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.
3 April: Reform UK drops two parliamentary candidates who allegedly made racist comments on social media about Muslims and black people. (Guardian, 3 April 2024)
4 April: The Conservative party investigates former minister Alan Duncan after he says in an LBC interview that ‘extremists’ within the parliamentary party, including senior leaders of Conservative Friends of Israel, should be flushed out, singling out Lord Polak and Eric Pickles for defending Israel’s settlements and doing Netanyahu’s ‘bidding’ in parliament. (Middle East Eye, 4 April 2024)
4 April: In Greece, the leader of the far-right Spartiates party, Vassilis Stigas, declares that he supports all MPs in his party following the resignation of two MPs and the Supreme Court’s announcement that charges of electoral fraud would be brought against 11 MPs who received support from the former deputy leader of the banned Golden Dawn party Ilias Kasidiaris. (Ekathimerini, 4 April 2024)
5 April: Billy Howarth, the Parents Against Grooming founder linked to numerous far-right conspiracy theory groups, is standing as a Rochdale council candidate for George Galloway’s Workers Party, Searchlight reveals. (Searchlight on X, 5 April 2024)
6 April: According to an Observer exposé, the UK branch of the extreme-right Christian US anti-abortion group Alliance Defending Freedom is doubling its spending in the UK and forging links with senior government advisers. (Observer, 6 April 2024)
6 April: Campaigners hold a vigil to mark the sixth anniversary of the exposure of the ’Windrush Scandal’ and to remember those who died without redress, the government’s payment of compensation to victims being notoriously slow. (Guardian, 6 April 2024)
On 6th April in Brixton, campaigners & supporters came together for a vigil commemorating the 6th anniversary since the exposure of the Windrush scandal. The gathering was to honour the memory of those who passed away w/out receiving justice.
Photos courtesy of Andrew Carnegie pic.twitter.com/PraD4T7e4Q
— BCA (@bcaheritage) April 10, 2024
7 April: Labour suspends Glasgow councillor Audrey Dempsey after she claimed that ‘racist attacks on white children and teachers’ in the city were increasing, liked posts on X which expressed support for the far-right Homeland party and accused Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar of ‘anti-white hate crime’. (BBC News, 9 April 2024, Daily Record, 12 April 2024)
9 April: After Nicaragua brings a case against Germany at the International Court of Justice for breaching its obligation to prevent genocide, Germany’s representatives say Israel’s security is at ‘the core’ of its foreign policy because of the history of the Holocaust and that its supply of arms is in line with international law. (Guardian, 9 April 2024)
10 April: Labour suspends Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath parliamentary candidate Wilma Brown after receiving reports that in the past she liked and shared racist and controversial social media posts. (Guardian, 10 April 2024)
12 April: The three-day Palestine Congress in Berlin, Germany is banned two hours after it begins. British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah is refused entry at the airport and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis is banned from entering the country or engaging with the conference via Zoom. Middle East Eye, 12 April 2024, New Arab, 12 April 2024, Deutsche Welle, 14 April 2024)
12 April: Prime minister Sunak is urged to stop former home secretary Braverman from speaking at the far-right NatCon conference in Brussels, Belgium, as Edificio, the company that owns the venue booked for it, cancels the booking following pressure from the Belgian Anti-Fascist Coordination, the Human Rights League and the Brussels mayor. (Brussels Times, 12 April 2024, Telegraph, 12 April 2024, Guardian, 13 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.
