ELECTORAL POLITICS | GOVERNMENT POLICY
As anti-migrant, anti-equalities, anti-abortion, misogynistic and anti-LGBTQI rhetoric in electoral campaigning are increasingly interlinked, we reflect this in the coverage below which also includes information on the influence of the Christian Right as well as the religious Right generally.
17 April: In Belgium, the controversial right-wing NatCon conference, addressed by Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman, goes ahead after the prime minister appeals the Brussels mayor’s orders to shut it down to the supreme administrative court, which rules that there is no evidence of a threat to public order. (Guardian, 17 April 2024)
17 April: The mayor of Budapest accuses the Hungarian government of using the municipal elections to launch a ‘cynical attack’ on the capital after it announces a plan to expropriate ten residential buildings and evict 200 families, many of whom are Roma living in poverty. (ERRC, 17 April 2024)
19 April: French prime minister Gabriel Attal is accused of recycling far-right ideas for calling for a crackdown on youth violence, saying some teenagers in France are ‘addicted to violence’, following the killing of a 15-year-old boy. (Guardian, 19 April 2024)
21 April: The leader of the Labour party writes to all general election candidates asking them to ‘fly the flag’ on St George’s Day and tells the Telegraph that ‘Labour is the patriotic party now’. (Guardian, 21 April 2024)
23 April: Members of Italy’s ruling Brothers of Italy party bring criminal defamation charges against Donatella Di Cesare, professor of philosophy at the University of Rome, over his comment that the agriculture minister ‘spoke like a neo-Hitlerite governor’ when he said ‘we cannot surrender to the idea of ethnic replacement’. (THE, 23 April 2024)
24 April: In France, left parliamentarians accuse the government of authoritarianism after Mathilde Panot, leader of La France Insoumise’s parliamentary grouping, and party member Rima Hassani receive police summonses for ‘apology for terrorism’ for criticising Israel’s war in Gaza. (Middle East Eye, 24 April 2024)
24 April: Ben Habib, deputy leader of Reform UK, tells Talk TV that the navy or Border Force should not save people who scupper their Channel boats, even if that means they are left to drown. (Guardian, 24 April 2024)
26 April: FOI responses obtained by the Guardian suggest that when the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Gideon Falter was proposed for membership of the Commission for Countering Extremism, the government’s anti-extremism tsar threatened to resign. (Guardian, 26 April 2024)
25 April: Days after the passage of the Safety of Rwanda Bill, France’s president Macron criticises migration policies involving sending migrants to African countries as ‘a betrayal of our [European] values’. (Guardian, 25 April 2024)
25 April: Laurence Fox, founder of the Reclaim Party, is ordered to pay libel damages of £90,000 each to former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and RuPaul’s Drag Race star Crystal, aka Colin Seymour, for slurring them as paedophiles in a row about Black Lives Matter in 2020. (Third Sector, 25 April 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.
18 April: Italian anti-fascist Ilaria Salis, who was arrested at a counter-demonstration of a Hungarian neo-Nazi rally in February 2023, is nominated as a candidate for EU elections by the Greens and Left Alliance in an attempt to gain parliamentary immunity from prosecution. (EuroNews, 18 April 2024)
19 April: After masked protesters with anti-migration placards protest outside the home of Irish integration minister Roderic O’Gorman in Dublin, a Garda directive is issued stating that erecting posters and signs at politicians’ homes can constitute harassment. (RTE, 19 April 2024)
23 April: Police arrest at least six protesters attending a St George’s Day rally addressed by members of the far right, including Tommy Robinson. (Guardian, 18 April 2024)
25 April: Greece’s supreme court rules that the far-right Spartans party may not run in the upcoming EU elections due to a probe into electoral fraud from June 2023 and links with convicted members of the banned Golden Dawn party. (teleSUR, 25 April 2024)
25 April: In Sweden, Mattias Wåg, publisher of the anarchist magazine Brand, states that he will not be silenced after five Nazis wielding mace and a smoke bomb stormed a political meeting and assaulted him and other attendees. Three people were hospitalised, while police are yet to make any arrests. (Freedom News, 25 April 2024; AA, 25 April 2024)
