A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Find these stories and all others since 2014 on our searchable database, the Register of Racism and Resistance.

ASYLUM | MIGRATION | BORDERS | CITIZENSHIP

Asylum and migrant rights 

19 December: The Greek Parliament passes a bill to allow undocumented migrants to gain a three-year residency and work permit, benefitting around 30,000 people from non-EU countries who have been employed irregularly for a minimum of three years, to tackle the large labour shortages throughout the country. (Info Migrants, 22 December 2023, Info Migrants, 20 December 2023)

 20 December: The European Union agrees new rules on responsibility for asylum reception and processing involving border detention and accelerated deportation, which according to Amnesty International will lead to a ‘surge in suffering’. Save the Children says the deal will endanger children and violate their rights. (Al Jazeera, 20 December 2023, Guardian, 20 December 2023)

20 December: A Reunite Families UK report describes an expensive and complex family migration system which causes family separation and impacts children’s mental health, with families unable to meet the minimum income requirement of £18,600, as they seek to challenge the proposed increase in the threshold to £38,700. (Electronic Immigration Network, 20 December 2023)

21 December: The Home Office responds to the outcry over the doubling of the minimum income requirement for British nationals to bring family members to the UK by phasing it in, with an initial increase to £29,000 in spring 2024 and a further increase to £38,700 in 2025, and dropping the additional income requirement for children. (Electronic Immigration Network, 21 December 2023, Guardian, 22 December 2023)

 28 December: A report by Islington Law Centre’s Migrant and Refugee Children’s Legal Unit (MiCLU) reveals how the increasingly hostile environment towards Albanian asylum seekers affects their mental health and wellbeing. (Electronic Immigration Network, 4 January 2024)

 2 January: The UK’s statistics watchdog reportedly launches an investigation into the home secretary’s claim that the backlog of asylum cases awaiting decision from June 2022 has been cleared, as official figures reveal 4,500 undecided backlog claims and almost 140,000 asylum seekers awaiting a decision. (Sky News, 3 January 2024)

4 January: Responding to a 25,000-signature petition to introduce a Ukraine-style scheme to help Palestinians stranded in Gaza join family in the UK, the government says it has ‘no plans’ to do so, or to waive visa fees or tests. (Open Democracy, 4 January 2024)

Borders and internal controls 

20 December: Medical Justice and the Public Law Project publish Constantly on edge, which reveals a 56 percent increase in Home Office use of GPS electronic monitoring as a condition of immigration bail: 3,335 people have a fitted device and 543 a non-fitted fingerprint scanner, requiring up to 10 scans a day. (Medical Justice, 20 December 2023)

 29 December: The approximately 172-kilometre-long wall along the Belarus/ Latvia border, aimed at stopping people crossing into the European Union, nears completion. (Info Migrants, 29 December 2023)

6 January: A 26-year-old Guinean man being housed in an asylum seekers’ reception centre in Mülheim, Germany, dies in hospital following an altercation with security staff. Staff claim the man went ‘on a rampage’ and he was tasered twice before losing consciousness in the ambulance. (Info Migrants, 8 January 2024)

Reception and detention

For attacks on asylum accommodation see also racial violence

19 December: Regulations cut financial support for asylum seekers housed in hotels while awaiting the processing of their claims from £9.58 to £8.86 a week, £1.25 a day to cover travel, phone and medication costs. (Guardian, 19 December 2023)

 21 December: A court-appointed administrator is placed in charge of a pre-removal centre for migrants (CPR) in Milan, Italy, following an investigation that found the facility to have ‘inhumane’ conditions and triggered an allegation of fraud in public procurement. (Info Migrants, 26 December 2023)

21 December: Data obtained by Liberty Investigates confirms that 19 asylum seekers living in Home Office accommodation have taken their own lives over the last 4 years, with a further 4 deaths believed to be self-inflicted, more than double the total in the previous four years. (Guardian, 21 December 2023)

21 December: The inquest opens and adjourns into the death of 27-year-old Leonard Farruku on board the Bibby Stockholm on 12 December, with the coroner requesting written statements from the Home Office, port officials, security providers Isca, ship operators Landry and Kling, Dorset Police and Dorset Council. (Guardian, 21 December 2023)

