A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Find these stories and all others since 2014 on our searchable database, the Register of Racism and Resistance.
ASYLUM | MIGRATION | BORDERS | CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
5 August: Figures show that the Home Office paid out over £70m in compensation in the past year, including £41.1 million in compensation to Windrush victims and people wrongfully detained, and £28.8 million in legal costs. Only a quarter of Windrush victims have received compensation. (Guardian, 5 August 2022)
7 August: Thousands of international students who fled Ukraine face having to leave Germany by the end of August unless they meet strict requirements for student visas, it is revealed. (Deutsche Welle, 7 August 2022)
8 August: The Moroccan human rights group AMDH Nador condemns the jailing of fourteen migrants in a case linked to migrants’ attempts to scale the Spanish-Moroccan border fence at Melilla in which none of the men, convicting for insulting law enforcement and belonging to a criminal gang, were involved. (Info Migrants, 8 August 2022)
11 August: New Home Office data shows a record number of referrals for human trafficking this year, with nine out of 10 suspected cases being accepted as genuine. Since the enactment of the Nationality and Borders Act, survivors are no longer guaranteed support even if recognised as victims. (Guardian, 11 August 2022)
12 August: Many European politicians publicly oppose the Czech EU Presidency’s proposal for a blanket ban on the issuing of visas to any Russian visitor to the EU, arguing that this is ‘Putin’s war’ and, in particular, visas on humanitarian grounds should still be granted. (Brussels Times, 12 August 2022)
15 August: A year on from the fall of Kabul, the government’s failure to keep its resettlement promises leaves thousands seeking asylum by other means, with almost one-fifth of those stranded in northern France from Afghanistan. (Morning Star, 12 August 2022, Independent, 15 August 2022)
Borders and internal controls
2 August: A Border Force representative calls for the inhumane Rwanda asylum policy to be dropped as record numbers of asylum seekers cross the Channel, calling into question the government’s claim that the policy acts as a deterrent. (Guardian, 2 August 2022)
3 August: It is revealed that, fearing a ‘political fallout’, the UK coastguard cut contact with a British decommissioned lifeboat, the Aurora, on 29 May after it rescued 86 people from a sinking boat in the Mediterranean, and prevented the boat from going back to sea after it landed. (inews, 3 August 2022)
3 August: An investigation into Frontex’ conduct of ‘voluntary interviews’ with newly arrived migrants in Spain displays their opacity and questionable legal basis, with information extracted in these interrogations, conducted without a lawyer and at times without an interpreter, passed on to police for use in criminal proceedings. (Statewatch, 3 August 2022)
4 August: Médecins Sans Frontières reveals that since January 2021 it has treated 423 patients with injuries due to violence, including beatings with belts and batons, allegedly inflicted by Hungarian authorities at the border with Serbia. Two unaccompanied minors were repeatedly sprayed with pepper spray as they were transported to Serbia in a tiny windowless shipping container. (MSF, 4 August 2022)
5 August: The Home Office announces a scheme involving facial recognition smartwatches with 24/7 tracking to monitor ‘foreign national offenders’, from autumn 2022, requiring migrants convicted of crime to take pictures of themselves up to 5 times a day. (Guardian, 5 August 2022)
8 August: Police blame people smugglers after three migrants die and eleven others are injured, when their car, attempting to evade a police check, crashes near Bocsa village, southern Hungary. (Info Migrants, 8 August 2022)
8 August: According to Aegean Boat Report, Greek officials have illegally pushed back 38,000 people in the Aegean Sea, in 1,500 cases over the past 3 years. (Aegean Boat Report, 8 August 2022)
11 August: A 5-year-old Syrian girl, in a group of 39 refugees stranded without food or water on an islet in the Evros river, dies from a scorpion sting, and a 9-year-old is in a critical condition, as Greece denies the refugees are on its territory and defies a European Court of Human Rights instruction, refusing to allow medical aid. (Channel 4 News, 11 August 2022)
‘No-one wants us. No-one hears us’. As Greece refuses to rescue 39 refugees from a Greek islet, a child died of a scorpion sting. Another remains critical. What are you doing @Refugees @UNHCRGreece @UNHCRUK @RefugeesMedia @RefugeesIntl?https://t.co/p7WD0kPjW0
