Calendar of Racism and Resistance ( 18 February – 4 March 2025)

Calendar of Racism and Resistance ( 18 February – 4 March 2025)

March 6 2025 News

Written by: IRR News Team


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. 

21 February: France’s National Rally leader Jordan Barella cancels his scheduled speech at the US Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland just hours after Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon gave a Nazi salute at the conference. (Guardian, 21 February 2025) 

23 February: In Germany’s federal election, the far-right AfD, backed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, doubles its share of the vote from 2015 to 20.8 percent. In east Germany, it wins 43 out of 48 available seats after campaigning vigorously on an anti-Islam, anti-immigration platform, and backing the ‘remigration’ of immigrants and German citizens deemed to have poorly integrated. (Guardian, 24 February 2025)

25 February: The prime minister announces a 40 percent cut in the aid budget, to 0.3 percent of GDP, the lowest level in a generation, to fund a rise in defence spending from 2.3 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent by 2027, following Donald Trump’s demand that European countries step up defence spending. (Guardian, 25 February 2025)

26 February: Dozens of Labour MPs join aid agencies criticising the prime minister’s plan to slash overseas aid. Nearly a third of the existing aid budget is used in supporting refugees who have come to the UK and are claiming asylum. Global Justice Now launches a petition calling on the PM to reverse the cuts. (Guardian, 26 February 2025, Global Justice Now, 26 February 2025)

26 February: Following the German general election, where ‘remigration’ was central to the far-right AfD’s campaign, political analysts warn that the term has now crossed into mainstream political discourse and from there into the collective national psyche, creating negative perceptions of migrants in public discourse and redefining who belongs to Germany. (InfoMigrants, 26 February 2025)

27 February: Home secretary Yvette Cooper meets her French counterpart, Bruno Retailleau, at Le Touquet to see how the government’s £540m funding of French border police is being spent to stop small boats. (BBC, 1 March 2025)

27 February: The FT reports that asylum accommodation will take up almost half of the UK’s reduced aid budget after the 46 percent cut announced by Keir Starmer. (Financial Times, 27 February 2025)

27 February: The Hungarian government says it is clamping down on the Budapest Pride parade, citing ‘child protection’ concerns to indicate it should be moved to a closed venue instead of public streets. Prime minister Viktor Orbán’s administration has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ policies, including banning content related to gender and homosexuality for minors. (CNN, 27 February 2025) 

28 February: International development minister Anneliese Dodds resigns over Keir Starmer’s decision to cut the aid budget, which aid agencies say could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths of children in the global south for lack of vaccination against endemic diseases. (Guardian, 28 February 2025; Guardian, 28 February 2025)

1 March: Germany’s probable next chancellor, Friedrich Merz of the CDU, whose party won the most votes in February’s election, says he will invite Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Germany despite the arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, issued by the International Criminal Court. (Deutsche Welle, 1 March 2025)

2 March: The CDU announces an investigation into the political neutrality of German NGOs and charitable associations taking part in mass demonstrations targeting stricter immigration laws proposed jointly by the CDU/CSU and AfD. A parliamentary request, containing 551 questions about 17 NGOs, is submitted to the federal government. (Deutsche Welle, 2 March 2025)

3 March: After Austria swears in a new coalition government, led by the Conservatives but excluding the far-right Freedom Party, which won the most seats, the FPӦ ridicules the coalition of ‘losers’. (Deutsche Welle, 3 March 2025)

4 March: EC President Ursula von der Leyen unveils the plan ‘Rearm Europe’, proposing that €800 billion should be earmarked for defence as Europe enters a new era of rearmament.  (Deutsche Welle, 4 March 2025)

ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT

25 February: Following its strong performance in the German general election, the far-right AfD reinstates Maximilian Krah and Matthias Helferich into its parliamentary group. Both politicians were previously suspended for Nazi-related remarks, with Krah downplaying SS crimes and Helferich referring to himself as ‘the friendly face of the Nazis.’ (Guardian, 25 February 2025)

