Calendar of Racism and Resistance (10 December 2024 – 7 January 2025)

Calendar of Racism and Resistance (10 December 2024 – 7 January 2025)

January 9 2025 Fortnightly Bulletin

Written by: IRR News Team


The deadly attack on 20 December 2024 on the Christmas Market in Magdeburg, Germany is covered in the following sections: electoral politics; anti-fascism and far Right; national security; culture and media.

ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY

17 December: After the Israeli government closes its embassy in Dublin and accuses Ireland of libel against the state of Israel by saying it deliberately starves children and kills civilians, Irish president Michael D Higgins says that it is a ‘deep slander’ to describe the Irish people an antisemitic. (RTE, 17 December 2024)

18 December: Christian Democrat (CDU) parliamentarian Jens Spahn proposes paying €1,000 to each Syrian immigrant who volunteers to self-deport, adding that those who are integrated could get ‘an offer to stay’. The Association of German Transport Companies criticises the proposal, citing the vital role that Syrians play in the workforce. (Deutsche Welle, 18 December 2024)

22 December: Reform UK wins a council seat from Labour in a by-election in the Milton Regis Ward of Swale, in Kent. (Standard, 22 December 2024)

23 December: Following the Christmas Market attack in Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, which killed five people and left over 200 injured, the far-right AfD links the attack to German immigration policy. The interior minister calls for outstanding security legislation to be swiftly approved, while the suspect, born in Saudi Arabia and resident in Germany for around twenty years, is described by the federal police as an ‘atypical perpetrator’. (Deutsche Welle, 22 December 2024; Deutsche Welle, 23 December 2024)

23 December: In the Netherlands, it is revealed that in negotiations around the composition of a new coalition government earlier this year, the far-right PVV party proposed that owning a copy of the Koran should be made a criminal offence punishable by five years in jail. (Dutch News, 23 December 2024)

24 December: The Muslim Council of Britain calls for the sacking of Conservative shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick after leaked messages reveal that he is a ‘great admirer’ of the far-right X account, Inevitable West. (London Economic, 23 December 2024; Muslim Council of Britain, 24 December 2024)

28 December: Following a fatal shooting in a shopping centre in Portugal, far-right CHEGA party leader André Ventura demands a parliamentary debate on ‘growing insecurity’. Citing the impunity of the ‘gypsy’ community and its ‘culture of weapons, subsidy dependence and disrespect for legal rules’, he calls for enhanced penalties for organised crime. (Portugal Resident, 28 December 2024)

2 January: The chair of the Commons equalities committee says that the Conservative government’s focus on immigration helped fuel the summer far-right riots and warns that Reform MPs are making the task of strengthening communities more urgent. (Guardian, 2 January 2025)

2 January: Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is criticised after saying ‘the time is long overdue for a national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal’, a demand supported by billionaire Elon Musk, who posts on X attacking safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, accusing Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute child rapists in Oldham during his time as DPP, and calling for the release from jail of Tommy Robinson, while whistleblower Sara Rowbotham accuses Elon Musk of politicising the rape of young girls to attack the PM. (Guardian, 2 January 2025; Guardian, 3 January 2025)

3 January:  A review of the Northern Ireland Executive’s 10-year Racial Equality Strategy finds that Stormont’s strategy to tackle hate crime and racism has been undermined by the lack of an action plan and budget. (BBC News, 3 January 2025).

5 January: Having already defunded Palestinian NGOs, the German government cuts funding for two Israeli groups, Zochrot and New Profile, that focus on anti-militarisation and Palestinian rights. No explanation is given. (Deutsche Welle, 5 January 2025)

6 January: In Austria, after coalition talks between centrist parties collapse, the far-right Freedom party formally receives a mandate to form a new government. (Deutsche Welle, 6 January 2025)

 7 January: After the prime minister condemns Elon Musk’s ‘lies and misinformation’ on grooming gangs for amplifying the ‘poison’ of the far Right, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, supported by the right-wing press, accuses him of smears and calls for another national inquiry; the chair of the independent inquiry into child sex abuse criticises the ‘politicisation’ of the issue, and survivors of the Telford sexual abuse scandal defend Jess Phillips. (Guardian, 6 January 2025; Guardian, 7 January 2025; Guardian, 7 January 2025)

