UK protests erupt over Trump's Muslim travel ban

Yahoo News Photo Staff

Tens of thousands of people protested in London and other British cities against President Donald Trump’s ban on entry to the United States by refugees and people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Thousands of people, some holding placards reading “No to Racism, No to Trump”, “Dump Trump” and “I stand with Muslims”, joined a protest on Monday outside the Downing Street residence of Prime Minister Theresa May, the first leader to visit President Trump.

Some chanted “Shame on May” for her offer to Trump of a visit to Britain while 1.5 million people signed a petition calling for Trump’s planned trip – which will involve lavish displays of royal pageantry and a banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth – to be cancelled.

“It’s a lot worse under Trump than I was expecting, because it’s only been 10 days but he’s changed so much already,” Rawnak Jassm, a 23-year-old British-Iraqi, who joined the protest, told Reuters. “It’s pretty scary.”

Trump’s immigration order, which was signed just hours after his meeting with the British prime minister in Washington, has soured May’s attempt to show that post-Brexit vote Britain can have a “special relationship” with the world’s superpower.

Some British voters, including thousands on protests across Britain, have expressed concern that May has failed to criticize Trump sufficiently for his temporary ban on travel to the United States by people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

While the protests in Britain were smaller than those in the United States, they illustrate how Trump’s first days in office have had a sometimes unexpected impact on politics across the world, even in some close allies such as Britain.

Trump said the new controls were aimed at securing the United States by keeping out radical Islamic terrorists, but protesters in Britain said the measures were racist and anti-Muslim. Trump has denied the measures are anti-Muslim. (Reuters)

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