26 February: Tomáš Vandas, former leader of the neo-Nazi Workers’ Party, files a criminal complaint against journalist Jindřich Šídlo for calling him a ‘famous Czech Nazi’ on public television. Vandas, who has a history of promoting racist and extremist views, claims the label is false and damages his reputation. (Romea, 26 February 2025)

27 February: Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, facing charges including rape, sex with a minor and people trafficking, leave Romania on a private jet and fly to the US after a travel ban is lifted. Donald Trump, Elon Musk and JD Vance have publicly supported the brothers, whose lawyer, Paul Ingrassia, is the White House liaison official for the US Department of Justice. (Guardian, 27 February 2025)

POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

20 February: Amnesty International launches a report on predictive policing, Automated Racism, showing how skin colour, socio-economic background and addresses are used to ‘predict’ crime, and a campaign to stop it. Sign the petition here. (AI, 20 February 2025)

22 February: The home secretary announces the creation of a new criminal offence of using a child to commit criminal activity, as well as new child criminal exploitation prevention orders. Both measures are linked to County Lines and instances of gangs grooming children to carry drugs. (Guardian, 22 February 2025)

25 February: In Copenhagen, Denmark, police use tear gas and batons as they disperse around 800 Palestinian solidarity activists protesting the genocide in Gaza outside the headquarters of maritime transport company Maersk. According to the Palestine Youth Movement, several people sustain injuries and are hospitalised. (X [Palestinian Youth Movement], 24 February 2025; Dawn, 25 February 2025)

25 February: The Crime and Policing Bill is introduced in Parliament, with measures including more penalties for anti-social behaviour; bans on fireworks, face coverings and climbing memorials at protests; drug testing on arrest; warrantless searches of premises for electronic devices; and anonymity for arrested firearms officers to the point of conviction. (gov.uk, 25 February 2025)

3 March: A court in Finland finds Juhani Sebastian Lämsä, who has a history of neo-Nazi activity, including with the Nordic Resistance Movement, guilty of stabbing and the attempted murder of two children ‘from a foreign background’ at a shopping centre in Oulu. He is not sent to prison but will undergo compulsory medical treatment as a ‘court-ordered psychological assessment previously found he was not criminally accountable at the time of the attack’. (YLE, 3 March 2025)

3 March: Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, is among those the Met police calls in for questioning over his involvement in a pro-Palestine march on 18 January, where he carried a bunch of flowers. (Morning Star, 3 March 2025)

4 March: After two people die and several are injured when a man drives a car into a carnival procession in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, police rule out a political or terrorist motive and say that the suspect, who has a criminal record, is a German citizen with psychological problems. The man was fined in 2018 under hate crime laws for a Facebook comment. (Deutsche Welle, 4 March 2025)

4 March: The ongoing inquest into the death of Oladeji Omishore, who experienced a mental health crisis when police were called in June 2022, finds that he was tasered three times by police before falling into the river Thames and that he was not holding a screwdriver or a knife, as originally reported, but a gas lighter used to light cigarettes. (Justice Gap, 4 March 2025)

4 March: Chief Inspector Andy George, president of the UK’s National Black Police Association, faces a misconduct investigation over a tweet criticising the promotion of officer Martyn Blake, acquitted in the shooting of Chris Kaba, which highlighted disparities in disciplinary actions between Black and white officers. He argues that the investigation suppresses free speech and hinders efforts to address racial inequalities within the police force. (Guardian, 4 March 2025)

Protesters in central London with banners saying Justice for Chris Kaba. On the left there is a London red bus.
The Justice for Chris Kaba march in London. Credit: Steve Eason, Flickr.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND COUNTER-TERRORISM

22 February: In Mulhouse, eastern France, one person dies and five police officers are wounded in a knife attack described by the president and interior minister as ‘Islamist terrorism,’ carried out by an Algerian man with a ‘schizophrenic profile’. (Al Jazeera, 22 February 2025; Le Monde, 23 February 2025)

ASYLUM|  MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP

Asylum and migrant rights

19 February: a 21-year-old Afghan refugee is the first to challenge new government plans to deny citizenship to anyone who takes a ‘dangerous journey’ on grounds that the method of entry contradicts the good character requirements for application of citizenship. (Guardian, 19 February 2025)

