ELECTORAL POLITICS| GOVERNMENT POLICY

26 June: The German government approves legislation to simplify deportations to Afghanistan, Syria and other countries for those who express support for terrorism, including through ‘liking’ social media posts, with no conviction necessary for an individual to be deported. (Deutsche Welle, 26 June 2024)

26 June: Labour is accused of ‘not putting up a fight’ against Reform party leader Nigel Farage in Clacton after its officials rebuked the party’s candidate, Jovan Owusu-Nepaul,  for distracting from Starmer’s campaign. (Guardian, 26 June 2024)

26 June: TBIJ uncovers a Facebook network of 11 groups, run by Reform activists, including 74 candidates, allegedly spreading misinformation and Islamophobia among the network’s 63,000 members. (TBIJ, 26 June 2024)

27 June: The Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris says that a bomb threat made on his family home was ‘utterly unacceptable’, and that everyone, including the media, needs to reflect. (RTE, 27 June 2024).

27 June: Channel 4 News secretly films a Reform UK canvasser making racist comments about Rishi Sunak and using slurs. Sunak says he is hurt and angry, adding that Farage, who has distanced himself from the incident, has ‘questions to answer’. (Guardian, 27 June 2024; Guardian, 28 June 2024)

28 June: Reform leader Nigel Farage says on BBC Question Time that he would use the Royal Marines to return migrants who cross the Channel to France. (Left Foot Forward, 28 June 2024)

28 June: Reform candidate Leslie Lilley calls migrants on small boats ‘scumbags’ and says he would ‘slaughter’ them and have their families ‘taken out’. (Left Foot Forward, 28 June 2024)

29 June: The EU signs a €1 billion short-term economic aid deal with Egypt, the first tranche of a €7.4 billion funding package, in exchange for stemming migrant flows to Europe and energy sales. Similar deals have been signed with Tunisia, Mauritania and Turkey. (Euractiv, 29 June 2024)

30 June: In a letter to the Labour leader, the Bangladesh High Commission objects to Starmer’s comments about deportations to Bangladesh, stating that Bangladesh has never been in the list of top 20 countries with the highest number of small boat arrivals and that no single return is pending. (ITV News, 30 June 2024)

30 June: In the first round of the French presidential elections, the far-right National Rally (RN) come in first, with 33.1 per cent of the vote, almost doubling its share of the vote from the 2022 legislative elections (18.68 per cent). (Le Monde, 1 July 2024) 

1 July: Hungary takes over the rotating presidency of the EU and vows to ‘stem illegal immigration’, a fortnight after being fined €200 million (and €1 million per day) by the EU Court of Justice for an ‘unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach of EU law’ in failing to comply with a 2020 judgment on giving access to asylum procedures. The government says it will not pay the fine. (ECRE Bulletin, 28 June 2024; EU Observer, 5 July 2024)

 

2 July: National Rally candidate for Calvados, Normandy, Ludivine Daoudi, is withdrawn from the second round of the French parliamentary elections after a photo of her wearing a Nazi cap bearing a swastika circulates on social media. (Le Monde, 2 July 2024)

3 July: Germany’s first black MP Karamba Diaby stands down to spend more time with his family. During his time in office, he had received bullets, death threats and hate mail, including racist slurs. (Guardian, 3 July 2024)

4 July: In the UK general election, won by Labour, the far-right Reform UK party wins five seats, coming in second in 103 constituencies. Measured by vote share (4 million), it is the third largest party. Independent candidates standing on a pro-Palestinian ticket win five seats (from Labour) with a former advisor to Tony Blair warning that Labour should ‘take the votes lost over Gaza as seriously as the loss of red wall’. (Left Foot Forward, 5 July 2024; Guardian, 5 July 2024; CNN 5 July 2024)

6 July: New prime minister Keir Starmer confirms that the Rwanda deportation scheme is ‘dead and buried’, and that his government will ‘smash the gangs’ bringing asylum seekers to the UK. (BBC News, 6 July 2024)

6 July: 1000 French historians issue a statement urging voters not to vote for the far Right, pointing out that ‘despite a superficial makeover’, the RN is ‘successor and heir of the National Front, founded in 1972 by people nostalgic for Vichy and French Algeria’ and that ‘national preference’ lies at the heart of its ideological programme. (Guardian, 6 July 2024)