— Lindsey Hilsum (@lindseyhilsum) August 12, 2022
11 August: The Latvian authorities extend for a further three months the state of emergency imposed almost a year ago at the Belarus border, allowing refugees crossing into Latvia to be returned there. (Schengen Visa News, 11 August 2022)
12 August: The Lebanese Center for Human Rights and KISA issue a joint press release alleging that on 4 July 52 people shipwrecked near the shores of Pathos, Cyprus, were illegally pushed back to Lebanon, with the Cypriot authorities leaving them for ‘two days in a boat while it was sinking’, according to one survivor. (KISA/CLDH press release, 12 August 2022)
12 August: Hundreds of protestors barricade themselves around immigration enforcement vehicles in Chorlton, Greater Manchester, to prevent officers detaining anyone during a raid on a Chinese restaurant. (Manchester Evening News, 14 August 2022)
16 August: As the rescue is announced of 38 Syrians and Palestinians stranded in a restricted military zone on an islet on the Evros river, the Greek minister for Migration accuses Turkey of forcing them across the border. Attempts are made to retrieve the body of the little girl killed by a scorpion bite. (Euronews, 16 August 2022)
Reception and detention
3 August: A joint report by UNHCR and the Red Cross, At risk: Exploitation and the UK asylum system, finds that gaps in the asylum support system leave asylum seekers at risk of exploitation including domestic servitude and modern slavery. (UNHCR, 3 August 2022)
5 August: Germany’s antiziganism commissioner details a dozen reported cases of Romani refugees from Ukraine facing discrimination in Germany, adding that some have been subjected to harassment and assault. (Deutsche Welle, 5 August 2022)
6 August: Roma refugees from Ukraine say they are suffering discrimination in the Czech Republic, Romania and Moldova, with many being turned away from refugee accommodation and told they are not refugees but Roma. (CNN/ KTVZ, 6 August 2022)
7 August: In Ireland, the Children’s Rights Alliance warns of the effects on children of continually moving them from temporary accommodation, after the government tells 3,000 Ukrainian refugees they must leave student accommodation by the end of August. (RTE, 7 August 2022)
8 August: An investigation by StreetPress concludes that in at least three asylum accommodation centres in the Pas-de-Calais region, France run by the Active Life Association, between 2018 and 2021 several dozen families were prevented from enrolling their children at school. (StreetPress, 9 August 2022)
10 August: Plans to repurpose a former RAF base at Linton-on Ouse, Lincolnshire into an accommodation centre for up to 1500 asylum seekers are cancelled after a campaign by local residents. (Guardian, 9 August 2022; BBC, 10 August 2022)
10 August: A new report by Corporate Watch, Migrant ‘No’ Help: the Home Office’s charity gatekeeper, looks at the corporate interests behind Migrant Help, the charity with a multi-million pound contract for services in asylum accommodation. (Corporate Watch, 10 August 2022)
11 August: A survey reveals that a quarter of those housing Ukrainian refugees do not wish to continue their sponsorship beyond the six-month minimum, with many citing the rising cost of living. (BBC, 11 August 2022)
15 August: Refugees housed by Serco at the Hilltop Hotel in Carlisle stage a protest at their conditions, saying they feel like prisoners. (Cumberland News & Star, 15 August 2022)
15 August: As it is revealed that 9,000 Afghan refugees remain stuck in hotels for a year, since their evacuation from Kabul, the Home Office tells them to look on Rightmove or Zoopla for private-sector rented accommodation. (Guardian, 15 August 2022)
15 August: It is reported that 45 lone asylum seeking children have gone missing from hotels where they were placed over a period of 10 months, raising fears that the children are victims of trafficking. (Independent, 15 August 2022)
Deportations
5 August: The Paris Administrative Court suspends an expulsion order against Hassan Iquioussen, an imam born in France to Moroccan parents, accused by the interior minister of antisemitism and promoting hate speech against French values. (Morocco World News, 5 August 2022)
11 August: In the first case since Turkey supported Sweden’s bid to join NATO in exchange for accelerated extraditions, the Supreme Court rules that there are no obstacles to the extradition from Sweden to Turkey of a man wanted for bank card fraud. (Al Jazeera, 11 August 2022)
12 August: A Bulgarian court rules that Russian national Alexey Alchin, who burned his passport in protest at the war in Ukraine, can be extradited to Russia, which claims he is wanted for tax fraud. (Euractiv, 12 August 2022)
