A missing child poster that has made the rounds on social media websites is actually a racist hoax.
Below is the poster, which reads:
Missing Person
Amy Hamilton
Please Share
It is believed Amy has been kidnapped by an Asian grooming gang. She’s 6 years old and was last seen in the Croydon area of London wearing a pink top and blue jeans. Please share this so we can find her. 1 share makes a difference.
If you know where Amy is or have any information that can help the investigation, please ring….
The poster, which features a mythical blue-eyed bond-haired six-year-old named Amy Hamilton, is actually a ruse by a far-right British group called “Britons against Left-wing Extremism” to stir up racist sentiment against brown-skinned and Asian groups.
According to the poster, the young girl was last seen in the Croyden section of London and was believed to kidnapped by an Asian “grooming” gang. The term “grooming” signifies the procurement and use of underage girls in the sex trade. The Croyden Advertiser revealed in 2013 that no Amy Hamilton existed.
The “Britons Against” group, also called Bale, is well known for fabricating stories to further it’s ultra-conservative racist agenda. The mouthpiece of the organizations social media feeds is called “The Daily Bale” and is used to perpetrate the groups politically motivated lies.
The picture used on the poster is not even a photograph, but a painting by the popular portrait artist Anita Stanhope and was lifted from the artist’s Flickr account. The work was a commission piece done of a grandchild of one of Stanhope’s clients. The phone number on the poster rings directly into a Daily Bale Investigations Ltd. which is actually a front for a UK insurance company.
This is not the first time that this organization has been responsible for this type of hate mongering. In September 2013, the group perpetrated a similar hoax with an illegally procured picture of a child and claiming that the baby was punched and thrown against a wall by an Asian youth.
Bottom Line
The Amy Hamilton “Missing” poster is a hoax perpetrated by a right-wing hate group and should not be taken seriously.
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