7 January: During a phone-in on LBC, Nigel Farage says that if the government does not hold a national inquiry into sexual abuse and rape by gangs, the Reform party will hold one. Robert Moore, Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley, claims in parliament that the scale of sexual abuse in Bradford could ‘dwarf’ what happened in Rotherham. (Guardian, 7 January 2025)

ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT

 13 December: The Swiss Federal Council proposes banning the swastika, Hitler salute and other Nazi signs due to a marked rise in antisemitism. (Guardian, 13 December 2024)

16 December: In Berlin, four teenagers attack SPD election workers and police officers in a far-right-motivated assault, leaving hospitalised with injuries. The incident occurs as Germany prepares for early elections, with far-right marches drawing only 63 participants compared to counter-protests attended by over 2,000 people. (DW, 16 December 2024)

19 December: In Italy, four members of the far-right group CasaPound face trial in Naples for the October 2023 assault on musician and photographer Roberto Tarallo, who was targeted for wearing an anti-fascist pin. (Il Mattino, 19 December 2024)

21 December: Media report that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the ex-Muslim suspect in the Christmas market attack in Magdeburg, Germany, has supported the far Right, including AfD, since 2016, and was a believer in conspiracy theories about the Islamisation of Europe. (Deutsche Welle, 21 December 2024; Guardian, 21 December 2024)

23 December: At a 3,500-strong, AfD-promoted ‘memorial rally’ in Magdeburg, Germany, protesters, including white supremacists, chant ‘deport, deport, deport’.  AfD leader Alice Weidel says the attack was ‘an act of an Islamist full of hatred for what constitutes human cohesion … for us Germans, for us Christians’. (Al Jazeera, 23 December 2024; Deutsche Welle, 24 December 2024)

23 December: In the German city of Bremerhaven, police arrest a man who threatened on social media to stab people with an Arab or southern appearance at the local Christmas market, though a psychiatric examination later determines he posed no danger. The incident occurs amid heightened security concerns following the deadly car attack at the Magdeburg Christmas market. (DW, 23 December 2024)

POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM 

12 December: A report by Stopwatch and the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies says that the rollout of a pilot scheme to reduce knife crime through Serious Violence Reduction Orders is ‘shrouded in unjustifiable secrecy’ and risks further harming marginalised communities. (Stopwatch, 12 December 2024)

12 December: The five police officers accused of the fatal shooting of Mouhamed Lamine Dramé, a 16-year-old Senegalese teenager, in August 2022, are acquitted by the Dortmund regional court, Germany, after almost a year of deliberations. Following the judgement, around 300 people join a march protesting the result. (InfoMigrants, 13 December 2024)

13 December: The IOPC says that there are no grounds for disciplining armed police who surrounded, arrested and handcuffed a Black 13-year-old in Hackney in July 2023 after his brightly-coloured plastic water-pistol was mistaken for a real gun. (BBC, 13 December 2024)

15 December: Sikh community leaders express concern about the number of British Sikhs stopped and questioned at UK airports under counter-terrorism laws about their views on India. (Guardian, 15 December 2024)

17 December: Liberty calls on the government to repeal anti-protest laws, as Home Office figures reveal that police restricted 434 marches and 39 gatherings between June 2022 and March 2024 under the Public Order Act, using vague justifications such as ‘noise’ and ‘serious disruption to the life of the community’. (X [Liberty], 18 December 2024)

17 December: Belfast investigative journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, who were arrested in 2018 after producing the documentary on collusion between police and loyalist terrorists in a massacre, No Stone Unturned, were unlawfully spied on by the PSNI and the Met police for years, a tribunal rules. (Guardian, 17 December 2024)

18 December: Analysis of Avon and Somerset police stop-and-search data reveals that between January 2017 and November 2023, Black Caribbeans were six times more likely to be stopped, and Black Africans 3.6 times more likely to be stopped than white people, while Black adults and children were 25 times more likely to be strip-searched. (Bristol 24/7, 18 December 2024)