ELECTORAL POLITICS | GOVERNMENT POLICY
2 August: After Conservative leadership contender Rishi Sunak proposes to extend the definition of ‘extremism’ to those who ‘vilify Britain’ and display ‘an extreme hatred of our country’, former counter-radicalisation chief Sir Peter Fahy criticises him for straying into the area of ‘thought crimes’. (Guardian, 3 August 2022)
4 August: The Polish government claims that most people trying to enter Poland ‘illegally’ are Africans who have first travelled through Russia to Belarus and that this is part of a ‘hybrid operation aimed at destabilising the NATO eastern flank’. (Independent, 4 August 2022)
4 August: The French interior minister is forced to postpone a proposal to remove all legislative restrictions preventing the expulsion of foreign offenders. His ‘fast-track immigration law’ will now be subjected to parliamentary debate. (Le Monde, 4 August 2022)
4 August: At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán says that a ‘clash of civilisations’ is underway, calls on conservative politicians to take back power from liberals, and asserts that ‘a Christian politician cannot be racist’. (CBS News, 4 August 2022)
7 August: In the run-up to the Italian general election, League leader Matteo Salvini targets refugees, first via Twitter posts alleging crimes and rapes are committed by ‘fake refugees’, and then during a high-profile visit to Lampedusa, declaring ‘Italy is not the refugee camp of Europe’. (Observer, 7 August 2022)
11 August: In Poland, a leaked email exchange between the prime minister’s chief of staff and a journalist in 2018 reveals that scholars researching Holocaust denial are automatically condemned as ‘enemies of the state’. (Wyborcza, 11 August 2022)
12 August: In Sweden, the Moderate party proposes that in order to cut gun crime, children in ‘vulnerable areas’ should be screened for ADHD, adding that children from an immigrant background were less likely to be medicated for ADHD than Swedish-born children. (The Local, 12 August 2022)
12 August: After Conservative leadership candidate Liz Truss vows to target ‘woke civil service culture that strays into antisemitism’, the general secretary of the FDA union describes her comments as ‘inflammatory’, ‘insulting and abhorrent’. (Guardian, 12 August 2022)
9 August: In Belgium, a Francophone liberal MR party campaign video which featured its leader answering questions from the public is criticised for including an unchallenged racist remark which compared Brussels and its ‘dirtiness’ to the Congo. (Brussels Times, 9 August 2022)
ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
With anti-migrant, anti-equalities, anti-abortion, misogynistic and anti-LGBTQI activities increasingly interlinking, we now incorporate information on the Christian Right as well as information relating to the incel movement.
2 August: Thousands of people attend a vigil in Vienna, Austria, after the suicide of GP Lisa-Maria Kellermayr, who was targeted by supporters of the Querdenker coronavirus conspiracy theory, and at least one neo-nazi. She had recently criticised the state for not offering protection. (Guardian, 2 August 2022)
9 August: Patriotic Alternative supporters unfurl a gigantic ‘White Lives Matter’ banner at Clifford Tower, York, before being evicted by security staff. (York Press, 9 August 2022)
11 August: The Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party burn the Koran at protests in Sweden, though few people turn out. (The Local, 11 August 2022)
12 August: A year after the mass shooting in Plymouth that left five people dead, local MP Luke Pollard says that there is no coherent government strategy to deal with incel culture and young men going down this path. (Independent, 12 August 2022)
POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
1 August: The European Roma Rights Centre says the Romanian criminal justice system is racist to the core after Romani mother Florica Moldovan is found guilty of disturbing the peace in an incident in 2019 when a bus driver in Zalău refused to allow her to board and assaulted her with a mop. (ERRC, 1 August 2022)
2 August: After being called to an incident at a hotel room, police in Frankfurt, Germany shoot dead a 23-year-old homeless man from Somalia after he injures a police dog with a knife. The man dies on the scene from a single shot to the head – not, as police first reported, later in hospital. (Frankfurter Rundschau, 2 August 2022; Hessenschau, 4 August 2022)
3 August: An inspectorate report criticises Lincolnshire police for use of force and managing detainee risks, including by forcibly removing clothing of detainees and using anti-rip clothing without adequate rationale. (Lincolnshire Live, 3 August 2022)