2 January: The Home Office refuses to contribute towards the cost of repatriating to Albania the body of Leonard Farruku, who died on the Bibby Stockholm barge in December, forcing his family to turn to crowdfunding to bring his body home. (Guardian, 2 January 2024)

4 January: Age-disputed asylum seekers claiming to be wrongly assessed as adults can no-longer be moved to the Bibby Stockholm barge or the former RAF bases Wethersfield and Scampton under new rules announced by the Home Office. (inews, 4 January 2024)

5 January: After a demonstration is held outside JJ Gannon’s hotel in Ballinrobe, Co Mayo,  Ireland, which is due to accommodate 50 international protection applicants, the Department of Integration says it is engaging with the provider but is ‘not in a position to comment further’.  (RTE, 6 January 2024)

8 January: Médecins sans Frontières, which works in war zones including Syria, Sudan and Gaza, is treating asylum seekers at the disused RAF base Wethersfield in home secretary James Cleverly’s Essex constituency, where scabies, tuberculosis, mental health problems and violence have been reported. (Guardian, 8 January 2024)

9 January: It is revealed that almost 100 asylum seekers have been moved out of Wethersfield camp, which has been condemned by former home secretary Priti Patel and current home secretary James Cleverly, to hotels, with the Home Office admitting the camp is not a suitable place for them. (Independent, 9 January 2024)

Deportations

19 December: Prime minister Rishi Sunak refuses to confirm reports that airlines have refused to sign Home Office contracts to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda, as failure to find a commercial supplier will force the MoD to step in. (Guardian, 19 December 2023)

22 December: At least 8 Rwandan dissidents who received police warnings of ‘reliable evidence … that the Rwandan government poses an imminent threat to your life,’ now feel unsafe and exposed by legislation declaring Rwanda a ‘safe’ country in pursuance of the government’s deportation scheme. (Guardian, 22 December 2023)

26 December: The campaign group 3Million says new guidelines on late applications for EU settled status remove safeguards for the thousands of EU citizens who are unaware that their ‘permanent residency’ cards obtained before the Home Office changed the rules are invalid and that they are vulnerable to removal. (Guardian, 26 December 2023)

27 December: The Latvian Office of Citizenship and Migrant Affairs says that at least 1,213 Russian citizens, previously considered Latvian citizens or ‘non-citizens’, could be expelled from the country because they have not met new residence conditions attached to immigration laws. (LSM, 27 December 2023)

28 December: Swedish migration lawyer Tomas Fridh reports a Palestinian client receiving a deportation order to Gaza, with the migration agency stating that ‘the situation is not such that everyone and anyone risks being killed or injured by the armed conflict simply by being in Gaza’. (Twitter, 28 December 2023, Mint Press News, 28 December 2023)

Crimes of solidarity

9 January: The retrial of 16 of 24 human rights activists, including Nassos Karakitsos (one of those supported by the Free Humanitarians campaign), begins at the Greek Supreme Court in Lesvos, after the case, dismissed for procedural errors including lack of translation, was reinstated for Greek-speaking defendants by the Supreme Court. (Aurora Suport, 9 January 2024, Facebook update Free Humanitarian Page, 8 January 2024)

Citizenship

31 December: The family of British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd el Fattah, imprisoned in Egypt for most of the past decade, says the British government has done nothing to help free him, a year after telling them of its ‘total commit[ment]’ to resolving his case. (Guardian, 31 December 2023)

5 January: Three years after the Irish Supreme Court struck down a system for stripping citizenship from citizens, the Department of Justice announces a new citizenship stripping process, allowing it to revoke the Irish citizenship of Algerian-born Ali Charaf Damache who wants to return to Ireland at the end of a US prison sentence. (Irish Times, 5 January 2024)

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.