4 April: The German government reveals that 1,051 extremists and 500 Reichsbürger members still possess licenses to own firearms despite efforts to disarm them. (Deutsche Welle, 4 April 2024)
11 April: At Sheffield Crown Court a far-right extremist who ran a website used by a ‘number of like-minded convicted international terrorists’ pleads guilty to four terrorism charges including the distribution of a terrorist publication. (BBC News, 11 April 2024)
11 April: Neo-Nazis and far-right agitators are making vexatious complaints en masse re Scotland’s new hate crime law so as to overwhelm police systems, it is revealed. According to Police Scotland only 3.8% of complaints were authentic and logged as hate crimes – almost half of 7,152 reports being made on 1 April. (Guardian, 7 April 2024; Guardian, 11 April 2024)
POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
4 April: ICCL and INAR publish a report, ‘Policing and Racial Discrimination in Ireland’ that highlights issues of racial profiling, documents communities’ interactions with An Garda Síochána and calls for government data to be disaggregated according to protected characteristics. (Irish Council for Civil Liberties, 4 April 2024)
4 April: A media inquiry reveals that around 400 German police officers are under investigation over links to right-wing extremist or conspiracy theories, with the real figure likely to be higher as Berlin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Bremen and Thuringia did not provide up-to-date data. (Deutsche Welle, 4 April 2024)
6 April: The IOPC launches an investigation into two North Yorkshire police officers after a Black man was pepper-sprayed and struck while being restrained following a traffic incident in the village of Tockwith. (Mirror, 6 April 2024)
6 April: In Bern, Switzerland, police link a rise in crime, aggression and unpredictable behaviour to the rising number of asylum seekers from North African countries addicted to the prescription painkiller Pregabalin. (Swiss Info, 6 April 2024)
9 April: The EU Fundamental Rights Agency says racist policing across the EU is widely under-reported; that police stop people of African descent most in Austria, followed by Germany and Ireland; and that most EU countries lack official data sources on racist and discriminatory incidents involving police. (Morning Star, 9 April 2024)
11 April: Human rights organisations in France lodge a complaint with UN CERD about abusive police identity checks targeting those ‘perceived as black or Arab’, constituting ‘systemic racial discrimination’. (Le Monde, 11 April 2024)
11 April: Investigative news website The Detail reveals that between October 2018 and March 2023, the Northern Ireland police service reported an estimated 29 victims and witnesses of crime each day to the Home Office, including those subjected to racist attacks and domestic abuse. (Belfast Telegraph, 11 April 2024)
13 April: In Limassol, Cyprus, riot police are deployed as hundreds of people protest the death of Bangladeshi national Anis Rahman, who jumped from the fifth floor of the apartment he shared with 11 other Bangladeshi nationals during a police raid apparently conducted without a search warrant. (Cyprus Mail, 13 April 2024)
National security and anti-terrorism
12 April: In Dusseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, three teenagers who had formed a chat group are arrested on ‘strong’ suspicion of ‘planning an Islamist-motivated attack and of having committed to carrying it out’. (Deutsche Welle, 12 April 2024)
ASYLUM | MIGRATION | BORDERS |CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
10 April: The European parliament approves a new migration and asylum pact comprising legislation to streamline the asylum process and deportations, externalise and further automate border controls, which is hailed by centre-right politicians and condemned by 200 NGOs. Victor Orbán (Hungary) and Donald Tusk (Poland) both reject its provisions for transfer of migrants from frontline countries to other member states. (Statewatch, 9 April 2024, Politico.eu, 11 April 2024, Guardian, 10 April 2024)
Borders and internal controls
4 April: The European Court of Human Rights finds Poland guilty of collective expulsions and inhuman treatment in pushbacks of Tajik asylum seekers at the Ukrainian border in 2016-2017. (ELENA Weekly Legal Update, 12 April 2024)
Reception and detention
3 April: The Hellenic Data Protection Authority fines the Greek migration ministry €175,000 for AI systems monitoring asylum applicants in reception accommodation, which breach data protection laws. (ELENA Weekly Legal Update, 12 April 2024)
9 April: Norway’s top authority revokes the decision by Drammen city council to take only Ukrainian refugees, who they claimed would be ‘easier to integrate’, as unconstitutional and direct race discrimination. (InfoMigrants, 10 April 2024)
Deportations
10 April: A report by HM Inspector of Prisons expresses concerns about the removal of 73 Albanian detainees in December 2023 involving the use of 129 escort staff, including detaining too many for several weeks including those returning voluntarily, the use of a waist restraint belt and an inadequate use of interpreters. (EIN, 10 April 2024)
12 April: The French government sparks protests and demonstrations by deporting Kurdish activist Serhat Gültekin, reportedly handcuffed, gagged and blindfolded, to Turkey, despite his serious medical condition and without waiting for the courts to rule on the legality of his removal. The third Kurdish activist to be deported to Turkey in three weeks, he is immediately imprisoned on arrival in Turkey. (Medya News, 12 April 2024)