18 December: A review by HMICFRS of police preparedness for and response to the far-right summer riots finds that police missed signs of growing ‘extreme nationalist sentiment’ and violence at asylum hotels and at demonstrations, and failed to tackle the misinformation feeding the riots. It warns of more serious disorder unless police counter disinformation. (The I paper, 18 December 2024)

19 December: The Traveller Movement charity brings a complaint against Greater Manchester Police for unlawfully targeting, racially profiling and using excessive force against children forcibly turned back at a train station from visiting Christmas markets. (Leigh Day, 19 December 2024) 

20 December: The CPS charges Mohammed Amaaz and Muhammed Amaad in connection with a disturbance in July at Manchester airport involving police. No police officers are charged and the suspension of an officer involved in the incident is lifted. (Guardian, 20 December 2024)

20 December: Five Yorkshire police are sacked for gross misconduct and three former colleagues are told that they would have been dismissed if they had not already resigned over a WhatsApp group featuring ‘routine misogyny’ and ‘casual racism’. (Yorkshire Post, 20 December 2024)

20 December: In response to a parliamentary question, National Police Coordination Centre data reveals that 262 people have been arrested for protesting UK government arming Israel since 8 October 2023. (They Work for You, 20 December 2024)

20 December: Westminster magistrates court finds two Met police officers attached to the North Area Basic Command Unity guilty  of unlawful assault by beating of a 16-year-old Black boy who they were transporting to hospital for a mental health assessment. (Voice, 26 December 2024)

20 December: The Met police apologise to 54-year-old Hackney community leader Jason Matthews for his detention and aggressive search in 2019 by an officer who has faced three misconduct proceedings for excessive force in the past two years, and for the three-year delay in hearing his complaint, during which the officer continued to work. (Guardian, 20 December 2024)

20 December: An internal police investigation into the Evidence Preservation and Arrest Unit in Dresden, Saxony, Germany, is launched amid allegations that the group carries out violent initiation rituals. Eight officers are investigated for assault and coercion. (Tag24, 20 December 2024)

23 December: Habeeb Khan, who is shown holding an ‘ornamental’ AK-47 rifle and threatening to ‘blow away’ the EDL in a video that went viral during the summer riots, is sentenced to 27 months in jail at Birmingham Crown Court, also admitting threatening behaviour relating to homophobic and abusive comments he made after being taken to hospital following arrest. (Guardian, 23 December 2024)

24 December: Brian Spencer, who pleads guilty to violent disorder in Southport, becomes the 500th person to be sent to prison in connection with the summer riots. He is also convicted of racially or religiously aggravated harassment of a Polish man while in hospital the following day. (Guardian, 24 December 2024)

24 December: A Dutch courts hands sentences of up to 6 months in prison to the first men tried over the November unrest in Amsterdam as Ajax took on Maccabi Tel Aviv at football. The prosecutor said of the most serious case that the action had ‘little to do with football’, that there was no evidence of a terrorist intent and that ‘the violence was influenced by the situation in Gaza, not by antisemitism’. (Guardian, 24 December 2024)

24 December: An FOI request reveals that 21 of the 24 marches banned in the last three years under the Public Order Act after requests from the police were proposed by far-right groups. (Guardian, 24 December 2024)

29 December: The Met police pay £5,000 in an out-of-court settlement to Xanthe Wells after allegedly unlawfully imprisoning the 17-year-old and wrongly accusing them, on the basis of CCTV footage, of being at a pro-Palestine protest where a building was spray-painted. (Guardian, 29 December 2024)

24 December: 39-year-old Marcus Meade is fatally shot by armed police who were called to a flat in Redditch, Worcestershire, over concerns over the safety of a man with a knife experiencing a mental health crisis. West Mercia Police refers itself to the IOPC which launches an investigation, while the family launch a crowdfunder to cover funeral costs. (BBC, 30 December 2024)

31 December: Allies & Arrest Press Unit observers in Germany accuse police of escalating tensions at a pro-Palestine demonstration in Berlin after two pro-Israel counter-protesters provocatively breached a ‘designated area’ with the police’s knowledge and a demonstrator who offered no resistance was beaten. (Instagram [Allies & Arrest Press Unit], 1 January 2025)

