Dr Amir Khan says his ‘family feel unsafe going to the shop’ following far-right riots and says he has to ‘continuously justify his presence in this country’

Dr Amir Khan has said he feel ‘really vulnerable’ speaking about far-right riots in the UK as he doesn’t want to open himself up for ‘racist attacks’.

The television doctor, who was born in Bradford as the child of Pakistani immigrants, said that he’s sick of being considered ‘the right kind of Asian’ for being a GP but praised anti-racism protesters for coming out in force against racist mobs.

Speaking on ITV‘s Lorraine, the doctor said: ‘To see people in those numbers come out against hate and division says more about British values than anything the far-right violent mobs have done in the last few days,’

Last night, thousands of anti-racist protesters outnumbered far-right antagonists on the streets of Britain – as those behind gatherings targeting immigration centres tried to backpedal on the gatherings ever being planned.

When presenter Christine Lampard asked what he made of the previous nights events, which were unexpectedly calm, Dr Amir said: ‘That was really positive, we were braced for more violence, tensions were high.’

He added he was pleased to see ‘British values’ in action.

Christine noted that Dr Amir had been feeling the political tension of the country.

She said: ‘I know Dr Amir, that you have been finding it really difficult to even talk about because of that feeling of being unsafe maybe how your family feel just going about their grocery shop, you’ve been really struggling this week with it.’

He responded: ‘It has been hard and it has been hard to talk about it because any person of colour like myself goes out in public against racism or against these far right racially aggravated attacks, puts themselves in a very vulnerable position.

‘Not just from physical violence from those people but from online hate, I’ve had that before.

‘I’ve thought long and hard before we talked about it today because I didn’t want to get that level of hate that I’ve had before when I’ve talked about these things.

‘But I’ve realised that my feelings aren’t as important as feelings of large numbers of black and brown people in Britain right now.

‘There is this feeling that because of these riots, people of colour like myself, aren’t really truly British. These rioters will say Britishness is whiteness.

‘And that people like us are merely tolerated as long as we conform and stay within a certain box. 

‘The minute we’re too Asian or too black or stand up against structural racism or talk about these issues, we’re playing the race card or worse, we get told to go back to our own country.

‘I was born here, this is my country and I want to make it better and make it more tolerable but it’s incredibly hard to talk about it, more than that, it’s exhausting.’

Christine then asked what the impact of the racially aggravated riots have had on the NHS, with nearly a quarter of their workforce being made up of black and minority ethnic groups. 

He said: ‘People of colour make up a large proportion of the NHS, particularly clinical work.

‘If we were to say that we don’t feel safe coming into work, the NHS would grind to a halt but we still come into work, despite fears of our own safety.

Particularly in general practice, we are in a room one to one with a patient and we treat everybody exactly the same, no matter their skin colour but a patient may come into see me today that feels empowered by what the far-right do and could quite easily violently assault me.’

‘We go out on home visits alone as well so we’ve had to put certain precautions in place.’

However, he felt the risk would be less for him since being a doctor makes him the ‘right kind of Asian’ in the minds of the far-right.

‘People may say to me, “we’re not talking about you Amir, you’re the right type of Asian’.”

‘When people talk to me about being the right type of Asian, it really upsets me because it puts a value on me being here based on my job and what I contribute to society and white British people don’t have that same pressure.

‘I have to continuously justify my presence in this country.’ 

He added that if he were to be the victim of a far-right mob, ‘they won’t stop me and ask what job I have.’

‘They’ll see the colour of my skin and most likely violently assault me and so that is really hard.’

On Wednesday night, counter-protesters turned out in their thousands in several UK cities – outnumbering ‘anti-immigration’ protesters in order to send the clear message that Britain does not welcome hate.

Around 100 hate-fuelled protests were planned across the country on Wednesday, many of which were planned in now-deleted far-right groups, with police deployed in their biggest mobilisation of resources since the 2011 riots. 

Undeterred, red-faced would-be protesters have taken to social media to row back on their claims – and now claim there was never a plan to target refugee centres in order to waste police time.

But the Telegram group responsible for sharing an alleged hit list of refugee centres for thugs to target was taken down by the typically immovable team behind the encrypted messaging app – who said it breached their rules on inciting violence.

The demos came as scores of arrests and dozens of convictions were sealed in rapid time, following more than a week of unrest after three young girls were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on July 29.

Police have also vowed to go after those sharing hate and inciting unrest online.

Today, police have launched dawn raids targeting ‘seriously violent’ thugs who took part in riots as the crackdown on the far-right begins following last night’s foiled chaos.

Sir Mark Rowley said his force had smashed its way into the homes of the ‘most violent’ members of last weeks protests in Whitehall and branded them ‘criminal thugs’.