7 July: Analysis of the election results shows that Labour’s vote share fell sharply in ethnically diverse seats, particularly those with large Muslim populations, while the Conservatives secured seats with large Hindu populations, gaining Leicester East (40 per cent Hindu) and obtaining its second-largest majority in Harrow East (28 per cent Hindu). (Guardian, 7 July 2024)

7 July: In the second round of voting in the French legislative elections, the far-right RN comes third, with 125 seats, (up from 88), achieving its best ever result in a parliamentary election. It did not gain the predicted absolute majority needed to form a government due to tactical voting and the fact that 200 candidates pulled out of the second round in order to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote. (Guardian, 7 July 2024)

8 July: A far-right alliance called Patriots for Europe is formed in the European parliament, comprising: National Rally (France), Fidesz (Hungary), Freedom party (Austria), Vlaams Belang (Belgium), ANO (Czech Republic), Voice of Reason (Greece), Party of Freedom (Netherlands), Chega (Portugal), Vox (Spain) and the Danish People’s Party. The League (Italy) is also expected to join. (Deutsche Welle, 7 July 2024; Politico, 8 July 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.

27 June: After investigative group Fanpage releases footage of the Brothers of Italy’s youth wing chanting ‘Duce’ and ‘Sieg Heil’, making antisemitic remarks and boasting of links to neofascist terror figures, opposition figures criticise party leader Giorgia Meloni for her lack of comment or condemnation. (Guardian, 27 June 2024)

27 June: In Italy, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, Victor Fadlun, calls for the prime minister to punish members of her party’s youth wing for making antisemitic and fascist comments, including the mocking of Jewish senator Ester Mieli. In a letter to party leaders, Meloni declares that there is no room in the party for those nostalgic for the fascist regimes of the 20^th century. (USNews, 27 June 2024; Taipei Times, 4 July 2024)

29 June: Police use pepper spray and tear gas to disperse anti-fascists attempting to stop delegates attending an AfD congress in Essen, Germany. (Deutsche Welle, 29 June 2024)

1 July: A member of the French Psychedelic Society shares an image of an ecstasy tablet bearing the symbol of the Nazi Eagle. While the use of drugs containing Nazi imagery was once described as a ‘limited phenomenon’, it is becoming much more common across Europe. (Vice, 1 July 2024)

1 July: In Germany the Munich administrative court rules that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is allowed to monitor the Bavarian association of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a suspected extremist group. The court cites evidence that the AfD has an anti-constitutional orientation. (DW, 1 July 2024)

1 July: In Halle, Germany, AfD politician Bjorn Hocke is fined €16,900 after he uttered the first two words of the Nazi stormtroopers’ slogan ‘Everything for Germany’ and goaded a crowd into completing the phrase. (DW, 1 July 2024)

4 July: The ultra-right website ‘Free Network – the Patriots’ Network’ calls for the ‘elimination’ of around 100 lawyers in France who signed a letter in support of a ‘law brigade’ against the RN, illustrating the blog post with a guillotine. (Le Monde, 4 July 2024)

6 July: In Spain, members of the far Right are using language referencing Spain’s 15^th century Reconquista to target Muslims and call for their expulsion as ‘invaders’. Specific events and historical figures are commonly referenced including El Cid and the Christian takeover of Granada. (AA, 6 July 2024)

POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

26 June: Two Hampshire police officers who exchanged more than 800 racist, sexist, misogynistic and homophobic messages on WhatsApp are dismissed, with a chief constable saying they were ‘among the most abhorrent’ messages he had ever seen. (BBC, 26 June 2024)

29 June: On the first anniversary of the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, a rally in his memory is held in Nanterre, Paris, France. The far-right National Rally, citing ‘security concerns’ in housing projects and the banlieues, calls on police to be granted a specific new legal status whereby those who use weapons during an intervention would be ‘presumed’ to have acted in self-defence. (Al Jazeera, 29 June 2024)

1 July: At a train station near Nuremberg in Bavaria, Germany, police shoot dead a 34-year-old Iranian man who was allegedly carrying a knife and had targeted a police car. No information about the identity of the man is revealed. (Yahoo, 1 July 2024)