20 February: Egyptian doctor Menatalla Elwan wins a judicial review of the cancellation of her leave to remain for tweets posted on 7 October 2023 deemed to glorify terrorist violence, although the refusal of indefinite leave to remain is upheld. (UK Human Rights Blog, 3 March 2025)

24 February: Statewatch reports on an internal EU document which says that Italian police provide a standard negative answer to people asking if they are banned from entering the Schengen area, resulting in some people being misled. (Statewatch, 24 February 2025)

27 February: Official statistics show that 2,000 Afghan asylum claims were refused in the last quarter of 2024, an increase from 48 in the same quarter of 2023, as grant rates for Afghans fell from 98 percent to 36 percent in the period. With returns to Afghanistan halted, those refused are left in limbo in a new ‘hostile environment’. (Guardian, 27 February 2025)

27 February: The Home Office announces it is extending the eVisa transition period to allow individuals to continue using their expired documents (BRPs and BRCs expired 31 December 2024) for international travel until 1 June 2025, after which they will no longer be valid as evidence of immigration status. (EIN, 28 February 2025)

28 February: Home Office figures show that 37 percent fewer work visas were issued in 2024 compared to the previous year, including  81percent fewer permits for health and social care workers, while the number of people granted refugee status or other leave at the initial decision stage fell by 37 percent to 39,616. (Info Migrants, 28 February 2025) 

Borders and internal controls

20 February: New rules giving Europol more powers and proposals to update EU laws against migrant smugglers will ‘aggravate the criminalisation and dehumanisation of people on the move’, according to a report by the #ProtectNotSurveil migrants’ and digital rights coalition. (Statewatch, 20 February 2025)

21 February: Poland’s parliament approves a Bill allowing ministers to suspend the right to claim asylum at the border in cases of ‘instrumentalisation of migration’ constituting a ‘real and serious threat to security’. The Bill goes to the Senate, which can delay but not block it. (Notes from Poland, 21 February 2025)

25 February: Two years after the shipwreck that killed 94 people off the coast of Steccato di Cutro, Italy, a commemoration is held in the Garden of Alì, named after the youngest victim. (InfoMigrants, 28 February 2025)

25 February: Figures from the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project reveal that at least 82 people died crossing the Channel in 2024, including at least 14 children, both record numbers, with officials believing the number of casualties to be higher. (Guardian, 25 February 2025) 

28 February: Italy and France sign an agreement in Ventimiglia to set up a joint operational unit to combat illegal border crossings and human smugglers on the Italian-French border. (Nova News, 28 February 2025)

3 March: The Cranston Inquiry begins hearing evidence into the biggest ever loss of life in a Channel migrant crossing in November 2021, when at least 27 people died, including 13 women and eight children. Four people remain missing and two survived. (Guardian, 3 March 2025)

3 March: Council of Europe human rights commissioner Michael O’Flaherty confirms ‘compelling evidence’ of ‘summary returns’ at Greece’s land and sea borders with Turkey and Poland’s with Belarus, warning Europe’s leaders not to cede to populists on asylum rights and international norms. (Guardian, 3 March 2025)

Reception and detention

25 February: An HM Inspectorate of Prisons report, based on an unannounced inspection of the UK’s five short-term holding facilities in France, identifies nine key concerns, including age assessments not in line with the legal threshold, serious concerns about child safeguarding referrals and cases of re-trafficking. (EIN, 25 February 2025)

26 February: Homeless refugees living in the ‘red tent camp’ in St Peter’s Square, Manchester, are evicted by Manchester City Council bailiffs and relocate around the corner to Albert Square, having ‘no other choice’. (Mancunian Matters, 26 February 2025)

27 February: Former home secretary Suella Braverman writes to her local council, Fareham, urging them to purchase a 27-flat block to prevent the Home Office using it to house asylum seekers. (Telegraph, 27 February 2025)