26 April: A 19-year-old neo-Nazi is found guilty of possession of an article connected with the preparation of an act of terrorism after police found bomb instruction manuals and a note detailing his plans to attack a synagogue in Hove. (BBC News, 26 April 2024)
29 April: Nine of 27 people arrested in 2022 raids on a far-right conspiracist grouping involving Reichsbürger and QAnon movement members go on trial in Stuttgart on charges including high treason, attempted murder and terrorism relating to a plan to overthrow the state. (Guardian, 29 April 2024)
POLICING| PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
19 April: Following the police shooting of Lamin Touray in Germany on 30 March, a media investigation reveals that the dog handler involved in the operation that led to the Gambian man’s death had spread extreme right-wing content on social media. (Lower Saxony Refugee Council, 19 April 2024)
20 April: The IOPC removes the term ‘excited delirium’ from incident forms that police officers use to make referrals, confirms that it will no longer use the term as an option for categorising investigations and prohibits police from blaming restraint deaths on an ‘outdated’ and ‘potentially offensive’ term. (Guardian, 20 April 2024)
20 April: After the Campaign Against Antisemitism release two videos showing its head, Gideon Falter, in conversation with a Met police officer at a Palestine solidarity march, the Met issues two statements of apology, saying that being Jewish ‘should never be seen as provocative’. Sky News footage showing a fuller picture of the interaction later leads the head of the Met to commend the officer’s professional conduct and confirm that he will not be disciplined. (Guardian, 20 April 2024; Guardian, 22 April 2024)
21 April: Data from 41 out of 43 police forces shows that children of Black, Asian or mixed-race descent are more likely to be targeted for strip searches. While some forces fail to record the ethnicity of strip-searched children, available data shows that 45 percent of all affected children had their ethnic background recorded as white. (Observer, 21 April 2024)
22 April: On the 30th anniversary of Stephen Lawrence’s death, and as the Met apologises to Doreen Lawrence for failure to re-examine the case after a BBC investigation, the mayor of London announces that an independent police force will review the Met’s handling of new evidence regarding his death. (Largs and Millport News, 22 April 2024)
22 April: A report from the Centre for Social Justice which claims that 63 percent of Londoners back stop and search recommends that police play a defining role in delivering a Right to Sport programme in all schools and that the Volunteer Police Cadet scheme is expanded. (City AM, 22 April 2024)
22 April: A high court judge throws out an attempt by the solicitor-general, a government law officer, to prosecute someone for holding up a placard outside a London crown court reminding jurors that they have the rIght to acquit a defendant according to their conscience. (Guardian, 22 April 2024)
24 April: In Ireland, the family of George Nkencho, who was shot dead after a Garda Armed Support Unit were called to an incident in Clonee, Dublin, in December 2020, say they will appeal the DPP’s decision not to prosecute any officers involved. (Irish Times, 24 April 2024)
25 April: A Tunisian man who wore a green headband at a pro-Palestine rally in November 2023 is found guilty of wearing an item ‘in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion’ that he was supporting Hamas. (BBC News, 26 April 2024; CPS, 25 April 2024)
25 April: The Met says that the cost of policing pro-Palestinian and linked protests now stands at £38.5 million. 415 arrests have been made since the demonstrations started, including 193 for alleged antisemitic offences and 14 for alleged breaches of counter-terrorism laws. The CAA cancels its counter protest to a national pro-Palestine demonstration in central London. (Guardian, 25 April 2024)
26 April: In Berlin, Germany, police forcibly remove protesters at the ‘Occupy Against Occupation’ camp outside the German parliament, justifying the action on the grounds of local regulations to maintain the lawn and the ‘use of unconstitutional symbols and forbidden slogans’. It had previously banned singing or speaking in Arabic, as well as Irish. (Reuters, 26 April 2024, Belfast Media, 26 April 2024)
29 April: Thirteen protesters are arrested as they demonstrate outside Sandford House immigration centre, Solihull against the Rwanda legislation. (I Am Birmingham, 30 April 2024)
Police arrested 13 protestors during a demonstration at a #Solihull immigration centre last night.