1 July: A public inquiry hears that the Met has issued a series of wide-ranging apologies to campaigners spied on in the 1980s and 1990s, admitting that it was ‘particularly indefensible that many of the anti-racism campaigns’ infiltrated by undercover officers  ‘were seeking justice for members of the Black and Asian communities’ and attempting to hold police to account. (Guardian, 1 July 2024)

1 July: Merseyside Police Commissioner data from April 2023 to March 2024 reveals that 5,623 people across Merseyside were subjected to stop and search, with those who identify as Black being almost twice as likely to be searched and disproportionately subjected to the use of force. (Yahoo, 1 July 2024)

6 July: A court in Greece finds three right-wing extremists who abducted 13 refugees in August 2023 guilty of illegal detention, but ignores the racist motives of the perpetrators. Eyewitnesses claim that the proceedings amounted to a ‘mock trial’ and a ‘farce’, with the convicted men facing fines but walking free. (The Press Project, 6 July 2024)

7 July: UNICEF France describes as ‘deeply disturbing’ the absence of French electoral debate about children’s rights, which were mentioned only to advocate for tougher penal policies that would treat minors as adults in arrest and sentencing. (Le Monde, 7 July 2024)

9 July: Amnesty International publishes ‘Under protected and over restricted’, a report that examines 21 countries across Europe where the right to protest is under serious threat. (AI, 9 July 2024) 

ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP

Asylum and migrant rights 

25 June: UK and EU visa applications for artists and musicians from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are ‘complicated, costly and unequal’, with unfair rejection rates as high as 40-70 per cent for African visitors, according to analysis from the Lago Collective. (Guardian, 25 June 2024)

26 June: A report by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law into the impact of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 on modern slavery finds a significant decrease in positive decisions and a ‘wholly negative’ impact on the victims of modern slavery. (EIN, 26 June 2024)

28 June: The Refugee Council publishes ‘Asylum: Day one challenges for the next government’, an overview of problems and recommendations on asylum policy. (Refugee Council, 28 June 2024)

1 July: In the lead up to the election, a letter written by the Open Rights Group and signed by 37 organisations calls on MPs to ‘shun hateful and inflammatory’ language against migrants and to support the concept of ‘digital security’ for migrants. (Statewatch, 1 July 2024)

Borders and internal controls

28 June: Frontex officials are deliberately turning a blind eye to systematic pushbacks and rights violations at the Albania-Greece border, according to a report by BIRN. (Balkan Insight, 28 June 2024)

3 July: Statewatch publishes its second bulletin monitoring EU externalisation policy, revealing the billions of euros spent on externalising border controls to non-EU ‘partners’. (Statewatch, 3 July 2024)

5 July: A joint UN survey of 32,000 people over three years finds that smugglers are not the main perpetrators of violence against migrants, much of which comes from law enforcement authorities as well as criminal gangs and armed groups. (IOM, 5 July 2024; EU Observer, 9 July 2024) 

8 July: Poland’s border guards state that in the three weeks since the introduction of an exclusion zone at the border with Belarus, the number of ‘illegal’ crossing attempts has fallen by more than half. (Notes from Poland, 8 July 2024)

Reception and detention

26 June: The University of Birmingham and Rainbow Migration publish a report revealing institutionalised homophobia in the Home Office, and a ‘heterosexist, homophobic asylum system that violently abandons queer people most in need of protection’, citing incidents of assault in asylum accommodation and homophobic abuse by interpreters in Home Office interviews and court hearings. (Big Issue, 26 June 2024; EIN, 4 July 2024))

27 June: After home secretary James Cleverley suggests asylum seekers at Wethersfield falsely claim to feel suicidal, an investigation by Inews and Liberty Investigates reveals seven suspected suicides by asylum seekers in Home Office accommodation in four months of 2023. (inews, 27 June 2024) 

30 June: A report by the Helen Bamber Foundation and Humans for Rights Network into the Wethersfield site finds that moving vulnerable asylum seekers from the site has become more difficult, causing a ‘mass deterioration’ in the physical and mental health of the men there and increasing levels of suicide ideation, attempted suicide, self-harming and refusing to eat. (Guardian, 30 June 2024; EIN, 1 July 2024)