3 March: Labour MPs call on the government to investigate Clearsprings Ready Homes, which provides often grim and squalid asylum accommodation under government contracts worth billions and whose owner is one of the UK’s richest men, after ‘consultancy fees’ of £17 million allegedly disappear into an account controlled by him. (Open Democracy, 3 March 2025)

3 March: Statistics show that a record 14 asylum seekers housed in asylum accommodation in Ireland died in 2024, and a further three died in the first six weeks of 2025. There have been 131 deaths since 2022, including 31 children. In over a third of cases, the cause of death is not given, while 15 died of accidents, poisoning or violence. (Irish Examiner, 3 March 2025)

Deportations

20 February: Dutch government ministers confirm the plan to send refused asylum seekers to Uganda if they fail to return home after exhausting appeals, contravening EU regulations that prevent deportation to a third country without consent. (NL Times, 20 February 2025)

27 February: The Irish government deports 32 Georgian refused asylum seekers on a charter flight to Georgia, the first such mass deportation under a contract signed in November. (BBC, 28 February 2025)

2 March: It is announced that from 1 April, a squad of specialist staff will be sent to 80 prisons in England and Wales to identify and manage anyone going through the immigration system to speed up the deportation of those ruled to have no right to stay in the UK. (Independent, 2 March 2025) 

3 March: Two Kurdish Turkish children aged six and nine, whose parents sent them across the Channel alone, are to be sent back to their parents in France, in the first ‘return’ deal since Brexit. (Telegraph, 3 March 2025) 

Crimes of solidarity

3 March: A fortnight after journalists take the Italian government to court over hacking phones, Statewatch publishes a translation of a report revealing how Italian police implanted Israeli spying software in the phones of anti-deportation activists, which they seized on arresting the activists during an attempt to stop a deportation. (Guardian, 19 February 2025; Statewatch, 3 March 2025)

Citizenship

26 February: The Supreme Court rules that a child born in a prison camp in Syria to a father who had been wrongly stripped of his British citizenship is British by birth, since the unlawful deprivation decision did not validly remove the father’s citizenship. (Middle East Eye, 28 February 2025)

HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION

25 February: It is reported that ‘prominent’ British Muslims have come together to form the British Muslim Network to influence government policy and advocate for the ‘interests of UK Muslims as a diverse British social identity rather than purely as a faith group’ at a time when anti-Muslim prejudice is being weaponised by certain politicians and media and hate crime is on the rise. The government has a non-engagement policy with the longstanding Muslim Council of Britain to date. (Guardian, 25 February 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.

21 February: The German Trade Union for Education and Research warns that the rise of the AfD is leading international academics to avoid universities in eastern Germany. International students’ associations warn of the threat posed by the AfD’s attacks on ‘woke ideology’, including pledges to close down gender studies and pandemic research facilities and sack professors. (THE, 21 February 2025)

22 February: Liberty Investigates reveals that the Association of university chief security officers (Aucso) successfully lobbied for support from UK vice-chancellors in using US-style security to clamp down on Palestine solidarity protests on campus after attending a campus security conference in New Orleans. (Guardian, 22 February 2025) 

22 February: FOI requests by Liberty Investigates and Sky News find that up to 113 students and staff in the UK have faced disciplinary investigations linked to pro-Palestine protest activity across at least 28 universities since 7 October 2023. At least nine universities received briefings on protests from private intelligence and security companies. (Guardian, 22 February 2025)

26 February: The University and College Union, Liberty and Palestine Solidarity Campaign accuse Cambridge University of an ‘all-out attack on freedom of expression and assembly’ after it applies for a five-year injunction to restrict pro-Palestine protests at its Senate House and Old Schools sites. (THE, 26 February 2025) 

2 March: As three Essex schools run by the Mossbourne Federation call an emergency meeting about the treatment of children, Hackney Council confirms receipt of over 300 separate accounts of alleged emotional harm at Mossbourne schools from parents, former students, teachers, local GPs and child psychologists. (Observer, 2 March 2025)