Crimes of solidarity
14 April: The former president of Malta, Marie-Louise Coleiro-Preca presents a ‘human rights defender’ award to the El Hiblu 3, who await trial for their role in the alleged hijack of an oil tanker to prevent the forced return of over 100 people to Libya five years ago, on behalf of the Coalition to Defend the El Hiblu 3. (Malta Today, 13 April 2024)
HUMAN RIGHTS AND DISCRIMINATION
5 April: In Berlin, Germany, lawyers file an urgent application on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza aimed at obtaining an immediate halt to Germany’s supply of weapons exports to Israel. (ELSC, 5 April 2024)
7 April: Around 600 German civil servants write to the chancellor and senior ministers calling on the government to ‘cease arms deliveries to the Israeli government with immediate effect’, citing their obligation as civil servants to follow international law and the constitution. (Al Jazeera, 7 April 2024)
EDUCATION
3 April: The DfE’s pilot scheme to cover the cost of relocation for non-UK teachers wishing to train in the teaching of physics or languages is dropped midway through its two-year cycle. (TES, 3 April 2024)
4 April: The DfE announces further budget cuts to the Uni Connect programme which aims to reduce ‘the gap in higher education participation between the most and least represented groups’. Funding for 2024-25 will be two-thirds less than it was in 2020-21. (THE, 4 April 2024)
9 April: Institute of Fiscal Studies research on the educational effects of Sure Start centres between 1999 and 2010 finds centres had a positive impact on non-white children and that ‘children eligible for free school meals living near a Sure Start centre increased their performance at GCSE by three grades relative to similarly poor children who were not able to access Sure Start’. (IFS, 9 April 2024)
9 April: Following a shooting by a 12-year-old boy in Vantaa, Finland, that led to the death of a fellow student, the education minister proposes ‘hybrid learning units’ for ‘troubled students’ with ‘violent tendencies’, a policy recommended by the Children’s Ombudsman. (YLE, 9 April 2024)
10 April: The Dutch education ministry admits that fraud checking on ‘non-resident grants’ given to various students, including those living in ‘neighbourhoods with a high number of residents with a migration background’ and with a ‘non-Dutch-sounding surname’, has led to more home checks. An algorithm provides a ‘risk score’ as to whether students were likely to be lying about their home status. (THE, 10 April 2024)
11 April: The European Roma Rights Centre and the National Association of Disadvantaged Families launch a legal action against a local municipality and other Hungarian institutions for failure to provide equal access to education and safety for Romani children who, since the bus service was stopped, must walk seven kilometres to reach their local school in Tiszavarsvári. (European Roma Rights Centre, 11 April 2024)
15 April: Birmingham City University, run by one of the UK’s few Black vice-chancellors, announces 23 free and funded places for aspiring doctoral students from ‘groups that have been historically under-represented in doctoral study’. (THE, 15 April 2024)
15 April: A report from Chance UK finds that ‘boys from White Irish Traveller, White Gypsy/Roma, Black Caribbean and Mixed White and Black Caribbean backgrounds were the groups most likely to experience permanent exclusion or suspension in primary school’. (Chance UK, 15 April 2024)
Our #TooYoungToLeaveBehind report highlighs the devastating impact of primary school #exclusions on children's lives.
Find out more: https://t.co/IF5fzOd3tP pic.twitter.com/c9XkvmOaB1
— Chance UK (@ChanceUK) April 15, 2024
16 April: A student loses her High Court discrimination case against Michaela Community School in north-west London, for imposing a ban on Muslim prayers at lunchtime. The judge rules that ‘the claimant at the very least impliedly accepted, when she enrolled at the school, that she would be subject to restrictions on her ability to manifest her religion.’ (TES, 16 April 2024)
HOUSING | POVERTY | WELFARE
4 April: Two-thirds of children’s social workers report seeing families living in homes with excessive mould or damp, according to a survey by the Social Workers Union. (Inside Housing, 4 April 2024; SWU, 4 April 2024)
8 April: Southwark Liberal Democrats raise fears that the borough is sleepwalking towards social segregation after it was revealed that new council homes funded by developers are concentrated in the poorest areas. (London News Online, 8 April 2024)
10 April: The Refugee Council reports an increase of 239% in homelessness among newly recognised refugees, to 12,630 households in the 2 years to September 2023, caused by a Home Office transition system ‘dysfunctional by design and discriminatory in delivery’. (Refugee Council, 10 April 2024, Guardian, 10 April 2024)
15 April: Newcastle’s GreenSquareAccord housing group and Yorkshire’s Manningham Housing Association (MHA) close their X/Twitter accounts citing the platform’s ‘prejudicial, racist and deeply unpleasant’ content. (Inside Housing, 8 April 2024, Prolific North, 15 April 2024)
HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
3 April: A new report shows that 33% of the 272 maternal deaths recorded in France from 2016 –2018 were migrants, with those born in sub-Saharan Africa 3.1 times more likely to die than those born in France. (Le Monde, 3 April 2024)
3 April: Hundreds of healthcare workers blockade the entrance of NHS England’s headquarters calling for an end to its contract with Palantir, an American software company that supplies technologies to Israel’s military as well as to the CIA and ICE. (Independent, 3 April 2024)
