ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY

6 October: University of Potsdam research shows that in three recent state elections, Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured the most votes amongst young voters (29-38 per cent) and was twice as successful at reaching first-time voters on TikTok than all other parties combined. (Azerbaycan24, 6 October 2024)

7 October: In a Daily Mail column, Conservative party leadership candidate Robert Jenrick calls for Friends of Al-Aqsa and the Palestinian Forum in Britain to be banned. (Middle East Eye, 7 October 2024) 

7 October: The Reform Party announces that if the CPS decides not to prosecute Fahir Amaaz, who was kicked and stamped on the head by police officers at Manchester airport, and his brother, it will launch a private prosecution against them. Reform previously wrote to the home secretary saying that the officers involved have been thrown ‘under the bus’. (Telegraph, 7 October 2024)

9 October: After the Austrian general election, where the far-right Freedom party secures the most votes, the president dispenses with the tradition of giving the largest party the opportunity to form a new coalition government, as the three other largest parties refuse to work with it. (Minnesota Star Tribune, 9 October 2024)

9 October: As a working group on quota refugee allocations convenes in Finland, the far-right Finns party is reported to have proposed a reduction in the number of quota refugees accepted from Muslim-majority countries while increasing the intake from Christian-majority nations. (YLE, 9 October 2024)

ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT

With anti-migrant, anti-Muslim, anti-equalities, anti-abortion, misogynistic and anti-LGBTQI activities increasingly interlinking, we now incorporate information on the Christian Right as well as the religious Right generally.

4 October: In Belgium, Emanuele Licari, a Vlaams Belang candidate for the City of Brussels, posts messages promoting fascism on his personal website. In one post, he thanks ‘friends’ from Italian neo-fascist movement Casa Pound, while another shows him posing with a flag bearing a symbol linked to Benito Mussolini. (Brussels Times, 4 October 2024)

5 October: Concerns are raised by Hope Not Hate about the growth in the UK of ‘active clubs’—self-styled fitness clubs organised by the far Right via online channels to spread white nationalism, fascist images, homophobia and misogynistic language. (Guardian, 5 October 2024)

6 October: In Ireland, analysis of anti-immigration activists conducted by the Hope and Courage Collective (H&CC) finds that four high-profile accounts on YouTube and X were able to amass 14.5 million views over 39 such videos between July and August. The H&CC argue that with verified accounts receiving advertising revenue, account owners have an economic incentive to produce content. (Extra, 6 October 2024)

8 October: Hope Not Hate says there is a link between the recent riots and years of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant activism, highlighting the role played by ‘migrant hunting’ social media content and demonstrations outside asylum hostels, as well as round-the-clock blockades of proposed asylum accommodation. (Hope Not Hate, 8 October 2024)

💥NEW: Community resilience is at a low point after 14 years of austerity, political turmoil, and hostility to migration and multiculturalism. Two months after violent race riots, divisions remain deep in the UK. How do we rebuild resilience?

🔗 https://t.co/qGLx85Zj1K pic.twitter.com/NTSiwjsfye

— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) October 10, 2024

9 October: A media investigation finds that Patriotic Alternative raised £14,000 for those jailed after the August riots, describing its fundraiser as ‘gifting’ of funds to families of ‘political prisoners’. (Guardian, 9 October 2024)

10 October: Hope Not Hate criticises Amazon for platforming the far Right after Tommy Robinson’s new book promoting the ‘great replacement’ theory is listed as number one on the site’s bestseller charts on Tuesday. (Guardian, 10 October 2024)

10 October: Anti-extremist researchers warn that the Irish far Right is increasingly linked to US conspiracy theorists, with the website ‘The Irish Channel’ modifying US content and alleging that teachers and librarians are paedophiles and groomers and children in Irish schools are being forced to watch pornography as part of the curriculum. (Wired, 10 October 2024)

10 October: The far-right Irish Freedom Party launches Sinne na Daoine (‘We the people’) , aimed at creating localised groups of men ‘who will be activated to respond to claims that illegal immigrants are brought into their neighbourhoods’ (Wired, 10 October 2024)

12 October: In France, Marie Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, launches a new far-right party called Identité-Libertés (Identity-Freedoms) to help gain victory for what she describes as the ‘national camp’. The party is to be allied with Le Pen’s National Rally and is built upon two policy ‘pillars’: the defence of French identity from immigration and ‘Islamisation’, and the protection of freedom of expression and free enterprise. (Al Jazeera, 12 October 2024)

14 October: Far-right Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan goes on trial in Sweden, charged with incitement against an ethnic group in relation to insults and Qur’an burnings at gatherings in 2022. (Guardian, 14 October 2024)

POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

30 September: In Germany, 125 police officers raid the homes of five men in connection with ‘allegedly pro-Palestinian motivated incidents’ which police say included antisemitic slogans, online comments and an attack on Berlin’s culture minister. No arrests are made. (Deutsche Welle, 30 September 2024)

