asian-owned businesses with violence, has been circulated in Burnley. The letter urges the owners of the shops to leave England, warning that they will otherwise “suffer”. The letter was signed by “British Liberation Militia”, an otherwise unknown group.

Lancashire-based papers report that five letters in total were delivered, including to post offices in Burnley, Padiham and Pendle.

“Return or go back to your land”

The letter, with was framed with Swastikas, was first posted online by Jenna Rigby, a resident of Burnley who says that the letter was delivered to a shop ran by her brother and sister in law.

In the letter replete with spelling mistakes, the author calls on any man and woman born in another country to go back to their lands “immediateley” and to take their “inbred children” with them.

The letter, which contained gruesome descriptions of violence, as well as depiction of what appears to be a lynching, said that foreigners are not welcome “in this forsaken land” and that failure to leave would result in the lives of immigrants being made hostile.

“We will make your life hostile” reads the letter which combines accusations of rhetorical “sins” with strangely mundane grievances, accusing immigrants of robbing the community with hyper-inflated prices, “lacklustre and terrible service” and “inhumane, uncivilised and ‘un acceptable’ sins of the past that will be held under judgement”.

At one point, the author misspells Britain as “Britian” despite being willing to kill for the country. At another point, the letter takes a swipe at the “God Forsaken bloody Scots”, excluding Scotland (and forgetting to mention Northern Ireland) as part of the “United Kingdom of England and Wales”.

“They tirelessly got up 7 days a week during lock down to run their post office”

Jenna Rigby, who posted the letter of Facebook, said that her brother and sister in law have been working tirelessly to support the community through the coronavirus lockdown. She said that they were running their post office full-time with reduced staff and increased custom.

She said that the police have been notified.

Lancashire papers also confirmed that specialist officers are reviewing the letter. They said that they suspect the letters to be linked to a number of similar letters distributed across Lancashire in 2019.

Officials said that any information about the letters should be sent to Lancashire Police via email at [email protected] or call 101 quoting incident reference LC-20200624-0489.

Burnley had another brush with racism this week

The letters came on the heels of an incident earlier this week in which a plane carrying a “White Lives Matter Burnley” banner was flown over the Etihad Stadium during a football game between Burnley Football Club and Manchester City.

The man responsible for the incident, Jake Hepple, has rejected allegations of racism, claiming that he did it in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. He has since lost his job at an engineering firm.