8 April: According to a Guardian analysis, Black women are up to six times more likely than their white counterparts to experience pre-eclampsia, a serious pregnancy complication that causes high blood pressure and protein in the urine. (Guardian, 8 April 2024)
9 April: A new study shows that ethnic minorities face an average of one year’s delay between first noticing symptoms and receiving a cancer diagnosis, twice as long as white people. (Guardian, 9 April 2024)
EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION
2 April: A tribunal finds that ‘unconscious bias’ produced a ‘subjective layer of decision making’ within the internal recruitment policy of London housing association L&C concerning who would ‘fit in’ and who they could be ‘100% sure of’. (Inside Housing, 2 April 2024)
4 April: In Ireland, the Workplace Relations Commission awards Sharanjeet Kaur, a chef and mother of two from India, €143,000 in damages for gross breaches of her employment rights. Kaur was ‘under constant threat of blackmail and deportation’ and was paid as little as €200 for a 50-hour working week. (RTE, 3 April 2024; MRCI, 4 April 2024)
4 April: A report by Focus on Labour Exploitation reveals that migrant workers coming to the UK on the seasonal work visa scheme are burdened with debts to cover travel and lack honest information about costs, pay and conditions of employment, making it difficult to escape exploitation. (EIN, 4 April 2024)
4 April: Over 50 members and supporters of UVW union descend on The Dorchester Hotel in central London to protest what they claim was discriminatory and abusive treatment of Teresa Calixto, a sacked Peruvian migrant cleaner and cloakroom attendant at the five-star hotel. (UVW Union, 4 April 2024)
10 April: Over 800 predominantly Black female and non-binary actors sign an open letter in solidarity with Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, targeted with online racial abuse after the announcement of her casting in a new production of Romeo & Juliet. (Guardian, 10 April 2024)
14 April: Outsourced migrant cleaners working at the Department for Education (DfE) threaten strike action over low pay and poor work conditions, amid concerns that black workers are not afforded the same rights as their predominantly white colleagues. (Independent, 14 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.
3 April: Leeds Pride ends its sponsorship agreement with TPP, the health tech company owned by Conservative donor Frank Hester, following his recent racist comments about Diane Abbott. (Guardian, 3 April 2024)
4 April: Following a 1,000-strong demonstration, Home Theatre Manchester reinstates the Voices of Resilience event celebrating Palestinian voices. (Morning Star, 4 April 2024)
Manchester activists protest outside HOME theatre to denounce its censorship of Palestinian voices by cancelling the “Voices of Resilience” event due to take place on April 22nd, 2024. pic.twitter.com/ML7kTuv4tE
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) March 30, 2024
5 April: A spokesman for Kier, a council contractor tasked with removing graffiti in Birmingham, apologises for painting over a mural of the late Benjamin Zephaniah, whose eponymous Family Legacy organisation states it had received assurances that the mural would be protected. (Guardian, 5 April 2024)
8 April: Cologne University, Germany, withdraws its invitation to US Jewish philosopher Nancy Fraser, to be 2024 Albertus Magnus Professor, for signing a statement titled ‘Philosophy for Palestine’. The interim president of The New School in New York describes the decision as a ‘simply outrageous’ assault on academic freedom. (X, 5 April 2024; Literary Hub , 8 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.
3 April: In Germany, the chair of the North Rhine Westphalia State Integration Council says xenophobia and right-wing extremism are most likely behind an arson attack in Solingen that on 25 March claimed the lives of a Bulgarian Muslim family of four and injured 23 others, nearly all Muslims of Turkish origin from Turkey and Bulgaria. Initially, the public prosecutor ruled out a xenophobic motive, saying the crime was ‘interpersonal’, but investigations are now ‘open ended’. (InfoMigrants, 28 March 2024, World Socialist Web, 3 April 2024)
6 April: Police release images of a woman they wish to speak to regarding an alleged hate crime in Stoke Newington, north London, in which a Muslim woman who was with her young children was racially abused by a woman who made an offensive gesture, grabbed her hijab and hit her in the face. (Hackney Gazette, 6 April 2024)
7 April: Hundreds attend a solidarity event outside a synagogue in Oldenburg, Germany, after an arson attack in which an unidentified man threw a Molotov cocktail against the door of the synagogue. (Deutsche Welle, 7 April 2024)
7 April: In Halle, Germany, a 36-year-old man who shouted racist abuse and threatened to bomb his ‘foreign-looking’ neighbours while threatening people with a toy gun is charged with illegal use of explosives after a search of his home discovered what appeared to be a detonation-ready device. (Deutsche Welle, 7 April 2024)
8 April: In South Belfast, police launch a hate crime investigation after the home of Takura Makoni, who has spoken out against anti-immigration signs in the Finaghy area, is daubed with racist graffiti. (Belfast Media, 8 April 2024)
This calendar is researched by IRR staff and compiled by Sophie Chauhan, with the assistance of Graeme Atkinson, Sam Berkson, Margaret McAdam, Louis Ordish and Anne Singh. 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.