1 January: Ireland’s hate crime law, the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act 2024, comes into force, prescribing increased sentences for offences motivated by or demonstrating hatred for real or perceived ‘protected identity characteristics’ such as race, gender or sexuality. (UKHRB, 6 January 2025)

5 January: Muslim prisoner Kevin Thakrar, who brought a legal challenge in April 2023 alleging he had been held in solitary confinement for two years, says he remains in isolation 20 months later because of the high court’s failure to issue a judgment on his case. (Guardian, 5 January 2025)

6 January: Statistics show that the proportion of young people being detained in young offender institutions (YOIs) more than 100 miles from their home has doubled over the last decade to 15% – the highest ​since its peak at the height of the Covid pandemic. (Guardian, 6 January 2025)

6 January: Taxi driver Andrew McIntyre, whose ‘Southport Wake Up’ posts on social media were said to be a ‘catalyst’ for violent disorder following the Southport knife attack, is jailed at Liverpool Crown Court for seven and a half years, with the judge saying that he was ‘motivated by racial hatred’. (Evening Standard, 6 January 2025).

NATIONAL SECURITY AND ANTI-TERRORISM 

20 December: In Paris, France, a seven-judge special anti-terrorist court convicts eight people over their involvement in the 2020 murder of teacher Samuel Paty, setting a legal precedent by drawing a connection between words and murder. Convictions relate to organising a hate campaign online before the murder and providing material assistance to the assailant (Le Monde, 20 December 2024; Le Monde, 21 December 2024)

22 December: A parliamentary investigation into German intelligence service failures prior to the Magdeburg attack is launched. (Deutsche Welle, 22 December 2024; Deutsche Welle, 22 December 2024; Guardian, 22 December 2024)

2 January: 30-year-old Zaheed Hossen, who was stopped at Stansted airport in August 2020, is sentenced to seven years imprisonment after being convicted on five counts of sharing terrorist materials. (UK Defence Journal, 2 January 2025)

5 January: Labour is warned by two former counter-terrorism experts, Sara Khan and Neil Basu, that the home secretary’s plans to strengthen Prevent and appoint an independent commissioner do not take on the full societal impact of current extremism, especially the use of social media and language of hatred to trigger violence. (Guardian, 5 January 2025) 

ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP

Asylum and migrant rights

11 December: The 2024 Catholic Migrantes Foundation (CMF) report finds decreasing access to asylum throughout the EU and warns that the Common European Asylum System, part of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, will further reduce rights through accelerated procedures and fictions of ‘non-entry’, effectively legalising pushbacks. (ANSA, 13 December 2024)

22 December: Research by charities Reunite Families UK and Coram finds hundreds of children separated from parents by the minimum income requirement for family reunion (currently set at £29,000), two-thirds of whom see their parent once a year or less. (Guardian, 22 December 2024)

3 January: Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni says that she is ‘in tune’ with Keir Starmer on ‘the fight against mass illegal immigration’ and the need to explore ‘innovative solutions’ on asylum, as she fights the courts over her off-shoring deal with Albania. (Guardian, 3 January 2025)

3 January: It is revealed that Ecctis, a firm contracted to run language tests for migrants on a not-for-profit basis in 2014, is found to have made over £13 million in profits and had its contract renewed, while its CEO, who had been a UK representative on a Council of Europe ethics committee, wrongly received management fees of £85,000 a quarter. (Guardian, 3 January 2025)

4 January: The Home Office is found to have failed to carry out equality or data protection impact assessments on the roll-out of its e-Visa scheme, launched in April 2024, for around 4 million non-EU national residents, despite warnings of difficulties for those who are older and unfamiliar with technology and of the system’s vulnerability to hacking of immigration status. (Guardian, 4 January 2025)

Borders and internal controls

10 December: Human Rights Watch reports on continued brutal and illegal pushbacks and denial of access to asylum procedures by Polish border guards at the Belarus border. (Human Rights Watch, 10 December 2024)

11 December: The EU announces €170 million in extra funding for Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Norway for better surveillance to secure their borders with Russia and Belarus against asylum seekers, alleging ‘weaponisation’ of asylum as part of those countries’ ‘hybrid warfare’ against EU member states, who would also be permitted to suspend asylum claims in ‘exceptional circumstances’. (InfoMigrants, 12 December 2024)

