A young politician has opened up about vile racist abuse and death threats he received on social media.
The UUP’s Jay Basra shared screenshots of sinister messages, which included threats to “cut your head off”.
The messages were reported to police and the account blocked on X.
The 19-year-old said he fears such incidents will discourage other young people from pursuing politics.
The most recent spate of online abuse, which Mr Basra says isn’t reflective of the reaction he receives in person, started in May when he announced his Westminster candidacy.
“It’s just typical of politics now, it’s more about how you can bring someone down, rather than actually debating their political points of view,” he said.
“It’s more vitriol and hate rather than debate, which is what I have noticed even in my replies, they are criticising me but they are mixing prejudice and hate in there.”
During the recent general election Mr Basra was the UUP candidate for Mid Ulster securing 2,269 votes while studying history and politics and Queen’s University Belfast.
Announcing his candidacy in May, he said he hoped it would “encourage more young people to put their names forward” but he fears the abuse levelled at him will have the opposite effect.
“All the young people that have spoken to me, and have seen the messages that I have been getting, have said they wouldn’t be interested because of it,” he said.
“It discourages people from being involved in politics, and that’s the antithesis of what I want, I want to encourage more young people to get involved in politics. So many young people here are disenfranchised from politics, and this doesn’t help it at all.”
Mr Basra describes himself as Punjabi-British, and said that the negative reactions he has received are largely confined to social media and began after he became politically active.
He said: “I don’t think anyone had ever tried to reduce my opinion or try and make it invalid by saying that because of my family background, that I can’t be a unionist or that I can’t be British. It’s completely farcical.
“It is perpetrated by users on Twitter, there’s quite a lot of them who try to reduce me down to my heritage.”
Mr Basra is the second politician to hit the headlines for being the target of racist abuse.
Earlier this year the SDLP’s Lilian Seenoi-Barr was also targeted after being selected by her party to be the first citizen of Derry City and Strabane District Council.
“I would say politics needs more representation on a whole, but you can’t force it on people, you have to go through the democratic process,” Mr Basra added.
“If we have more people running from younger and more diverse backgrounds it would help representation in this country, but it always depends on the area and where it is.
“I just want to help young people I do find that people aren’t engaged, but I hope that it will change. We got more younger voters out this time in Mid Ulster, which is great to see and I want to build on that.”
