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
29 March: The High Court rules that the ‘immigration exemption’ in the Data Protection Act, which is used to stop those subject to immigration control from seeing or correcting data held by the Home Office, is unlawful, in a challenge brought by the Open Rights group and the 3Million. (Free Movement, 29 March 2023)
29 March: As UNHCR’s UK representative warns that the Illegal Migration Bill could topple the international protection system for refugees in a ‘domino effect’, New Zealand’s Labour government introduces a bill to imprison asylum seekers arriving by small boat. (Guardian, 29 March 2023, Guardian, 29 March 2023)
30 March: It is revealed that Afghans seeking resettlement in the UK must still produce documents stamped by the Taliban government, despite assurances that the requirement would be waived. (Guardian, 30 March 2023)
30 March: The UK authorities grant ‘third-country asylum’ in an as yet undisclosed country to two Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers who were transferred to Rwanda from British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) after they attempted suicide. They had arrived in Diego Garcia in October 2021, where they were held in a fenced camp. (New Humanitarian, 30 March 2023)
30 March: The European Court of Human Rights rules that Italy violated fundamental rights including liberty, freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment and protection from collective expulsion, by summarily detaining and deporting four Tunisians who were rescued and landed in Lampedusa. (ECRE/EWLU, 7 April 2023)
3 April: Following a legal challenge launched by Women for Refugee Women last year, the Home Office and the Legal Aid Agency announce that all legal advice surgeries in immigration detention are to take place face-to-face. (Women for Refugee Women, 13 April 2023)
5 April: A mother and her two children go missing from Serco-managed asylum hotel accommodation in Stockport where another refugee family, who suffered violence and abuse there, were forced to leave and are now homeless. Stockport social services confirm the poor conditions in the hotel. (Morning Star,13 April 2023)
6 April: The Black Equity Organisation launches legal action against the home secretary over her refusal to implement three crucial recommendations from the Windrush Lessons Learned Review, as a petition with 50,000 signatories is delivered to Downing Street urging a reversal of the decision. (Guardian, 6 April 2023)
6 April: Amnesty International criticises Austria for its ongoing unlawful pushbacks, for housing asylum seekers in tents and the disappearance of 5,140 unaccompanied children seeking asylum within a period of six months in 2022. (ECRE Newsletter, 6 April 2023)
Borders and internal controls
29 March: Ten organisations including Statewatch sign a submission to the European Commission opposing its plan for a security-related information sharing system between frontline police and border officers in the EU and key partner countries, saying it will bolster externalisation of borders and human rights violations. (Statewatch, 29 March 2023)
29 March: Under Italy’s new border control policy that prevents multiple rescues, the NGO rescue ship Louise Michel, having just rescued 178 migrants, is impounded in Lampedusa, preventing it from attempting a new rescue mission for 20 days. (Euronews, 29 March 2023)
6 April: After AI finds that Hungary is the top EU state for pushbacks using different kinds of force, with 157,879 cases by the end of December 2022, a government spokesperson says they have violated neither EU nor Hungarian law. (ECRE Newsletter, 7 April 2023)
6 April: It emerges that on 24 March, the body of the 40th victim of the ‘crisis’ on the Polish-Belarusian border was discovered during a civic patrol near the Hwoźna River in Poland’s Białowieża National Park. The body of an Afghan man was found in the same area earlier in the month. At least 200 people are missing. (ECRE Newsletter, 7 April 2023)
8 April: A freedom of information request confirms the Home Office has no evidence to support the claim, made by Priti Patel as home secretary and later supported by Suella Braverman, that 70% of people coming to the UK on small boats are economic migrants. (Observer, 8 April 2023)
10 April: The Italian coastguard launches rescue missions for 400 migrants on board a capsizing boat stranded in the central Mediterranean after Maltese authorities order a merchant ship not to conduct a rescue in the Maltese search and rescue area but to supply the boat with fuel so it can continue to Italy. (Reuters, 10 April 2023, CNN, 10 April 2023)
Reception and detention
26 March: Detainee Frank Ospina, believed to be 39 and Colombian, dies at Colnbrook immigration removal centre, reportedly suicide. Following his death detainees reveal more suicide attempts as charities highlight delays in vulnerability assessments of people at risk of suicide in detention. (Guardian, 1 April 2023)
29 March: Immigration minister Robert Jenrick says asylum seekers are to be housed in ‘the most basic accommodation possible’ in disused army and air force bases in Essex, Sussex, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and possibly on disused cruise ships or barges, to reduce costs as it emerges that one-third of the international aid budget is being used for UK asylum accommodation. (Independent, 29 March 2023, Guardian, 29 March 2023)
29 March: The Jesuit Refugee Society (JRS) publishes Napier Barracks: the inhumane reality, drawing on the experiences of 17 quasi-detainees between July and November 2022. (JRS, 29 March 2022)
1 April: West Lincolnshire district council launches legal action against Home Office plans to use RAF Scampton as accommodation for up to 2,000 asylum seekers, claiming it will affect plans for a £300m regeneration project. (Guardian, 1 April 2023)
2 April: A study confirms that the origin of an outbreak of typhoid in spring 2022 on the Liberty Ann ship in Haarlem, Netherlands (affecting 72 asylum seekers, 25 requiring hospitalisation) was a leak of raw sewage mixed in to freshwater for drinking and cooking. (Guardian, 2 April 2023)
4 April: Photographs received by the Guardian expose appalling conditions inside a former prison in East Sussex where the Home Office plans to accommodate 800 asylum seekers by September and 1,200 by December. (Guardian, 4 April 2023)