1 October: Mia Harizul, a 29-year-old man from Bangladesh, is found hanged in a police cell in Omonia, Athens, Greece, days after delivery driver Muhammad Kamran Ashiq, originally from Pakistan, is found dead at the Agios Panteleimonas police station, with signs of multiple beatings on his body. (Keep Talking Greece, 1 October 2024)

4 October: Two Met police officers who stopped the car of Black athletes Bianca Williams and Ricardo Dos Santos are reinstated after appealing against a ruling that they lied by saying they could smell cannabis during the stop. (Sky, 4 October 2024)

5 October: Three years after firing eight bullets into a car in Stains, France, leaving the driver Nordine and companion Merry injured, three police officers are brought to trial for ‘intentional violence by persons in positions of public authority’ and sentenced to one year in prison. (Streetpress, 5 October 2024)

5 October: In Rome, Italy, police fire tear gas and water cannon on an estimated 6,000 people who defied a ban on a pro-Palestinian protest. 51 of the 200 people ‘removed’ at the start of the demonstration are served with deportation orders on the basis of previous public order convictions. (ANSA, 6 October 2024; Deutsche Welle, 5 October 2024)

10 October: A day after pro-Palestinian protesters clash with police in Berlin, Germany, police dismantle a pro-Palestinian protest camp in Dortmund, alleging that Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who planned to visit the camp, was a ‘potentially violent participant’, a statement they later retracted, blaming an ‘internal error’. (Deutsche Welle, 10 October 2024)

12 October: A motorcade of Pakistani delivery drives leads a protest of hundreds of people calling for accountability for the death in police custody of Muhammad Kamran Ashiq, in Athens, Greece. (Inkstick, 14 October 2024)

14 October: In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley suggests Northern Ireland-style policing for future demonstrations, pointing to the work of the Parades Commission in policing ‘divided communities’. (Morning Star, 14 October 2024)

NATIONAL SECURITY AND COUNTER-TERRORISM

2 October: Statewatch reveals broad new information-sharing powers on ‘potential terrorists’ among EU member using an informal ‘shared understanding’ of the phrase, reached without democratic scrutiny. (Statewatch, 2 October 2024)

ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP

Asylum and migrant rights

2 October: An Open Democracy investigation finds that the asylum applications of more than 31,000 people, whose claims were deemed inadmissible after the passing of the Illegal Migration Act, are left in limbo. (Open Democracy, 2 October 2024)

3 October: More than 60 organisations, including Migrants Organise and JCWI, highlight that the legal aid crisis is leaving more than half of asylum seekers without access to legal help, a figure that continues to grow as the asylum backlog increases. (EIN, 3 October 2024)

4 October: A Scottish family evacuated from Lebanon express anger at being separated as their Lebanese mother, Nadia McCullough, is refused boarding for lack of a visa. (BBC News, 4 October 2024)

4 October: The European Court of Justice rules that Romania violated the rights of a transgender EU citizen by refusing to recognise his change of first name and gender identity, impeding his right to free movement. (UK Human Rights blog, 14 October 2024)

8 October: A Palestinian refugee in Scotland takes the Home Office to court over the refusal of a family reunion visa to her parents and sisters, currently in the UAE after fleeing Gaza. The Home Office rules their situation not sufficiently compelling. (BBC, 8 October 2024)

8 October: After agreeing to hand back the British Indian Ocean Territory, including Diego Garcia, to Mauritius, the British government offers Tamils who have been held there for years after claiming asylum temporary relocation in Romania. (BBC, 8 October 2024)

8 October: Following the publication of the suppressed Home Office report on the historical background of the Windrush scandal, 25 Labour and independent MPs call on the home secretary, as she prepares the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, to address the links between racism and hostile immigration policies and for a commitment to a fair and compassionate system. (Guardian, 8 October 2024)

14 October: Young Roots publishes Good Decision-Making in Age Assessments, which looks at local authority practices in assessing the age of age-disputed young people seeking asylum. (Young Roots, 14 October 2024)

14 October: Following a review, a quarter of the 2,000 refusals of Afghan soldiers’ applications to come to the UK are expected to be overturned, as evidence of payments from the UK government to the soldiers is confirmed. (Guardian, 14 October 2024)

15 October: More than 60 human rights NGOs and a Holocaust memorial group urge Polish prime minister Donald Tusk to shelve plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum, telling him that the region’s volatility ‘doesn’t exempt us from humanity’. (Guardian, 15 October 2024; InfoMigrants, 14 October 2024)

Borders and internal controls 

3 October: Italy’s new migration decree allows for mandatory biometric registration for visas, tighter scrutiny of applicants from South Asia, and inspection of new arrivals’ mobile phones to verify identity and nationality. (AA, 3 October 2024)