4 August: Three of five police officers recently investigated as part of a wider investigation into right-wing group chats sharing racist and fascist material in Frankfurt, Germany, are high ranking officials, it is revealed, including the officer responsible for internal investigations, who allegedly warned colleagues of proceedings against them. (Frankfurter Allgemeine, 4 August 2022; Hessenschau, 5 August 2022)
4 August: In a new report, the Campaign Against Arms Trade and NetPol warn that the line between the police and military has become blurred in counter-terrorism, public order, border control and the policing of ‘gangs’, with ‘people of colour’ at greatest risk from this ‘hyper-militarisation’. (CAAT, 4 August 2022, Guardian, 4 August 2022)
5 August: Academic research based on interviews with police officers from several northern England forces finds that pre-existing biases in policing at least partly explain why minority ethnic people were more likely to receive fines for Covid breaches than their white counterparts. (Guardian, 5 August 2022)
New research in today's Guardian confirms much of the findings in this IRR and @EthnicityUK report from last year: that racial bias in Covid-19 policing disproportionately impacted Black and Minority Ethnic communities.https://t.co/LOo3abjEV4
— Institute of Race Relations (@IRR_News) August 5, 2022
5 August: The lawyer for Desmond Acquah, a Black army veteran and key worker wrongfully accused in April 2022 of breaking coronavirus regulations, criticises Hampshire police for not issuing an apology, despite accepting their misuse of power and agreeing £30,000 in damages. (Iain Gould, 5 August 2022)
6 August: The Metropolitan police apologise to Zac Sharif-Ali for an illegal stop and search on Chiswick Common in 2012, paying him £30,000 damages, but deny racism was involved and offer no apology for the force used during the arrest, including an alleged unlawful chokehold. (Guardian, 6 August 2022)
8 August: The police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight scraps a community resolution hate crime awareness course. The arrest of a man for sharing an anti-LGBT post written by the actor Lawrence Fox, and Fox’s subsequent sharing of a video of the man’s arrest, is said to have prompted the move. (BBC, 8 August 2022)
8 August: A Children’s Commissioner for England report criticises the Metropolitan police’s record on child protection, with data showing that 650 children were strip-searched between 2018 and 2020, with no adult present in 23 percent of cases, and 58 percent of strip-searched children aged 10 to 17 were identified by police as black. (Guardian, 8 August 2022)
8 August: Two Metropolitan police officers face a disciplinary hearing after being accused of cutting a woman’s clothes off in an ‘unjustified’ strip search witnessed by male officers at Lewisham police station in 2020. (Evening Standard, 8 August 2022)
8 August: A 16-year-old Senegalese youth dies after being shot five times by police in Dortmund, Germany. Police allege that the youth attacked them with a knife, but the regional public prosecutor says the circumstances are unclear, and does not rule out the possibility that the boy intended to commit suicide. (Westdeutscher Rundfunk, 9 August 2022)
10 August: Hundreds demonstrate in Dortmund, Germany, to protest the police shooting of the 16-year-old Senegalese youth, named as Mouhamed Lamine Dramé, as more details emerge of the use of taser and pepper spray against him, as well as suggestions that the police’s bodycams were turned off. (Perspektive, 10 August 2022; Focus, 11 August 2022)
10 August: French police shoot dead a homeless man of colour, reported as brandishing a knife, at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris. (Euronews, 10 August 2022)
10 August: The Children’s Commissioner pledges to review national data on police strip-searching children after it is revealed that a total of 160 young people aged 13 to 17 were strip-searched by police officers in the West Midlands in 2021. (Birmingham Mail, 10 August 2022)
14 August: The IOPC opens an investigation after Black athlete Ricardo dos Santos says he feared for his life during the third stop and search he has endured in two years, in which he was pulled over by seven armed officers while driving to his London home. (Guardian, 1605 August 2022)
15 August: An investigation by the IOPC into a fatal collision in Stretford in May 2021 following a police pursuit which led to the death of Devonte Scott, 18, finds that Greater Manchester police acted in accordance with relevant policies and procedures. (IOPC press release, 15 August 2022)
