Police are investigating the student head of Cambridge’s equality group after he claimed that ‘all white people are racist’ and praised rioters in Dalston who lit bonfires and hurled petrol bombs at police.
Jason Osamede Okundaye, who runs the Black and Minority Ethnic society at the elite institution, posted the shocking tweets amid violent protests in east London last night over the death of Rashan Charles.
He said that white people had ‘colonised’ Dalston and ordered them to ‘go back’ to areas such as Exeter and ‘Solihurst’ (sic).
Okundaye, 20, wrote to his thousands of Twitter followers: ‘ALL white people are racist. White middle class, white working class, white men, white women, white gays, white children they can ALL geddit.’
However, his online outburst may now have landed the student in hot water after officers confirmed they were looking into the tweets.
A Cambridgeshire police spokesman said: ‘We are aware of these matters and they are in hand. I can confirm that police are investigating the incident at this time.’
The student at Cambridge’s Pembroke College – who previously attended a £36,000-a-year public school – also claimed it was ‘absolutely delicious’ to watch ‘middle-class white people despair over black people protesting in their colonised Dalston’.
A spokesman for the University said: ‘The College is looking into this matter and will respond appropriately.’
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Critics accused Mr Okundaye of encouraging hatred. Tory MP Bob Blackman said the student should be ‘prosecuted for inciting racial hatred’.
He added: ‘That is stirring up racial hatred unnecessarily – and completely without justification.’
Mr Okundaye, who has been involved in a series of anti-racism initiatives, was born in South London and says he is a member of the Edo tribe in Nigeria.
He was educated on an academic scholarship at the independent Whitgift School in Croydon, which was founded in 1596 and charges fees of up to £36,400 for full boarders.
Last year, the sociology and politics student was part of a Cambridge campaign calling for a bronze cockerel, which was the symbol of Jesus College, to be ‘repatriated’ to Africa.
The newly-elected president of the Black and Minority Ethnic Campaign was among students demanding that the sculpture, which had pride of place in the college’s dining hall, be handed back in a ceremony to Nigeria, from which they claimed it had been looted.
The campaign, which was likened to one at Oxford University over a statue of Cecil Rhodes, forced the college to remove the cockerel.
Mr Okundaye, an outstanding student at Whitgift who won an Oxford theology prize and the Harvard Book prize in 2015, has since criticised public school colleagues for narrow mindedness and has claimed that ‘white men’s obsession with my skin meant I was made to feel naked’.
On Friday, demonstrators barricaded part of the area’s Kingsland Road – close to where Mr Charles died last week following a struggle with a police officer – with wheelie bins, mattresses and household debris.
The 20-year-old died after he was chased by an officer who attempted to remove an object from his throat, according to an initial probe by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Footage on social media appeared to show at least one police officer attempting to restrain the 20-year-old in a shop close to where the protest is being held.
Dramatic video taken last night showed more than a dozen officers retreating from protesters who launched objects at them.
The violence has drawn parallels with the London riots in 2011, which were sparked by the police shooting of 29-year-old Mark Duggan in Tottenham.
And as night descended, worrying videos showed youths setting fire to mattresses in the middle of the road and pelting police vans with objects.
The windows of several shops in Kingsland High Street were smashed as the violence extended beyond Dalston Kingsland Station.