2 March: The German Union of Jewish Students and the American Jewish Committee Berlin claim that a ‘tsunami of antisemitism’ has erupted on university campuses around Germany, citing ‘so-called pro-Palestinian protest camps’ and research output, describing Berlin as a ‘hotspot’. The controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism should be included in university constitutions, they conclude. (Deutsche Welle, 2 March 2025)

3 March: After US authorities pressure the University of Helsinki to remove certain terms, such as equality and climate change, from its press release about Fulbright scholarships, more than 800 academics publish an open petition calling on the rectors of Finnish universities to resist any political attempt to censor the activities, research and related communications of higher education institutions. (YLE, 3 March 2025)

3 March: A ruling by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator that an African history course was ‘unfairly axed’ by the University of Chichester is welcomed by the students’ legal representative Jacqueline McKenzie as a ‘significant victory’ that ‘acknowledges the fundamental principle that students should receive the education they were promised, taught by the experts they signed up to learn from’. (Voice, 3 March 2025)

3 March: A report by Together with Migrant Children and the Public Law Project finds that asylum seeking children living in asylum support accommodation experience significant delays in gaining a school placement, which can be further complicated by financial and logistical barriers. (EIN, 3 March 2025) 

HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE

23 February: Charities report a rise in homelessness, particularly for those under the age of 35, young people kicked out of home because of their sexuality or to escape gangs, and refugees, among whom New Horizons reports homelessness has doubled in the past year. (Guardian, 23 February 2025)

3 March: In Southwark, south London, over 600 people join an emergency demonstration calling for council housing and justice for Southwark’s ‘diverse communities’ and affirming that ‘migrants did not cause the housing crisis’. (Homes for All, 3 March 2025) 

HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE 

24 February: North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust is criticised for its treatment of asylum seekers struggling with mental illness following extreme trauma, at an inquest into the death of 31-year-old Veruika Kariahua, from Namibia, who killed herself a week after her discharge from hospital in June 2022. The coroner finds failures of communication and follow-up despite several suicide attempts. (Stoke Sentinel, 25 February 2025)

CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT

21 February: Culture secretary Lisa Nandy, delivering the first Jennie Lee memorial lecture, criticises political campaigns to boycott literary and arts festivals for ‘gagging society, self-defeating virtue signalling and moral puritanism,’ rejecting arguments that campaigners are against sponsors linked to Israel or fossil fuel companies. (Independent, 21 February 2025) 

22 February: After 45 Jewish media workers object to the screening of ‘How to Survive A Warzone’, the BBC removes it from iPlayer. The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians says that the objection that the film’s child narrator is the son of a Hamas official ‘does not negate the child’s lived experience or invalidate his testimony’. (Guardian, 21 February 2025)

23 February: The French Senate approves a bill to prohibit the display of religious symbols, including the hijab, in all sports competitions, both professional and amateur. The bill now awaits approval from the National Assembly to become law. (RFI, 23 February 2025)

26 February: As it emerges that ten BBC staff have resigned, 500 media professionals and personalities call on the BBC to reinstate its BBC iPlayer documentary on Gaza, criticising the racist assumptions driving the removal and the ‘unethical and dangerous’ weaponisation of  ‘family associations to discredit a child’s testimony’. (Guardian, 26 February 2025)

RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT

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

19 February: The German-Syrian Cultural Association in Magdeburg reports that verbal and physical attacks on people with a migrant background, as well as on advice centres, have increased by more than 70 percent. (AP, 19 February 2025)

22 February: In Germany, a Spanish tourist is severely injured in a stabbing at Berlin’s Holocaust Museum, with police confirming that the suspect, a 19-year-old Syrian refugee, had antisemitic motives. (Deutsche Welle, 22 February 2025)

26 February:  Two men, appearing at Dunfermline Sherrif Court, avoid a prison sentence and are ordered to do unpaid work, despite admitting racially aggravated violence.  In April 2024 Osama Farooq, a  GP of Pakistani descent, was repeatedly punched close to his practice in  High Valleyfield, Fife, Scotland, and racially abused by the two men who told him to ‘go back to your country’ . (Pulse Today, 26 February 2025)

 

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. 

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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