The protest coincided with a major Home Office operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK in preparation for deportation to #Rwanda:
▶️ Watch more: https://t.co/w33sL7wx3Z pic.twitter.com/9AM32cf0ic— I Am Birmingham (@IAmBirmingham) April 30, 2024
ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
22 April: FOI data reveal that three-quarters of those served with notice of intent to remove them to Rwanda as ‘inadmissible’, 18,000 people, have since been admitted into the asylum system and are having their claims processed in the UK. (Guardian, 22 April 2024)
23 April: The Safety of Rwanda Bill is passed, hailed by prime minister Sunak as ‘a fundamental change in the global equation on migration’ but ‘moving a further step away from the UK’s long tradition of providing refuge … in breach of the Refugee Convention’ and ‘setting a worrying precedent’ according to UNHCR and the UN’s Office for Human Rights. (Government news, 23 April 2024, UNHCR News, 23 April 2024)
24 April: The Dutch Council of State orders the government to end its moratorium on asylum applications from the Palestinian territories. The asylum claims of three Palestinians who brought the case, as well as all other decisions frozen since 19 December, must now be processed. (Dutch News, 24 April 2024)
Borders and internal controls
23 April: Five migrants, including a 7-year-old child, die near the French coast attempting to cross the Channel in an overcrowded boat with 110 migrants on board. Three are arrested for suspected illegal arrival and facilitation. (Sky News, 23 April 2024, inews, 24 April 2024)
28 April: A row breaks out over pushbacks from Poland to Belarus after border activists claimed a heavily pregnant Eritrean woman was pushed back twice from Poland and forced to give birth alone in the forest before finally being admitted to Poland with her newborn son, who was taken to hospital. (BBC News, 28 April 2024)
Reception and detention
24 April: Women for Refugee Women, BID, Migrants Organise and Privacy International launch a protest at SERCO’s AGM against the company’s profiting from immigration detention. (Women for Refugee Women on X, 24 April 2024)
24 April: A former cleaning employee on the Bibby Stockholm tells a parliamentary meeting she was unfairly dismissed for being too friendly with residents and that staff laughed and joked about the death of Leonard Farruku, an Albanian asylum seeker who died on the barge in December, as former residents describe prison-like conditions. (BBC, 24 April 2024)
Deportations
24 April: Ryan Air CEO Michael O’Leary says that he will have no qualms about using the airline to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda, as the UN warns that to do so is in breach of the Refugee Convention. (Independent, 24 April 2024)
29 April: The Home Office launches an operation to detain asylum seekers attending routine immigration or bail appointments in a ‘surprise two-week exercise’ and hold them in ready-prepared detention centres prior to deportation to Rwanda. (Guardian, 28 April 2024)
30 April: Protesters outside Lunar House, Croydon, resist as asylum seekers are detained for removal to Rwanda, with arrests reported as well as claims of assaults on detainees. (SOAS Detainee Support on X, 30 April 2024)
📣 CALLOUT FOR FURTHER SUPPORT 📣
Incredible people are at Lunar House right now resisting a forced removal! People inside the van were reported to have protested their removal & were assaulted. There are also reports of assaults against those there in solidarity, inc. arrest. pic.twitter.com/biz7vJOsXv
— SOAS Detainee Support (SDS) (@sdetsup) April 30, 2024
30 April: With the first Rwanda flights planned for July, Sky News reports that over half the asylum seekers slated for removal there ‘cannot be found’, as the Home Office claims Rwanda will accept 5,700, of whom 2,143 attend regular check-ins. The Home Office denies the others are missing. (Sky News, 30 April 2024, BBC News, 30 April 2024)
30 April: Prime minister Rishi Sunak says the UK will not take back asylum seekers who have gone to Ireland from the UK to escape deportation to Rwanda, as the Irish government considers emergency legislation allowing returns to the UK after the supreme court said it was no longer a ‘safe country’ for asylum seekers. (BBC News, 30 April 2024)
HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION
22 April: In an open letter to the EC from civil society organisations coordinated by European Digital Rights, the EU data agreement with Israel is criticised owing to a lack of alignment between Israeli and EU data protection laws and Israel’s lack of compliance with international law. (Statewatch, 22 April 2024)
23 April: The High Court hears a legal challenge to arms sales to Israel by GLAN and Al Haq, who argue that the weapons may be used in genocide, with sales aiding breaches of international law. (National, 23 April 2024)
