Problem

I’m a South Korean student studying at Canterbury. I was attacked and physically assaulted by a mixed group of racist white and black strangers on the 11th of November, in Oxford Street London.



I was with my friend walking down the Oxford Street around 5:50pm on the 11th, and suddenly I noticed someone throwing junks towards my head from behind me. I first ignored the group following me, but they kept throwing things from my back. I turned around and told them to stop. Then this black girl approached me saying, ‘Oh, you speak English? You alright?’ then continued throwing wastes from her hand towards my head. I got angry, and I threw her back some of the rubbish I was holding. The next thing I know, this girl started ranting at me ‘How dare you hit me’ and pushed me to the ground. I fell, and around 10 people came up to me and started beating me up. I tried to stand back up but the girl pushed me to the floor again and started punching me in my head, face. They also started kicking me on the floor. They all seemed teenagers, but they were all so much taller and outweighed me (I am around 5’2 and lot of them were around 6’) One of the guys who was the tallest, around 6’ (180cm) struck me down and carried punching my face and my head. I remember shouting, ‘This is 21st century, stop being racists’ and I kept screaming as there wasn’t much I can do whilst getting beaten up by a group of 10 people. I was with a friend of mine, and she was so stunned at the moment so she wasn’t able to physically stop them at all. Two of the strangers nearby came around trying to stop them, and so the group pretended they were leaving but they eventually came back, followed me and started attacking me again. The black girl who initially started punching me even took off her jacket and carried on punching me on my face and head. One of the most vivid memories from that evening was the white guy around 6 ft (180cm) punching me on my head for the very last time, and I almost lost my consciousness.



This was Oxford Street. This was Sunday evening in the central London area. Out of all the people walking by, it was only two people who were trying to help me out and the rest would just be filming the scene. The group had beaten me up for around 6-7 minutes and they ran away towards the Mcdonalds. I asked one of the guys helping me to call the police. I filed the case over the phone, but the police didn’t show up even after an hour later. I was waiting for the police with my friend and the guys who helped me call them, and called four more times after the initial phone call. They kept repeating the same response- they said they would look into the estimated arrival time, I’ll call you back, etc. but they didn’t show up after all.



I was shocked, I was panicking. The feeling was indescribable and I ended up coming back to Canterbury that night. I filed the case online as I got back, thinking back and realising that there were CCTVs in front of the M&S and Uniqlo from across the street. That night, the police had only sent me an email telling me to see a therapist. They were incredibly apathetic in helping me out/looking into the incident. It was an EVIDENT RACIST/HATE CRIME, and no one was wiling to help me out. I ended up calling the Korean embassy, explaining what’s happened and asking if they could help me with chasing the perpetrators, but they’ve only said stepping into ‘civil affairs’ would be out of their jurisdiction and that I would have to seek for help through police. They’ve also added that looking into the CCTV footage would require permissions from the court and this would take up to months. Both the police and Korean embassy have done pretty much nothing with neither chasing the offenders nor physically/emotionally supporting me.



A few days later at this point, I can feel several bumps on my head and my chin has entirely swollen up. I was experiencing several panic attacks/shocks, vomiting for the past couple days and i ended up calling an ambulance today to get to the A&E.







Solution

I hope the police will arrive right on time and that we can stop violence towards people regardless of their race. Also, I hope that the assaulters get a proper punishment because if they did this once, they will do it again. I don't want other people be a victim like me.