11 December: German SAR Compass Collective’s sailboat Trotamar III rescues an 11-year-old Sierra Leonean girl found floating alone off the Italian island of Lampedusa, believed to be the sole survivor of a shipwreck three days earlier. (AP News, 12 December 2024)

11 December: Ibrahima Bah is refused permission to appeal against his conviction and handed a 9.5-year sentence for manslaughter as the reluctant pilot of an inflatable that sank in the Channel two years ago, causing 4 deaths. (Guardian, 11 December 2024)

20 December: Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini is acquitted of kidnapping and dereliction of duty charges for actions taken while he was Interior Minister in 2019, after which he was accused of blocking an Arms Search and Rescue vessel from docking for nearly three weeks. (InfoMigrants, 23 December 2024; BBC, 20 December 2024)

25 December: More than 450 people successfully make the crossing from France to the UK in at least 11 boats. An additional 107 people are rescued by French authorities in 12 operations. (BBC, 26 December 2024; France24, 26 December 2024)

29 December: Three people die falling into the water trying to board an overcrowded boat off the coast of Sangatte, northern France, making 2024 the deadliest year in the Channel, with at least 77 deaths. 45 other passengers are rescued, with four being taken to hospital. (BBC, 29 December 2024; InfoMigrants, 30 December 2024))

2 January: A new report from the Refugee Council, Deaths in the Channel: what needs to change, argues that the record number of border fatalities makes it imperative to introduce refugee visas to enable safe, legal travel. (Guardian, 2 January 2025)

2 January: Unicef regional director Regina de Dominicis says that over 2,200 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2024 and that governments must do more to address the causes of mass migration. (UN News, 2 January 2025)

Reception and detention 

12 December: A new Migration Observatory briefing on immigration detention in the UK reveals that 16,000 people were detained in 2023, half the number detained in 2015; that over a third of them were held for more than 28 days; and that the Home Office made 838 payments for unlawful detention, totalling £12 million, in the financial year 2023-24. (Migration Observatory, 12 December 2024)

12 December: The Greek Supreme Court orders an investigation into claims by a 16-year-old Egyptian boy that he was tortured and sexually assaulted by fellow inmates at a migrant camp in Malakasa, north of Athens. (Keep Talking Greece, 12 December 2024)

13 December: The Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee issues a highly critical report on Italy’s migrant detention centres in Rome, Potenza, Milan and Gradisca, citing cases of physical ill-treatment, use of excessive force and administration of unprescribed psychotropic drugs to detainees. (ABC News, 13 December 2024)

13 December: Three migrant rights groups issue an open letter to the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee alleging conditions amounting to torture in Greece’s migrant detention centres. (To Vima, 13 December 2024) 

16 December: A high court judge rules that over 60 Tamil asylum seekers were unlawfully detained by British naval officers in a ‘rat-infested tent’ camp on Diego Garcia for three years after being rescued when their boat sprang a leak. (Guardian, 16 December 2024) 

16 December: Medical Justice publishes Home Office statistics obtained in FOI requests on issues in immigration detention, revealing numbers assessed for vulnerabilities and those released as a result, numbers self-harming, those on segregation, and statistics on use of force. (Medical Justice, 16 December 2024)

18 December: An Institute for Government report recommends redesigning asylum housing and support with greater resources and responsibilities for local authorities to deliver them. (Institute for Government, 18 December 2024)

 22 December: As new Home Office figures reveal over 133,400 asylum seekers in temporary accommodation, Manchester mayor Andy Burnham says central government is ‘throwing the problem’ of homeless refugees at local authorities, who must find accommodation for them once they receive their status. (The I paper, 22 December 2024)

1 January: Hundreds of volunteers flock to Didsbury Central Mosque, bringing duvets and tea, as 400 refugees are evacuated there along with 60 local residents after flooding left their hotel and homes without gas, electricity or clean water. (Mancunian Matters, 2 January 2025)

Deportations

13 December: The government announces that 13,500 deportations have been carried out since July’s election, a five-year record, as rights groups warn that the emphasis on enforcement puts lives at risk. (Guardian, 15 December 2024)