15 August: New reports reveal that a special forces unit was involved in the fatal shooting of the homeless Somalian man, now named as Amin F. in Frankfurt, Germany (see above), and that he was shot at multiple times. (Hessenschau, 15 August 2022)
15 August: Retired Southwark Lib Dem councillor Jonathan Hunt says he was ‘wrongfully arrested’ for punching a police officer after filming a black 15-year-old boy tackled by men who he took to be right-wing thugs but who turned out to be plainclothes officers responding to a 999 call about a knife fight. (My London, 15 August 2022)
COUNTER-TERRORISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY
7 August: German chancellor Olaf Scholz warns that a winter of energy problems could prompt an extremist backlash as spiralling heating costs are a ‘powder keg for society’. (Deutsche Welle, 7 August 2022)
EMPLOYMENT | EXPLOITATION | INDUSTRIAL ACTION
13 August: In the aftermath of the Oldham mill fire in May which killed four Vietnamese men, a Manchester Evening News investigation into trafficking victims reveals that Vietnamese men are one of the most exploited groups in the UK, and describes young men imprisoned in cannabis factories not seeing daylight for two years. (Manchester Evening News, 13 August 2022)
14 August: An investigation into a Kent farm using Indonesian seasonal agricultural workers since the supply of EU and Ukrainian workers dried up discovers that many risk debt bondage, having paid illegal recruitment premiums of thousands of pounds to an Indonesian agency which procures labour for farms on the government scheme. (Guardian, 15 August 2022)
14 August: A petition accuses EU border agency Frontex of exploitation through its use of an agency, Seprotec, which allegedly pays an effective wage of €2.50 an hour to interpreters working with vulnerable refugees in Greece, Italy and the Canary Islands. (Guardian, 14 August 2022)
DISCRIMINATION | EQUALITIES | HUMAN RIGHTS
3 August: Following 30 years of campaigning by Roma activists, the pig farm that stood on the former Lety concentration camp south of Prague in the Czech Republic is removed. (Al Jazeera, 3 August 2022)
5 August: As Dutch police reveal that three years after the ban on face-covering clothing in public facilities, they have not fined a single woman, a Ministry of Social Affairs survey finds that women who wear burqas or niqabs have experienced significantly more aggression, with offenders seeing the law as a license to harass.(Netherlands Times, 5 August 2022)
12 August: The Counselling Center for Civil and Human Rights, Slovakia, says it will appeal a first instance court ruling that placing Romani women in ‘Romani rooms’ in the maternity ward of a hospital in Prešov is not discriminatory and that segregation is not necessarily unlawful. (Romea, 12 August 2022)
HOUSING | POVERTY | WELFARE
14 August: The chair of the Commons work and pensions committee accuses minister Thérèse Coffey of attempting to hide the impact of benefits caps and sanctions after she refused to publish reports on the cap, sanctions, the deaths of benefits claimants and the impact of the rollout of universal credit, which her predecessors had agreed to publish. (Observer, 14 August 2022)
HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
12 August: A study by the University of Leicester finds that pre-existing health disparities among ethnic minorities with diabetes have become worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Helsinki Times, 12 August 2022)
EDUCATION
3 August: Academics at University College London’s Bartlett school of sustainable construction complain of a culture of bullying and deep racism, including firing staff without due process, discriminatory extension of probationary periods and harassment which have ‘destroyed careers and lives’. (Guardian, 3 August 2022)
4 August: Overstretched teachers in England fear they are missing signs of far-right radicalisation among students and lack the training to challenge extremist views increasingly adopted by children exposed to racist, white supremacist, neo-nazi and incel ideas online. (Guardian, 3 August 2022, Guardian, 4 August 2022)
11 August: The Estonian Association of Student Unions criticises the government’s decision not to issue study visas to Russian and Belarusian students, arguing that not only should they be allowed to finish their studies but some will face fatal consequences in their home countries. (Times Higher Education, 11 August 2022)
CULTURE | MEDIA | SPORT
While we cannot cover all incidents of racist abuse on sportspersons or their responses, we provide a summary of the most important incidents. For more information follow Kick it Out.