5 October: Four people, including a two-year-old child, die off the French coast, all apparently trampled to death when two grossly overcrowded boats crossing the Channel from Calais and Boulogne suffer engine failure, causing passengers to panic. (BBC, 5 October 2024)

8 October: The European Court of Human Rights rules that Cyprus violated the Convention by intercepting Syrian refugees at sea and pushing them back to Lebanon, preventing them from claiming asylum. (UK Human Rights blog, 14 October 2024)

9 October: The Migration Observatory says that since 2022, the route across the Channel has become more deadly, as the average number of people per boat increases to 53, from 11 in 2019. (BBC, 9 October 2024)

10 October: An investigation by No Name Kitchen reveals that Croatian police are burning the clothing, phones and passports of those they catch trying to cross the border, as well as beating them before illegally pushing them back into Bosnia. (No Name Kitchen, October 2024; Guardian, 10 October 2024)                       

11 October: The Spanish government asks the EU’s border force, Frontex, to patrol the West African coast to stop migrants embarking for the Canary Islands. (InfoMigrants, 11 October 2024)

14 October: The first asylum seekers intercepted by the Italian navy are sent to Albania, where they will be detained while their asylum claims are processed under the deal done between the two countries. (Guardian, 15 October 2024)

Reception and detention

3 October: The European Court of Human Rights orders Greece to pay compensation to seven unaccompanied minors for the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, lack of shelter, food or medical care at the Samos hotspot in 2020, which the court considered inhuman and degrading. Observers report that conditions there remain dire. (InfoMigrants, 10 October 2024)             

11 October: The independent monitoring board calls for the closure of the family detention unit at Gatwick airport following an assessment which finds children raumatised and parents subjected to ‘callous treatment and unnecessary suffering’. (Guardian, 11 October 2024; BBC, 11 October 2024)

14 October: FOI requests reveal that the Home Office recorded 1,500 complaints in 2023 about conditions, racist abuse and sexual harassment by staff in asylum accommodation, over 900 relating to properties of Clearsprings Ready Homes, which was given a £996 million, 8-year contract to provide accommodation in 2021. (Open Democracy, 14 October 2024)

Deportations

3 October: Twenty immigration enforcement and police officers raid a roadside caravan encampment housing exploited migrants in Bristol at 4am, arresting 17 people and taking 13 to London detention centres. (Guardian, 12 October 2024) 

4 October: 14 EU member states, including the Netherlands, Germany and France, and 3 Schengen states call on the European Commission for stricter measures against undocumented arrivals and faster deportations. (Euractiv, 4 October 2024)

11 October: An investigation reveals that the EU has paid Turkey at least €213 million to construct around 30 removal centres for use in deporting hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Afghan refugees, as part of €1 billion of funding to help ‘manage migration flows’. (Lighthouse Reports, 11 October 2024) 

Crimes of solidarity

3 October: Prosecutors in Latvia call for an 18-month sentence for Ieva Raubišco, an activist working on the Latvia-Belarus border for the charity Gribu palīdzēt bēgļiem (I want to Help Refugees), who is on trial for assisting Syrian refugees to cross the border to claim asylum after several pushbacks. (ECRE Weekly Bulletin, 3 October 2024) 

HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION

14 October: In a judgment explaining the reasons for finding that professor David Miller was unfairly dismissed by Bristol University over alleged antisemitism, the Employment Tribunal rules that anti-Zionist beliefs are worthy of respect and protection through anti-discrimination laws. (Guardian, 14 October 2024) 

EDUCATION

See also Human Rights and Discrimination. Although we do not cover student protests for Palestine, we do track university administrative measures that deny the right to protest and authorise the use of force, or silence pro-Palestinian voices and display anti-Palestinian bias.

4 October: Sheffield Hallam University agrees to pay an undisclosed sum and legal costs to Gaza-born academic Shahd Abusalama, after it leaked information to the Jewish Chronicle, Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan, of Dr Abusalama’s departure without mentioning her exoneration on accusations of antisemitism. (THE, 4 October 2024)

7 October: A longitudinal study of around 5,000 Year 4 and 5 pupils shows that the ‘Covid-19 attainment gap’ in reading and mathematics ‘appears to have closed’. However, ‘the disadvantage gaps remain wider than gaps reported pre-pandemic’ and ‘disadvantaged pupils, and boys, were assessed as having significantly lower social skills than non-disadvantaged pupils and girls, respectively’. (NFER, 7 October 2024)

7 October: Education secretary Bridget Phillipson announces in the Telegraph that Labour will honour the Conservatives’ pledge to procure £7 million ‘to tackle anti-Semitism in schools, colleges, and universities’. (TES, 7 October 2024)

