Anti-Trump protestors vilified as “race traitors” by man on Tube

The Evening Standard reports on a woman who was abused and called a “race traitor” as she made her way to the protest against Donald Trump in central London on Saturday 4 February.

Sophia Nicolov, a 23-year-old student from London, was on a Piccadilly Line tube train with her sister Alice and friends when she was confronted by a man who had been “ranting about f****** Muslims”.

Alice told the paper, “We were on the way to the protest and there were about five or six of us girls. My sister was behind me holding a sign with a picture of Donald Trump and Theresa May holding hands which read ‘public enemies number one’.” 

Alice said the women became aware of a group of men, one of whom “was ranting and ranting about “f******* Muslims”.

“He was shouting about how ‘there are no white people left in London anymore’ and kept saying ‘what is this country becoming?’,” she said.

After the man saw her sister’s sign, Alice said he became enraged. “He lunged for her, kicked her and kicked the sign she was holding. He just started going mad and calling her a “liberal leftie piece of s***”, she said.

The paper reports that the man then tried to knock the sign out of Sophia’s hands, before hurling further abuse at her.

Sophie said, “He kept shouting ‘you f****** left wing liberal scum’ over and over again and then he started calling me a ‘race traitor’ – he was shouting it at me.”

The sisters said they began shouting “You’re a racist” back at the man, before starting to film the incident.

“When we began filming him, he started saying it was nothing to do with race,” said Alice. 

Footage posted on the Evening Standard website shows the tail-end of the incident. The man, whose face is blurred out in the video, can be heard defending his “race-traitor” comments before the sisters repeatedly tell him to “get off” the train, saying “bye-bye” sarcastically as he got off the tube at Oxford Circus.

Alice described the incident as “very intimidating and frightening.”

Alice told the paper she had never experienced such an incident before, saying the accusation of being a “race traitor” was “white supremacist type of talk”.

Sophia added that she felt this kind of behaviour has been “normalised by Trump and Brexit” and explained why they had attended the demonstration. “The reason we were marching is because we hate racism and we want people to know that London is not a racist city,” she said.

The paper reports that the incident was reported to British Transport Police. A statement by Siwan Hayward, TfL’s Head of Transport Policing, read: “We do not tolerate racist behaviour and are working with the British Transport Police to identify the individual involved in this incident.”

Saturday’s protest in central London was attend by thousands and is the latest in a series of demonstrations against US President, Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’, his proposed state visit to the UK later this year, and the seeming impotence of the British government to robustly challenge Trump’s discriminatory policies against Muslims and refugees. 

The protest on Saturday 4 February followed initial protests opposing Trump’s ‘executive order’ across UK cities and towns last Monday evening. Almost 2 million British citizens have signed a petition calling for the Government to prevent Trump making a state visit to the UK, with a Parliament debate on the topic scheduled to take place on 20 February.