30 December: The head of the Garda National Immigration Bureau of Ireland says gardaí will use charter flights in 2025 to carry out more deportations, including entire families, revealing that 132 people were deported in 2024, in addition to 870 ‘voluntary returns’, compared with 51 deportations and 215 ‘voluntary returns’ in 2023. (Irish Independent, 30 December 2024)

Crimes of solidarity

13 December: Médecins sans Frontières announces the end of rescue operations by its SAR vessel Geo Barents in the central Mediterranean, owing to the restrictions placed on crews which undermine their ability to conduct rescues, such as assigning distant ports to which those rescued must be taken. MSF says it will return. (MSF press release, 13 December 2024)

HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION

4 January: Protesters march through central London demanding that foreign secretary David Lammy intervene to get 18-year-old Briton Markus Fakana released from prison in Dubai, where he was convicted for having sex with his 17-year-old British travelling companion in September and is now, his supporters claim, in solitary confinement. (Guardian, 4 January 2025)

6 January: The family of Ahmed al-Doush, a British national held in a Saudi jail for over four months without charge, speak about his alleged maltreatment and say the Foreign Office refused for two months to share any information with his pregnant wife. The reason for his arrest is unknown. (Guardian, 6 January 2025)

EDUCATION

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.

19 December: A report by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) shows that the areas with the smallest disadvantage gap between learners on Free School Meals (FSM) and those who are not tend to be ‘much more diverse than England as a whole’. (EPI, 19 December 2024)

22 December: After the Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC) exam board removes John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ from its GCSE text list because it features the N-word, shadow Conservative education spokesperson Natasha Asgar says censorship does not solve the problem of racism and that the book should be taught within its historical context. (BBC, 22 December 2024; Guardian, 23 December 2024)

HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE

31 December: A Guardian analysis of local government spending data finds that since 2020, English councils have paid more than £5.2 million to relocation companies to move homeless families, disproportionately from ethnic minorities, out of big cities and the south-east. The Runnymede Trust raises concerns about ‘social cleansing’ and ‘racialised coercive displacement’. (Guardian, 31 December 2022)

2 January: Amongst other legal interventions costing up to £1m to prevent revealing information to the public, the previous government is found to have spent £50,000 on preventing the release of a safeguarding reviews after a Black disabled man, Errol Graham, starved to death in 2018 because his disability benefit had been wrongly stopped by the DWP. (Guardian, 2 January 2025)

3 January: A planning inspector in Cambridgeshire upholds an enforcement notice against an unauthorised extension of a caravan site for Gypsies, Travellers and refugees, despite acknowledging the need for more pitches for the GRT community, ruling that the site is ‘visually intrusive and urbanising form of development’ and giving residents six months’ notice to move. (Cambridgeshire Live, 3 January 2025)

HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE

23 December: Following the Portuguese government’s amendment to the Basic Health Law imposing restrictions on non-resident foreigners’ access to public health care to ‘control abuse of the public health system’, over 800 health professionals including the Order of Physicians sign an open letter saying they will boycott the restrictions and keep their doors open to everyone. (Portugal Resident, 23 December 2024)

28 December: A survey conducted by Macmillan finds that Black cancer patients and those with a disability are less likely to feel that they are getting enough support while receiving treatment in hospital. (Guardian, 28 December 2024)

29 December: It is revealed that a controversial face-down restraint is still being used on thousands of mental health patients annually despite several deaths, repeated warnings of its dangers and the passing of ‘Seni’s Law’ in 2018, a response to the restraint death of Olaseni Lewis in 2010. (Observer, 29 December 2024)

Olaseni Lewis

1 January: A British neurologist is suspended from practising medicine by the Medicals Practitioners Tribunal Service, pending a full investigation, following complaints about a social media post praising the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah. (Middle East Monitor, 1 January 2025)

1 January: Over 800 families of African-Caribbean heritage were not told whether their babies might be carriers of certain genetic blood disorders, including sickle cell anaemia, due to an NHS error that did not communicate the test results. (Guardian, 1 January 2025)

4 January: University College Hospitals London (UCLH) is attacked by right-wing media for a scheme to reduce health inequalities, 987 Inclusion Health, which allows vulnerable patients, including undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, priority access to consultants through the hospitals’ accident and emergency services. (LBC, 4 January 2025)

EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION

23 December: An investigation finds that migrant workers in Épernay, the heart of France’s champagne industry, mainly from west Africa and eastern Europe, are unpaid or underpaid and sometimes forced to sleep on the streets. (Guardian, 23 December 2024)

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.