19 December: The French government’s hardline immigration bill passes through parliament, but only due to the support of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), with Le Pen securing concessions on access to welfare and family reunification and celebrating an ‘ideological victory’. (Euractiv, 21 December 2023)

20 December: A planned speech by the prime minister on the government’s progress on immigration is shelved after Conservative splits on the Rwanda safety bill, the apparent suicide of an asylum seeker on the Bibby Stockholm and accusations of ‘fiddling the figures’ to cut the backlog of undecided asylum claims. (Guardian, 20 December 2023)

26 December: Labour leader Keir Starmer is warned against ‘dancing to the Tory tune’ after indicating that the party is considering offshore processing of asylum claims. (Guardian, 26 December 2023)

29 December: Papers released under the 20-year rule reveal that then prime minister Tony Blair considered setting up a camp for asylum seekers on the remote Scottish island of Mull. (National, 29 December 2023)

28 December: The Never Again Association documents the actions of the far-Right Polish Confederation party MP Gzregorz Braun, his promotion of conspiracy theories about Jews taking over Poland, mocking of the victims of Nazi camps, and calls for violence against LGBT people. (Never Again Association, 28 December 2023)

28 December: James Daly, MP for Bury North, outlining for the i newspaper what the New Conservatives group of MPs stands for in terms of family stability, calls ‘most of the kids who struggle’ the ‘products of crap parents’. (Guardian, 29 December 2023)

1 January: London’s mayor Sadiq Khan warns that the government’s decision to change the mayoral electoral system, coupled with the introduction of mandatory photo ID for voting, could depress voting and ‘open the door to a hard-Right victory’. He compares the Conservative candidate Susan Hall to Donald Trump. (Guardian, 1 January 2024)

1 January: The Reform Party’s Ben Habib and Howard Cox attack the London mayor’s New Year’s Eve fireworks display for the ‘relentless promotion of multi-culturalism, critical race theory and LGBTQ rights’. Turning Point UK accuses Khan of lighting the ‘London skyline with the flag colours of terrorist-controlled Palestine’. (Daily Express, 1 January 2024, Twitter, 1 January 2024)

4 January: Redbridge Palestine Solidarity Network submits a Freedom of Information  request to Redbridge Council for information on costs and motives behind its decision to remove Palestinian flags that had spontaneously appeared across the borough. (RPSN on Twitter, 4 January 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.

19 December: Reacting to the distribution of Nazi leaflets in Quissac, France, 200 people attend a rally organised by La France Insoumise MP Michel Sala. The leaflets, which call for the re-establishment of white dominance in Europe, are signed by the Département d’Eveil Racial du Peuple (People’s Department of Racial Awakening) and resemble others found in the town of La Neuville-Chant-d’Oisel. (Le Monde, 19 December 2023)

20 December: In Poland a Roman Catholic priest uses his church’s website to claim that ‘Jews are taking over Poland’ and to label speaker of parliament Szymon Hołownia a ‘Jewish altar boy’. The bishop of Legnica orders the priest to delete his posts. (Notes From Poland, 20 December 2023)

23 December: In Greece jailed former Golden Dawn MP Ilias Kasidiaris is set to attend a swearing-in ceremony for his seat on the Athens municipal council following a request for leave from prison. (Ekathimerini,23 December 2023)

23 December: In Avignon, France, left-wing mayor André Mondange is attacked by six men, one of whom allegedly shouts that he is a nationalist. (Celebsnet, 23 December 2023)

27 December: German monitors of the far Right warn that the Reichsbürger movement, Königreich Deutschland in Rutenburg and the New Age Anastasia movement, are attempting an ethno-nationalist rural land grab, buying 40 properties in a targeted attempt to establish parallel societies and infiltrate schools, sports venues and public offices. (Guardian, 27 December 2023)

28 December: In Spain, David Usero Caballer, the administrator of the España2000 website, is sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for inciting hatred against the LGBT community. (La Mamarea, 28 December 2023)

6 January: The home of Irish People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy is targeted for a second anti-immigration protest by ten people, some masked, carrying ‘White Lives Matter’ banners and others stating ‘Illegal male immigrants are housed before the Irish homeless’.  The homes of the Taoiseach and other politicians are also targeted over the weekend. (Journal, 8 January 2024)

8 January:  In Italy, the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni faces questions from opposition parties about police failure to intervene and calls to ban neofascist groups, filmed on 6 January ranked in military formation and making fascist salutes at a commemoration in a working-class neighbourhood in Rome. (Guardian, 8 January 2024, Washington Post, 8 January 2024)

8 January: After 100 German farmers try to stop the economy minister from disembarking from a ferry, the interior minister warns that right-wing extremists are attempting to infiltrate farmers’ protests against the government’s tax reforms proposals. The German Farmers’ Association distances itself from the far Right. (Politico, 8 January 2024)

POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

19 December: The trial of five police officers charged with the death of 16-year-old Senegalese asylum seeker Mouhamed Dramé begins in Dortmund, Germany. Dramé was shot five times with a sub-machine gun in August 2022, though he presented no threat. (Info Migrants, 20 December 2023)

 20 December: German police target pro-Palestinian feminist group Zora, raiding the Berlin office, a café and the apartments of six people in connection with an Instagram post which allegedly used emblems of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated a ‘terrorist group’ by the US and the EU. Deutsche Welle, 20 December 2023)

 22 December: Prominent Jewish pro-Palestinian activist Tony Greenstein is bailed with stringent conditions after his arrest by anti-terrorist police two days earlier for a pro-Palestinian tweet. (Squawkbox, 22 December 2023)

29 December: The Court of Appeal gives Edwin Afriye, a youth worker who was tasered by City of London police in 2018, permission to appeal against a High Court ruling that the officers acted lawfully. Bodycam footage shows him standing with arms folded at a distance from the officers when they used the weapon on him. (Guardian, 1 January 2024)

29 December: An appeal to end the illegitimate targeting and rampant criminalisation of children is launched in France, with those who sign the appeal urged to attend a march against racism, Islamophobia, and the protection of children in April 2024.  (LeMediaTV, 29 December 2023)

30 December: In Germany, Berlin police ban a pro-Palestine event in Neukölln on New Year’s Eve on the ground that it carries the risk of crimes, including displays of antisemitism and glorification of violence. (Deutsche Welle, 30 December 2023)

3 January: A court in Nice, France, convicts footballer Youcef Atal of incitement to hatred on religious grounds for reposting on Instagram a video about the war in Gaza containing anti-Jewish remarks, which he apologised for and deleted, saying he did not watch it all before posting. (Al Jazeera, 3 January 2024)

4 January:  Boris Johnson tells the Telegraph that posters at UK airports asking for witnesses to terrorism, war crimes or crimes against humanity indicate a ‘worrying politicisation of the Met police’. The Met says that UK policing is supporting the long-running investigation into Israel by the International Criminal Court, and it is obliged so to do if it could involve British subjects. (Jewish Chronicle 4 January 2024)

4 January: Two Met police officers from a violence suppression unit based at Southall police station are found guilty of misconduct for an unlawful stop and search, dishonestly claiming that warehouse worker Karo Grigoryan smelled of cannabis when they pulled him from his car in September 2021 and pepper-sprayed him. (Guardian, 4 January 2024, BBC News, 4 January 2024)

5 January: Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs Council, says policing is institutionally racist and a fundamental redesign of national policies and practices is needed to eliminate discrimination. (Guardian, 5 January 2024)

6 January: Extracts from an ‘independent’ review into political violence and disorder submitted to the Home Office in December indicate that Lord Walney, formerly Labour MP John Woodcock, wants the organisers of mass protests to contribute to policing costs, claiming ‘repeated incitements and disorder’ at ‘anti-Israel’ protests since October, which the Met police estimate have cost £20 million to police. (Telegraph, 6 January 2024)

8 January: The inquest into the death of  Christopher Kapessa, 13, allegedly pushed by another boy into a river in Wales in 2019, opens at Pontypridd coroners court, with his mother recounting the campaign of racism and horrific treatment suffered by the family since moving to Wales in 2011. (Guardian, 8 January 2024)

8 January: A narrative verdict delivered at the coroner’s court for Hull and the East Riding recites a number of failings by prison and healthcare staff in relation to the care of 74-year-old firefighter Alpha Kalay, who died of coronavirus in Hull prison in January 2021. Originally from Sierra Leone, Kalay’s symptoms were treated as a behavioural issue rather than a medical emergency. (BBC News, 9 January 2024, Hodge Jones & Allen, press release, 8 January 2024)

NATIONAL SECURITY AND ANTI- TERRORISM

31 December: In Cologne, Germany, police arrest four people in relation to an alleged Islamist terror plot to attack Cologne Cathedral on New Year’s Eve. (Deutsche Welle, 31 December 2023)