24 April: In its annual global report, AI accuses the UK of ‘deliberately destabilising’ human rights on the global stage for its own political ends, singling out its targeting of asylum seekers, migrants and protesters in the UK. German, UK and EU leadership are also criticised for ‘double standards’ in the ‘Israel-Gaza conflict’. (Guardian, 24 April 2024; Deutsche Welle, 24 April 2024)
EDUCATION
16 April: Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, funded by tech billionaires and run by Nick Bostrom, who came under fire for his apparent support for racial science and eugenicist theories, closes. (Guardian, 19 April 2024)
17 April: The University of Lille, France, cancels a scheduled conference on Palestine organised by the Libre Palestine student association at which politicians from La France Insoumise had been invited to speak, citing escalating tensions between Iran and Israel. (Middle East Monitor, 17 April 2024)
18 April: DfE figures for the 2023 spring term show school suspensions up by 71.9 percent and permanent exclusions up by 10 percent compared to 2019. Pupils on Free School Meals were 4.5 times more likely to be permanently excluded and 4 times more likely to be suspended, while suspension and permanent exclusion disproportionately affect Roma, Irish Traveller, Black and Mixed Caribbean heritage pupils. (TES, 18 April 2024)
24 April: In Paris, France, the Sciences Po administration instructs police to disperse a pro-Palestinian camp at the university, saying that protesters, who are calling on the university to divest from Israeli companies and weapons manufacturers, are causing ‘tensions’. All disciplinary proceedings against demonstrators are later dropped after 50 counter-protesters confront the sit-in and fights break out. (Middle East Eye, 24 April 2024, Le Monde, 26 April 2024; Reuters, 27 April 2024)
BREAKING:
Happening now in Paris, France!
Students from Sciences Po rise in solidarity for a free Palestine, fueling the global students uprising against Israel’s genocide.
“We won’t move! We stay here!” (On bougera pas! On reste ici!)
🇵🇸🔥 pic.twitter.com/g60X0KWHgU
— sarah (@sahouraxo) April 26, 2024
24 April: Research by the Centre for Mental Health links persistent school absences that affect one in five children to rising mental health issues, SEND, poverty and racism, all of which are exacerbated by ‘an alarming increase’ in fines for parents. (CMH, 24 April 2024)
25 April: The Alliance for Inclusive Education publishes ‘Lived Experience of Black/Global Majority Disabled Pupils and their Families in Mainstream Education’, which finds an excessive use of disciplinary procedures and practices of surveillance towards disabled and Black children, resulting in exclusion. (Alfie, 25 April 2024)
26 April: Palestinian academics in the UK issue an emergency call to UK universities to resist attempts to undermine or bypass the rebuilding of Gaza’s Palestinian universities and to ensure their actions are not complicit in those plans. (Scholars for Palestine, 26 April 2024)
26 April: Around 250 academics at Queen Mary University of London publish an open letter calling on the university to do more to support Dr Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who has been arrested in Israel. She is global chair of law at QMUL and a Palestinian-Israeli citizen based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (Guardian, 26 April 2024; ISCI, 29 April 2024)
26 April: MI5 and the National Cyber Security Centre warn vice chancellors at 24 universities that foreign states are targeting British universities in order to undermine national security and launch a consultation to introduce protective measures. (BBC News, 26 April 2024)
29 April: After students set up a camp in support of Palestine in the courtyard of the Sorbonne university in Paris, France, the police are called in to disperse the protest, reportedly at the request of the prime minister. (Al Jazeera, 30 April 2024, Yahoo News 29 April 2024,
29 April: A paper by Conservative thinktank Onward, featuring a foreword by Michael Gove, outlines a plan for higher education in which only ‘high-quality institutions’ have financial support for non-STEM ‘academic subjects’, and ‘only select high-performing universities should be able to issue visas’. (THE, 29 April 2024)
30 April: An unverified report says Palestinian students at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany, have received an email from the administration informing them that due to changes brought in by the state statistics office that mean ‘Palestinian Territories’ is no longer considered a ‘clarified nationality’, they will now be recategorised as stateless by the university. (X, 30 April 2024)
HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE
17 April: In Vitry-sur-Seine, southern Paris, France, police evict hundreds of migrants from the capital’s biggest squat in line with a push by the authorities to dismantle homeless and migrant camps ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, which aid organisations describe as ‘social cleansing’. (Le Monde, 17 April 2024)
