Kriss Donald Memorial

Every March the Kriss Donald Memorial is held each year in Scotland by the B & H Highlander Division in memory of the Scottish teenager.

On 16 March 2004, 16 year old Kriss Donald was abducted from Kenmure Street, beside the Pollokshields Bowling Club at the foot of McCulloch Street where he lived with his mother, younger brother, and three sisters. The Asian gang who kidnapped him took him on a 200-mile journey to Dundee and back whilst making phone calls looking for a house to take him to. Having no success, they returned to Glasgow and took him to the Clyde Walkway, near Celtic Football Club’s training ground. There, they held his arms and stabbed him 13 times. He sustained internal injuries to three arteries, one of his lungs, his liver and a kidney, and was then doused in petrol, set on fire and left to die.

The national media in Great Britain either totally ignored this vicious killing or relegated the crime to a mere footnote with only the local Scottish press telling the truth with headlines of “Abducted, Stabbed and Set on Fire for Being White” (The Scotsman, Friday 19th November 2004). Glasgow was a racial time bomb while the rest of the country was kept in the dark about this crime, a far cry from the extensive reporting of non-white victims of crime.

Five Asian men were eventually convicted of racially aggravated offences, three received life imprisonment after being extradited back from Pakistan. There were numerous diplomatic complications around the case, including apparent differences between government activities and those of ambassadorial officials; government figures were at times alleged to be reluctant to pursue the case for diplomatic reasons.

Each year a concert or social is respectfully held in memory of this young man, a victim of a crime that is becoming more and more common place in our lands.