2 January: The Met’s counter-terror chief, Dominic Murphy, expresses concern about the  number of young Londoners radicalised by extreme-right material and ideology. Of 25 children arrested in the 12 months to June 2023, 14 had extreme right-wing terrorism views compared with nine for Islamist views. (Standard, 2 January 2024)

4 January: Kingston Crown Court sends two neo-Nazis, Christopher Gibbons and Tyrone Patten-Walsh, to prison for seven and eight years for encouraging terrorism in podcasts encouraging listeners to attack ethnic minorities, as well as an online library of extreme-right material with 1,000 subscribers. (Romford Recorder, 4 January 2023)

HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION

21 December: A new CAGE International report, Censoring Palestine, from school to workplaces reveals a 455% increase in UK cases of repression of support for Palestine since the last upsurge of reported cases in 2021. Between October and December 2023, it handled 214 cases, spanning 118 schools and colleges, 35 workplaces, 35 involving  protest, 13 from universities and 13 involving mosques. (CAGE International, 21 December 2023)

EDUCATION

21 December: Parents protest outside Barclay Primary School in Leyton, east London, at the continued exclusion of an 8-year-old British-Palestinian boy for wearing Palestinian colours, badges and stickers for Children in Need day in November. The school, which has threatened to refer the boy and other students to Prevent, describes this as an ‘overt demonstration of political beliefs’. (Novara Media, 21 December 2023)

22 December: Scotland’s teaching union, EIS, says that one-quarter of children in Scotland live in poverty and calls for free school meal provision to be available to all eligible families during school holidays, also drawing attention to the poverty-linked educational attainment gap. (EIS, 22 December 2023)

22 December: A survey commissioned by housing charity Shelter England reveals that half of teachers in state schools work with children who are homeless. 140,000 children in England are living in temporary accommodation, with the housing emergency inflicting untold damage on children’s education as teachers report children missing school days due to hunger and exhaustion. (Shelter, 22 December 2023)

31 December: Students and concerned parents sign an open letter to Luton Sixth Form College asking it to reinstate the student council, dissolved in November after hundreds of students staged a walkout protesting the killings in Gaza. The college’s alleged links to an arms company that supplies weapons and advanced military platforms to Israel are also highlighted. (Al Jazeera, 31 December 2023)

4  January: A University of Kent study of higher education lecture slides finds that people from ethnic minorities are underrepresented and rarely presented positively in the images chosen. On courses where black and Asian students formed between 35 and 40 percent of the cohort, only a third of images featured people from global majority backgrounds, while only 12 percent of those images showed people in ‘positive, non-stereotyped and active roles’. (THE, 4 January 2024)

5 January: The Department for Education (DfE) reveals it is looking at ways to recruit more international teachers by reducing its own red tape on overseas recruitment in a strategy that the government is delaying publishing. (TES, 5 January 2024)

6 January: Research on student views on campus security and police, Whose campus? Whose security?published by the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity, shows that the majority of university students interviewed  believe that university security services and police on campus are unfairly targeting ‘racially minoritised students generally, and black students particularly’. (THE, 6 January 2024)

8 January: After a backlash against France’s new immigration law and the resignation of the higher education minister, president Macron commits to reviewing  ‘discriminatory and ineffective measures’ under which overseas students will pay a ‘return deposit’ to cover potential ‘removal costs’, annually demonstrate ‘the real and serious nature of their studies’ and pay higher university registration fees. (THE, 8 January 2024)

HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE

20 December: A Social Housing Quality Resident Panel report on Awaab’s law (brought in following the 2020 death of the toddler from long-term exposure to mould) requiring social housing landlord to repair or rehouse tenants speedily, finds that the burden of forcing landlords to meet deadlines for repairs is unfairly placed on residents, who must take them to court. (Inside Housing, 20 December 2023)

20 December: The Czech Supreme Court increases compensation to Romani families for eviction from their homes in Vsetín in 2006, which forced them to relocate by taking on loans or live in shipping containers. (Romea, 20 December 2023)

21 December: The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing says that the Netherlands must address its acute housing crisis without discrimination, adding that ‘too often, migrants and foreigners are blamed for it’. (OHCHR, 21 December 2023)