22 April: A coalition of charities, including the Race Equality Foundation, warns that 8 million people living in 3.7 million ‘dangerous’ homes in both the private rented and owner-occupied sectors are at risk of ill-health caused by substandard housing, putting ‘enormous strain’ on an overstretched NHS. (Morning Star, 22 April 2024)
HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
19 April: As the prime minister outlines his ‘moral mission’ to reform the disability benefits system, including reviewing Personal Independence Payments for mental health conditions and exploring alternatives to cash payments, charities say that the government has launched ‘a full-on assault on disabled people’. (Gov.UK, 19 April 2024; Guardian, 19 April 2024)
29 April: The Black Mental Health and Wellbeing Alliance launches a Black Mental Health Manifesto, seeking to alter a system which fails black people when they are at their most vulnerable. (BMHWA, 29 April 2024)
EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION
26 April: Migrants at Work issue a legal challenge against the government’s ban on migrant care workers bringing their family with them to the UK, which they argue is discriminatory. (Guardian, 26 April 2024)
26 April: The GMB union lodges a legal action against Amazon on behalf of five workers at its Coventry warehouse, claiming anti-union propaganda and deceptive practices designed to stop minimum wage workers from joining the union. (Guardian, 26 April 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.
17 April: At the Venice Biennale in Italy, Israel’s representative, Ruth Patir, announces that she will not open her country’s pavilion until a ceasefire and hostage release agreement is declared. (Jerusalem Post, 17 April 2024)
19 April: Biteback Publishing and Liz Truss apologise after a false quote linked to an antisemitic conspiracy theory is attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the Rothschild banking family. (BBC News, 19 April 2024)
21 April: Prominent author Antonio Scurati accuses the Italian state broadcaster Rai of censorship for cancelling a monologue he was due to make to commemorate Italy’s liberation from fascism. The broadcaster has faced increasing criticism for silencing those with left-wing views since prime minister Meloni took office. (Guardian, 21 April 2024)
23 April: In Brussels, Belgium, police raid the office of two Kurdish TV stations, Stȇrk RV and Medya Haber, apparently in tandem with the arrests of seven Kurdish journalists in Turkey. No arrests were made. (Medya News, 23 April 2024)
26 April: The Nottingham Islam Information Centre receives an official warning from the Charity Commission over a sermon delivered by its chair containing ‘inflammatory and divisive’ content, which discouraged the audience from voting in elections and/or engaging with democracy. (Civil Society, 26 April 2024)
27 April: An investigation by Unearthed finds that Conservative staff and activists are running a network of anti-Ulez Facebook groups posting Islamophobic content and antisemitic conspiracy theories. Prominent Conservatives such as London mayoral candidate Susan Hall and MPs Sir Bob Neill and Steve Tuckwell are members, although it is not suggested that they made racist posts. (Observer, 27 April 2024)
29 April: The annual media freedom report published by the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe says media freedom is in decline across the EU due to deliberate harm and neglect from governments. Journalists across Europe face the threat of physical attack, while spyware is also used against them in countries such as Germany, Greece, Poland and the Netherlands. (Guardian, 29 April 2024)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
16 April: In Paris, France, a man deliberately drives into a group of pro-Palestinian Jewish activists during a protest against military support for Israel’s attacks in Gaza outside the headquarters of weapons manufacturer Thales Group. There are no casualties. (Middle East Monitor, 16 April 2024)
24 April: In Ireland, a man pleads guilty to intimidating Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae by throwing a bottle and blocking his entry into a government building during an ‘aggressive’ anti-migrant rally outside Leinster House, Dublin in September 2023. (RTE, 24 April 2024)
24 April: A report by the Athens-based Racial Violence Reporting Network finds that racist violence in Greece against migrants, refugees and LGBTQ people surged in 2023 to their highest level since 2015, with 158 incidents reported to the Network, compared with 74 the previous year. (Cyprus Mail, 24 April 2024)
25 April: Six people are arrested after anti-immigration protesters attempt to set fire to a local building earmarked for asylum seekers in Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow, Ireland, and then clash with police. (Irish Times, 25 April 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.