13 December: Fact-checkers are increasingly targeted by harassment and physical threats, according to a report conducted by the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO). In countries like Hungary, state actors actively discredit independent media, while ideologically driven groups and online brigades exacerbate the abuse. (Euronews, 13 December 2024)

13 December: UEFA fines Serbia’s football federation €173,000 and imposes sanctions for racist incidents during two Nations League games, including an attempt by fans to burn an Albanian flag at a match in Switzerland. These actions follow charges for previous incidents at Euro 2024 and the 2022 World Cup. (Euronews, 13 December 2024)

17 December: Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo apologises to Daniela Owusu, a 20-year-old Finnish–Ghanaian woman who faced racist abuse after becoming Finland’s first Black Saint Lucia, a role in Swedish celebrations. The organisation behind the event condemns the hateful messages and are considering legal action. (Guardian, 17 December 2024)

18 December: Senior Counter Terrorism Policing coordinator Vicki Evans warns that the UK faces a ‘smouldering’ terror threat, with children as young as 10 being drawn into a ‘conveyor belt’ of radicalisation fuelled by violent, racist, and misogynistic online content. (BBC News, 18 December 2024)

21 December: Despite facing criticism following the Magdeburg Christmas market attack for his support of the far-Right AfD, Elon Musk doubles down and posts on X that the AfD is the ‘only hope for Germany’. He later pens an opinion piece published in Welt am Sonntag supporting the AfD, after which the editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kagel, resigns. (Der Spiegel, 21 December 2024; The Intelligencer, 20 December 2024; Guardian, 28 December 2024)

22 December: X and Facebook are criticised after it emerges that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a fan of Elon Musk and US podcaster Alex Jones, left a trail of hate and threats on social media, including against Angela Merkel. Days before the attack, he was interviewed by the RAIR Foundation (Resistance Against Islamic Radicals) website known for anti-Muslim content. (Deutsche Welle, 21 December 2024; Deutsche Welle, 21 December 2024; Der Spiegel, 21 December 2024)

31 December: In his New Year’s Eve address, the German Chancellor urges voters not to allow social media owners to determine German politics, following Elon Musk’s endorsement of the AfD. (Guardian, 30 December 2024)

31 December: Israeli players will now compete in the World Indoor Bowls Championships in Norfolk after organisers reversed an earlier ban prompted by pro-Palestinian campaigns. The World Bowls Tour apologises for withdrawing their invitations, citing security concerns, and confirms that increased security will be put in place. (Guardian, 31 December 2024)

6 January: The Times prints an official apology to two candidates for leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain for wrongly suggesting they both had praised Iran. They further apologise to Dr Wajid Akhter for wrongly reporting that he had said that New Year celebrations ‘usually’ involve ‘un-Islamic practices’. (X, [Times], 6 January 2025)

7 January: Meta is found to be removing fact-checkers and significantly reducing censorship across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, with plans to replace fact-checking with community notes, similar to X. Mark Zuckerberg announces that these changes will prioritise free speech and reduce content moderation, especially on topics like immigration and gender. (Wired, 7 January 2025)

RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT

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

24 December: Salam, a violence prevention centre in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, reports that a ‘hostile threatening environment’ and increased racial incidents against people perceived as ‘foreigners’ has developed since the Magdeburg Christmas market attack. (Deutsche Welle, 24 December 2024)

30 December: FOI requests show that police forces, including Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and the Met, have reported increases in religious hate crimes in the past 18 months, with antisemitic crimes rising after October 2023 and Islamophobic ones after the Southport attacks in England in summer 2024. (Guardian, 30 December 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. 

Feature image: Demo outside the Royal Courts of Justice for Ibrahima Bah’s appeal hearing on 4 December 2024. Credit: Free Ibrahima Bah campaign

The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

The majority of the IRR’s work is free to access. Please consider supporting our research and analysis by making a donation.

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