31 December: An analysis of 2,907 rulings made by the housing ombudsman reveals that despite Awaab’s law, the average financial penalty for housing associations for systematic refusal to deal with serious disrepair and squalor is just £445. (Observer, 31 December 2023)

 6 January: The Irish Department for Housing says that in November 2023 a record number of people (13,514) were counted as homeless, with a 30 percent increase in rough sleeping. The  Irish Refugee Councilpreviously criticised the government for its failure to prevent street homelessness of arriving international protection applicants, 376 of whom are living on the streets awaiting an offer of accommodation according to Department of Integration figures. (RTE, 6 January 2024, Irish Times, 3 January 2024)

HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE

19 December: Analysis by the Labour Party shows that in 2021-22 more than 270,000 young people waited longer than three months for mental health support. Of those, 232,000 (almost one in three referred by a professional) did not access any NHS mental health support at all. (TES Magazine, 19 December 2023)

 22 December: A demonstration is held outside the London offices of US tech giant Palantir over a contract to run the NHS Federated Data Platforms, with protesters claiming that Palantir provides intelligence and surveillance services to the Israeli government. (Independent, 22 December 2023)

24 December: Over 5,000 French health care workers sign an open letter denouncing the  new immigration law for undermining the country’s humanist health care model, threatening both healthcare for the undocumented and the rights of the child. The letter commends the health minister for resigning after the law’s adoption. (Le Monde, 24 December 2023)

 31 December: A coroner’s 2020 ruling that air pollution was a factor in the death of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, aged 9, is cited by Great Ormond Street hospital as a reason for its introduction of a pilot scheme to monitor air pollution levels at patients’ home addresses and add that data to patients’ records. (Guardian, 31 December 2023)

 6 January: NHS England confirms that it will investigate whether Palantir violated the terms of its contract to run the Federated Data Platform, after it covertly launched a social media influencer campaign which targeted the Good Law Project. (Good Law Project, 6 January 2024)

8 January: A study by health expert Michael Marmot reveals that more than one million people in England died prematurely between 2011 and 2019 owing to a combination of poverty, austerity and Covid. (Guardian, 8 January 2024)

EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION

19 December:  A representative of the Care Quality Commission tells the parliamentary health and social care committee that post-Brexit restrictions on free movement have significantly increased possibilities of exploitation in the care sector, with four referrals about modern slavery made in 2021-22, 37 referrals last year, and an anticipated 50 referrals to the end of 2023. (Guardian, 19 December 2023)

19 December:  Following allegations in a BBC Panorama programme that foreign workers trapped by visa rules are being exploited at Addison Court care home, Gateshead, unions say some foreign workers are paid as little as £5 an hour and charged thousands of pounds in unexpected fees. (Guardian, 19 December 2023)

1 January: A 3-year study by researchers from four universities finds underemployment ‘an increasingly concerning feature of the UK labour market’ affecting women, younger workers and ethnic minorities most affected, with short-time or zero-hours contracts forcing them to take several jobs. (Guardian, 1 January 2024)

5 January: The Metropolitan police confirm that the Post Office is under criminal investigation over prosecutions or civil actions against more than 7,600 wrongly accused sub-postmasters provided with faulty Horizon accounting software, in which racism has been raised as an issue in the scandal. (Guardian, 5 January 2024)

8 January: A Fawcett Society analysis reveals an ‘ethnicity pay gap’ where Bangladeshi and Pakistani-heritage women earn one-third less on average than white men, while Black Caribbean and mixed-heritage women earn one-quarter less than white men. The report also finds that 75 percent of women of colour have experienced racism at work, and over 40 percent passed over for promotion. (Guardian, 8 January 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.

19 December: According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue Global, over 115,000 anti-Muslim and dehumanising comments were made on YouTube videos in one week surrounding the Israeli Hamas ‘conflict’, with anti-Muslim comments related to Hindu ultranationalist ideologies highlighted and YouTube criticised for its moderation failures. (ISD, 19 December 2023)

21 December: The Jewish Chronicle apologises for its ‘inaccurate and potentially misleading’ reporting and removes the name of Dr Nimer Sultany from an article alleging that ‘academics claim Hamas atrocities are part of “legitimate struggle” against Israel’. (Jewish Chronicle, 21 December 2023, amended version of article published 19 October 2023)