3 July: Amnesty International reports that asylum seekers in Italy are illegally deprived of their liberty, in poorly equipped, inadequate and restrictive centres that violate their right to dignity. (InfoMigrants, 3 July 2024)

6 July: Hundreds of protesters, carrying placards saying ‘defend our neighbourhoods’ and ‘stop illegal immigration’, demonstrate in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, governed by Spain, where around 19,999 asylum seekers have arrived so far this year, after authorities refused demands to ban the protest as a ‘hate crime’. (Guardian, 6 July 2024)

7 July: The children’s commissioner of England, Rachel de Souza, is to visit the Manston immigration processing centre in Kent, following concerns raised about the treatment of children there. (Guardian, 7 July 2024)

Deportations

29 June: In Cyprus, police announce that 201 people living illegally in the country were deported in one week, with 139 leaving voluntarily. (Cyprus Mail, 29 June 2024)

5 July: The High Court rules that guidance by Tory ministers telling civil servants to ignore rulings from Strasbourg and deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is lawful, whilst accepting that ignoring an interim order to stop removal from the ECHR would be in breach of international law and that civil servants’ statutory obligation includes complying with international law. (Guardian, 5 July 2024)

Crimes of solidarity

26 June: A judge in Crotone, Calabria, Italy annuls the administrative detention of the sea rescue vessel Humanity 1, operated by German NGO SOS Humanity, imposed on 4 March for ignoring instructions from the Libyan coastguard. He rules that despite the 2017 Italy-Libya memorandum on rescue, Libya cannot be considered a safe place, and orders the Italian authorities to pay the NGO’s legal costs of €14,000. (InfoMigrants, 26 June 2024) 

1 July: Two protesters go on trial at Stratford magistrates’ court charged with highway obstruction for allegedly being in a 60-strong crowd stopping asylum seekers from being moved from a Peckham hotel to the Bibby Stockholm barge on 2 May. (Standard, 1 July 2024)

2 July: Italian authorities detain the MV Louise Michel, financed by Banksy, at Lampedusa for 20 days after the vessel rescued 37 people (including 17 lone children) from the central Mediterranean and took them to Lampedusa instead of disembarking them in Pozzalo, Sicily, because of bad weather. (Guardian, 3 July 2024) 

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.

27 June: As talks between UCU staff and management aimed at averting strikes break down, striking Black staff members claim they have been ‘victimised and discriminated against’ (THE, 27 June 2024)

28 June: A media account of the Palestine solidarity student movement finds that fifteen of the 35 Gaza encampments at UK universities have concluded. (Middle East Eye, 28 June 2024)

28 June: The LSE is granted a court order indefinitely barring encampments in one of its buildings. The occupation was sparked by claims in the Assets in Apartheid report that the LSE has invested £89m in 137 companies involved in the conflict in Gaza, fossil fuels, the arms industry or nuclear weapons production. (Guardian, 28 June 2024)

Recently, @LSEnews took students to court for protesting the university’s complicity in genocide. Apparently LSE is more interested in protecting predators rather than its own students. Shame. pic.twitter.com/2Jjqag7m8A

— Slime Watch (@SL1MEW4TCH) June 27, 2024

30 June:  A Warwick conservative student group apologises for a video that shows members singing and dancing to a Nazi marching song at a chairman’s dinner at the Warwick Conservative Association. (Sky News, 30 June 2024)

2 July: A survey by Teacher Tapp finds that 50 percent of senior leaders in schools in the most disadvantaged areas of England expect to cut teaching assistant jobs in the next year, along with small-group tutoring, school trips and building and equipment maintenance. (TES, 2 July 2024)

2 July: Universities are accused of collaboration with police to target, surveil and potentially criminalise students after a Metro/ Liberty Investigates report reveals that some UK universities are monitoring pro-Palestinian protesters and allegedly offering intelligence to police. (Liberty Investigates, 2 July 2024)

4 July: A growing trend in students not taking up their place at universities (more than 10 per cent at some universities) is blamed on the rising cost of living. (THE, 4 July 2024)