3 August: World Vision publishes ‘Warm Welcomes, Lurking Tensions’, warning that social media disinformation campaigns in central and Eastern Europe against Ukrainian refugees, particularly exaggerated claims about financial support, are stoking tensions. (Guardian, 3 August 2022)
11 August: A report on the history of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) finds that it supported and directly benefited from colonialism and its work was shaped by racist ‘pseudoscience’. (Guardian, 11 August 2022)
12 August: After the Daily Mail, quoting UK military intelligence, warns of the rising number of Albanians illegally entering the UK, Nigel Farage is accused in the Albanian press of stereotyping Albanians and hate speech for comments like ‘Now that one in ten foreign-born parents in the UK are Albanian, any guess as to the ratio in five years’ time?’ (Balkan Insight, 12 August 2022)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
2 August: Stockport magistrates sentence a 37-year-old Wilmslow woman to 12 months’ rehabilitation and £630 in fines for two assaults on women in November 2021, one racially aggravated. (Knutsford Guardian, 2 August 2022)
2 August: A mother and her 11-year-old daughter are followed and racially abused by a group of teenagers. three girls and five boys aged 13-16, while walking through a park and shops in Hythe. (New Milton Advertiser and & Lymington Times, 9 August 2022)
3 August: Stoke on Trent crown court makes a compulsory mental health treatment order on a 28-year-old care home resident who pleads guilty to punching, kneeing, kicking, spitting at and racially abusing his care worker after not being allowed outside in March 2020. (Stoke-on-Trent Live, 3 August 2022)
4 August: Kirklees magistrates sentence a 22-year-old man to three months in prison for racially or religiously aggravated threats of violence against a police officer on 21 January. (Telegraph & Argus, 15 August 2022)
4 August: Southampton magistrates sentence a 51-year-old woman to 16 weeks prison suspended for 12 months and a fine for racially aggravated assault on a police officer at Southampton general hospital in May. (Daily Echo, 4 August 2022)
4 August: The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain calls for urgent action after neo-nazi symbols are sprayed and bins set alight in the village of Castrillo Mota de Judíos, Burgos province, eight months after a similar incident. (Guardian, 4 August 2022)
6 August: In Prague, two men are arrested for threatening refugees from Ukraine on social media, calling for people in the Czech Republic to ‘rise up’ against Ukrainians. (Romea, August 2022)
6 August: A match in the South East Wales Cricket League is called off after Crumlin players allegedly direct racial abuse towards members of the Pontymister and Crosskeys team, causing the captain to fear for his teammates’ safety. (Caerphilly Observer, 10 August 2022)
6 August: Maldon Carnival is disrupted by three male cyclists who ride through the parade in blackface. Carnival organisers post a statement to Facebook condemning the offenders and suggesting that more checkpoints are introduced for future events. (Essex County Standard, 11 August 2022)
7 August: As hundreds march in Civitanova Marche on Italy’s Adriatic Coast demanding justice for the murder of Nigerian street vendor Alika Ogorchukwu, the deputy police commissioner rules out a racial motive, saying the killer was provoked by Ogorchukwu’s ‘insistent request for a handout’. (Guardian, 7 August 2022)
7 August: Film emerges of Beauty Davis, a Nigerian woman, being slapped by her boss at a beach resort in Calabria, Italy, after asking for wages owed to her. The restaurant owner is charged with theft and causing personal injury. (Guardian, 7 August 2022)
8 August: Cardiff magistrates sentence an 18-year-old Caerphilly woman to 20 days’ rehabilitation and £380 in fines for theft and racially aggravated assault by beating at a Primark store in November 2021. (South Wales Argus, 8 August 2022)
9 August: A consortium of 15 national and community-based organisations sets up a 24-hour support and reporting helpline and website called ‘On Your Side’, for victims of racism and all forms of hate of East and Southeast Asian heritage in response to a ‘dramatic rise’ of hate crime experienced by these groups since the start of the pandemic. (Guardian, 9 August 2022)
12 August: The family of a 21-year-old man who was beaten in Portsmouth on 22 July accuse police of ignoring racial motives behind the assault, in which two white male attackers, one carrying a knife, allegedly directed racial slurs at the victim before breaking his jaw. Hampshire police confirm the arrest and release on conditional bail of a 23-year-old Kent man. (Independent, 12 August 2022)
16 August: Reading magistrates sentence a 50-year-old man to 8 weeks suspended for 12 months and £1,900 in fines for posting racist images and comments about England football players after the Euro 2020 final last July. (Sky Sports, 16 August 2022)
The calendar was compiled with the help of Graeme Atkinson, Sira Thiam, Oscar Herzog Astaburuaga, Donari Yahzid, Sophie Chauhan and Joseph Maggs. Thanks also to ECRE and Stopwatch, whose regular updates on asylum, migration and policing issues are an invaluable source of information. Find these stories and all others since 2014 on our searchable database, the Register of Racism and Resistance.