21 December: The Campaign Against Antisemitism and the broadcaster Angela Epstein call on the BBC to drop Olly Alexander as the UK’s Eurovision Song Contest entrant because of an open letter he and 1,400 other LGBTQ+ people and organisations signed calling Israel ‘an apartheid regime’ and a ‘violent colonial state’. (Jewish Chronicle, 21 December 2023)

21 December: In France, former Nice manager Christophe Galtier is acquitted on charges of harassment and discrimination against mainly Muslim players. (Le Monde, 21 December 2023)

26 December: Following the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) ban on Usman Khawaja’s messages of peace in Palestine written on his shoes, the ICC rejects Khawaja’s application to display a peace dove on his bat. (Guardian, 26 December 2023)

27 December: Book Works and Hajar Press join artists in boycotting the Arnolfini after it cancelled two Palestine film festival events in November, and call on the arts venue to engage with its critics and heal its reputation in Bristol and beyond. (Bristol Live, 27 December 2023)

 30 December: An unnamed Premier League footballer is being investigated by police after he allegedly called a Black concierge the N-word twice during a drunken rant. (Mirror, 30 December 2023)

5 January: In Poland, companies pull ads from TV Republika after a guest on the platform stated that migrants should be sent to Auschwitz or microchipped like dogs. Prosecutors in Poland are to investigate the statements. (AP, 5 January 2024)

5 January: In Germany, Joe Chialo, Berlin’s culture senator, announces that artists applying for funding must sign a clause committing them to be against ‘any form of antisemitism’, following the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition which includes claims that the State of Israel is a racist endeavour. Hundreds of artists, including 2023 Turner Prize winner Jesse Darling, sign a letter criticising the clause as an attack on freedom of opinion. (ARTNews, 5 January 2024)

8 January: Former Yorkshire player Azim Rafiq criticises the proposed return of Yorkshire Cricket executive chair Colin Graves, whose period in office was marked by failure to address systemic use of racist language and who has stated that he never witnessed racism at the club and described racist language as ‘banter’. (Guardian, 8 January 2024)

8 January: The Charity Commission opens an investigation into the UK Friends of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israeli Soldiers (UKAWIS) over fundraising videos that appear to show grainy footage of Palestinians being killed. A ‘historic complaint’ regarding the charity’s fundraising activities is already being investigated. (Byline Times, 8 January 2024)

9 January: In the Netherlands, public broadcaster KRO-NCRV is set to stop using the social media platform X following the continuous racist harassment of rapper and campaigner Akwasi who appeared on a quiz show. The director of KRO-NCRV, Peter Kuipers, says that X is becoming a ‘more and more disruptive platform’. (Dutch News, 9 January 2024)

RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT

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

21 December: Police launch an investigation after Jewish people putting up posters in north London about missing hostages in Israel say they were called Zionists and physically attacked by assailants claiming to support Hezbollah and Palestine. (Jewish Chronicle, 22 December 2023)

 23 December: A week after a suspected arson attack at Ross Lake House, a disused hotel in Rosscahill, Ireland, scheduled to house 70 asylum seekers, gardaí complete their forensic examination and affirm their belief that the fire was deliberate. One of a string of attacks on refugee and asylum seeker accommodation centres, no one was hurt but the building received substantial damage. (Irish Times, 23 December 2023)

 31 December: Another suspected arson attack takes hold of former pub the Shipwright in Ringsend, Dublin, Ireland, that was due to house 14 homeless families, the latest of many attacks on accommodation centres for the unhoused, refugees and asylum seekers. (RTE, 4 January 2024)

4 January: A student is punched outside the Jewish Free School, Kenton during an exchange with two unidentified teenagers about Palestine, causing the school to extend the security presence outside the premises. (Jewish Chronicle, 5 January 2024)

5 January: In Nicosia, Cyprus, an explosive device is thrown through the window of the anti-racist organisation KISA, damaging the property and archives. KISA accuses the government of leaving it vulnerable to criminal elements with racist and nationalist motives, failing to investigate dozens of death threats on social media and other acts of harassment. (KISA, press release, 5 January 2024)

The calendar was compiled with the help of Graeme Atkinson, Sam Berkson, Margaret McAdam, Louis Ordish and Anne-Ysore Onana-Ateba. 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.