4 July: A review of maths teaching by the Education Endowment Fund (EEF) concludes that the most qualified maths teachers are being deployed to ‘high-stakes classes, leaving younger pupils and low attainers without specialist teachers’. (TES, 4 July 2024)

8 July: A survey by Etio of international students across 24 countries shows that at UK institutions, international students experience levels of discrimination similar to the global average (21 percent). Students from East and South-east Asian (ESEA) backgrounds are more likely to be affected, with 41 percent of Chinese students reporting  discrimination based on race and ethnicity. (THE, 8 July 2024)

HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE

28 June: An NHS review of West Midlands hospitals raises concerns over racist and discriminatory behaviour towards patients by midwives, including disregard for women whose first language is not English; denial of access to interpreters; instances of senior members of staff calling women in labour ‘Asian princesses’ for requesting pain relief; claims that asylum-seeking women were ‘gaming the system’; and a member of staff mimicking a women who had just lost her baby. (Independent, 28 June 2024) 

HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE

26 June: The mother of a 16-year-old autistic girl, who claims that a security guard at Kingston Hospital in London knelt on her daughter’s neck before a senior nurse dragged her across the floor, expresses concerns at the long delays in investigating her complaint that amounts she says to an ‘attempted cover-up’. (London News, 26 June 2024)

EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION 

1 July: In a significant victory, an employment tribunal makes an interim order that a private healthcare company pay the wages of migrant nurse Kirankumar Rathod, who was recruited from India in 2023 on a sponsorship certificate promising full-time care work after paying £22,000 to an immigration agent, but left without work or pay in the UK and dismissed when he complained. (Guardian, 1 July 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.

28  June: The French broadcasting regulator warns Europe 1 C8 TV news channel radio programme, hosted by Cyril Hanounam, that it lacks ‘honesty’ in its election coverage, favouring the far-right National Rally. Two former CNews commentators, Pierre Centillet and Guillaume Bigot, are standing in the election as RN candidates. (Le Monde, 28 June 2024)

29 June: A joint media and anti-fascist researchers’ investigation into the online pro-Israel hate network, the Shirion Collective, identifies Florida tech entrepreneur Daniel Linden as playing a key role on social media and a private Telegram channel where the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza are repeatedly celebrated and Islamophobic and antisemitic content about George Soros is shared. (Guardian, 29 June 2024)

29 June: Reform UK claims Channel 4 used an actor as a plant in an undercover exposé of the party, which Channel 4 denies. Reform UK reports the channel to the elections watchdog. (Independent, 29 June 2024)

29 June: Farage accuses the BBC of bias over its Friday Question Time programme, in which he was criticised as a racist by an audience member and forced to disown three Reform candidates as he was presented with their reportedly offensive remarks. (Guardian, 29 June 2024)

5 July: Turkish national footballer Merih Demiral is ruled out of the European Championships in Germany after being handed a two-game suspension by UEFA for a hand gesture associated with the ultranationalist Grey Wolf organisation. (ESPN, 5 July 2024)

6 July: The Centre for Media Monitoring, the Muslim Vote and social media users criticise journalists for spreading Islamophobic tropes after they attribute the successes of Muslim independent candidates in the general election to ‘sectarian’ voting’ (Jewish Chronicle), ‘failures of integration’ (Telegraph) and ‘voting with their religion’ (ITV). (Observer, 6 July 2024; Middle East Eye, 5 July 2024)

8 July: The French rugby federation (FFR) suspends fullback Melvyn Jaminet from the national team after a video surfaces in which he stated ‘The first Arab I meet on the street, I’m going to butt him’. (LeMonde, 8 July 2024)

RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT

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

26 June: Following the release of crime statistics, the Garda Commissioner says that anti-immigrant sentiment is a ‘driver’ in the 11 percent increase in arson offences in Ireland. (RTE, 26 June 2024)

4 July: SOS-Racisme lodges six complaints of racist incidents linked to support for the far Right in the French elections. In Créteil, a man rams his car into a bus, threatening to kill the driver while using anti-Black and anti-Arab slurs. Two men are convicted in relation to a racially motivated physical assault in Cressy on a man called a ‘Dirty Arab’, while a couple are called ‘Dirty shit Arab’ and told they will be deported. (Le Monde, 4 July 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.