11 October: A rabbi and his wife are removed from pastoral posts at Leeds and York universities after social media posts in which Mrs Pariente made references to ‘Pallywood’ (a conspiracy theory that Palestinians fake  suffering during Israeli military action) and posts she shared calling for ‘biblical punishment’ of Palestinians. (Yorkshire Post, 11 October 2024)

13 October: Black academics warn that cost-cutting measures are threatening to wipe out black scholarship in the UK. (Guardian, 13 October 2024)

14 October: Founder of Black Curriculum, Lavinya Stennett, says that some schools in England are fearful of teaching black history because of guidance against ‘victim narratives’ from the previous government. She argues black history lessons should be mandatory in England as they are in Wales. (Guardian, 14 October 2024)

HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE

2 October: New research shows that Black and North African people who migrate in adolescence face double the risk of developing psychosis than white non-migrants. (Guardian, 2 October 2024)

12 October: Doctors, migrants’ rights and health data privacy campaigners raise concerns around plans to create a new digital tag for the records of NHS patients from overseas, which would result in notifications of NHS debt being passed on to the Home Office, and possibly used to refuse cimmigration applications. (Guardian, 12 October 2024)

14 October: A report by the Royal Society of Psychiatrists describes the immigration system as a ‘public mental health concern’ due to the harms and re-traumatisation inflicted on asylum seekers upon arrival in the UK, and criticises ‘prison-like’ conditions in asylum hotels and detention facilities. (Guardian, 14 October 2024)

EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION

10 October: A Focus on Labour Exploitation briefing on Labour’s Employment Rights Bill argues that unless the government tackles restrictions on visas that tie migrant workers to specified employers or sectors, the Bill will increase inequality. (FLEX, 10 October 2024) 

CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT

See also Anti-fascism and far Right.

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 

5 October: Ten journalists from CNN and the BBC, speaking anonymously to Al Jazeera, allege pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles. (Al Jazeera, 5 October 2024)

6 October: A deportation video by The Young Alternative, the youth wing of Alternative for Germany (AfD), gains considerable traction on social media. ‘Remigration Hit’ shows ‘Aryan’ style pilots and flight attendants dancing in celebration as they deport people in planes decorated in the party’s blue and red. (Azerbaycan24, 6 October 2024)

7 October: A report by the Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media argues that social media platforms ‘aggressively over-moderate Palestine-related content’, recording 1,350 instances of censorship on platforms related to Meta, TikTok, X and Youtube since 7 October last year. (EuroNews, 7 October 2024) 

10 October: Prior to the England-Greece fixture at Wembley, the FA, which came under criticism for its failure to respond to the recent death of the founder of Kick it Out, pays tribute to Lord Herman Ouseley. (Morning Star, 10 October 2024)

10 October: BFI CEO Ben Roberts apologises to Faisal Qureshi, producer of the film Four Lions, after an independent report findsbadly handled’ a complaint he made about receiving incorrect information on accessing National Lottery funding and was discouraged from applying. While there was insufficient evidence to find ‘systemic racism within the BFI’, the organisation’s response ‘fell well short of constituting a formal response’, the report concludes. (Guardian, 10 October 2024) 

RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT

For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.

2 October: The PSNI says that 49 people have been arrested and 39 charged in connection with the racist violence in Belfast, with police examining 3,500 hours of footage. It adds that ethnic minority communities still have a sense of fear and that the community needs to stand up to ‘racist thugs’. (BBC News, 2 October 2024)

2 October: The Community Security Trust says that more than 5,500 antisemitic incidents occurred since 7 October 2023, with 4,583 cases involving abusive behaviour, 302 assaults, 266 incidents of ‘damage and desecration’ and 30 related to antisemitic literature. (Al Jazeera, 2 October 2024)

4 October: Tell Mama UK reveals that it recorded 4,971 incidents of ‘anti-Muslim hate’ between 7 October 2023 and 30 September 2024 – the highest total in 14 years – attributed largely to the fake news spread in the wake of the Southport killings. (Guardian, 4 October 2024)

10 October: Government statistics show that religious hate crimes in England and Wales soared by 25% ‘coinciding with the Israel-Hamas conflict’. In the year to March 2024, there were 3,282 hate crimes targeting Jewish people (double that of the previous year) and 3,866 offences against Muslims (up 13%). Reported hate incidents on grounds of race, sexual orientation, disability and transgender issues fell. (Guardian, 10 October 2024)

10 October: Finnish Police University statistics show that Somalis suffer a greater proportion of hate crimes than any other ethnic or national group, with hate crimes overall doubling between 2020 and 2023. (YLE, 10 October 2024)

This calendar is researched by IRR staff and compiled by Sophie Chauhan, with the assistance of Graeme Atkinson, Sam Berkson, Margaret McAdam and Louis Ordish. Thanks also to ECRE, the Never Again Association and Stopwatch, whose regular updates on asylum, migration, far Right, racial violence, employment 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.