4 April: The European Court of Human Rights rules that living conditions for a pregnant Ghanaian woman in an asylum camp without adequate sanitation in Samos, Greece, were inhuman and degrading. (ECRE/EWLU, 7 April 2023)
5 April: As home secretary Suella Braverman announces that the Bibby Stockholm, a barge moored off Portland Harbour, Dorset, will be used to house 500 asylum seekers, Tory MPs and local police forces warn that the plans to use former air force bases and boats could turn their constituencies into hotbeds of far-right activism. (I, 5 April 2023)
6 April: 171 organisations write to the prime minister warning of a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ if plans go ahead to accommodate asylum seekers in camps on former military bases with prison-like conditions. (Guardian, 6 April 2023)
6 April: In Berlin, Germany, migrants and asylum seekers living in hotels and hostels are told they will soon have to vacate accommodation to make way for tourists and will be moved to Tempelhof, site of the former Berlin airport, with refugees from Ukraine sent to Tegel. (Schengen visa news, 6 April 2023)
7 April: Around 200 asylum seekers staying at the Beresford hotel in Newquay, Cornwall, since November, are moved to alternative accommodation in south-east England, with only 24 hours’ notice, they say. Cornwall Council says the decision was taken without informing the council. (BBC News, 7 April 2023, Cornwall Live, 7 April 2023)
7 April: ECRE reports that 26 asylum seekers started a hunger strike at the Guarded Center for Foreigners in Krosno Odrzański, Poland, protesting their arbitrary detention, which has been extended twice. (ECRE Newsletter, 7 April 2023)
9 April: In Genoa, Italy, local councillor Ferruccio Sansa (Lista Sansa party) after visiting the hosting facility of Via del Campasso, in Sampierdarena district, says that he cannot believe what he saw, with migrants receiving only one meal a day and sleeping on mattresses on the floor in rooms infested with insects and parasites. (InfoMigrants, 9 April 2023)
Deportations
5 April: After a public outcry, the Home Office ‘pauses’ the deportation of 4 of the 13 security guards, 11 Nepalese and 2 Indian, who protected the British embassy in Kabul and were airlifted to the UK in 2021, detained a week ago, including 2 who had been granted indefinite leave to remain. (Guardian, 5 April 2023, Guardian, 3 April 2023)
7 April: In France, following a complaint from the Human Rights League, a judge from the crimes against humanity section of the Paris court opens an investigation into the controversial 2021 expulsion to Russia of Chechen dissident Magomed Gadaev which was agreed by the interior minister after a visit to Russia. (RFI, April 2023)
7 April: In a move that is linked to its NATO bid, Sweden agrees to extradite Omer Altun, a 29-year-old Turkish citizen sentenced last year in absentia to 15 years in prison for fraud. A Turkish extradition request for Swedish citizen, Mehmet Zakir Krayel, accused of being a member of an ‘armed terrorist organisation’, is rejected. (The Local, 7 April 2023)
8 April: International postgraduate student Rasikh Aziz faces deportation as the University of Law withdraws its place and reports him to the Home Office after he arrived two months early because it gave him the wrong enrolment date. (Observer, 8 April 2023)
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.
30 March: The Conservative president of the Regional Council of Ile-de-France, Valérie Pécresse, asks the education ministry to rename the Angela Davis High School after Rosa Parks, claiming Davis’s support of Muslim women who wear the headscarf violates laïcité, adding that to allege systemic racism in France is an attack on ‘French republican universalism’. (Mediapart, 28 March 2023, Guardian, 30 March 2023)
31 March: In the run-up to the May general election in Greece, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledges to nearly double the length of an existing wall across the country’s entire land border with Turkey over the next year, also accusing the Syriza party of supporting ‘open borders’. (Associated Press, 31 March 2023)
2 April: The home secretary announces a consultation on child sexual abuse and a new mandatory duty on safeguarding professionals to report abuse. Braverman accuses professionals of turning a ‘blind eye’ to British Pakistani grooming gangs because they fear ‘being called racist’, resulting in ‘thousands of children’ having their ‘childhoods robbed and devasted’ with ‘many of the perpetrators still running wild’. (Daily Express, 2 April 2023)
2 April: The prime minister tweets that ‘political correctness should never get in the way of keeping women and young girls safe’. Sunak promises a crackdown on ‘grooming gangs’ including ‘tough sentences for gang members’ and ‘collecting ethnicity data on suspects’. (Guardian, 3 April 2023)
3 April: In the Finnish general election, the far-Right Finns party emerges as the second largest party with 46 seats (20.1% of the vote, up 7 seats), with the potential now that the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP) may form a coalition government with the anti-immigration party. (Guardian, 3 April 2023)
3 April: With Electoral Commission data showing not a single case of voter impersonation last year, the government faces renewed accusations that the introduction of voter photo-ID is designed to exclude poor voters. (Guardian, 3 April 2023)
4 April: In order to avoid exclusion from a general election in Greece under a new law barring parties whose members have been convicted of participating in a criminal conspiracy, the far-right Ellines (Greeks National) party, whose imprisoned founder was a member of Golden Dawn, chooses as its new leader former Supreme Court prosecutor Anastasios Kanellopoulos. (Balkan Insight, 4 April 2023, Euractiv, 6 April 2023)
4 April: Far-right Brothers of Italy MP Fabio Rampelli suggests a new law introducing fines of up to €100,000 for public employees using foreign words in public communications, as well as penalties for firms that use foreign terms for job titles or schools and universities that use non-Italian expressions. (CBS News, 4 April 2023)
5 April: The far-right Finns Party, citing Finnish security policy since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leaves the nationalist Identity and Democracy grouping in the European parliament and joins the European Conservatives and Reformists in order to support the ‘uncompromising defence of Western civilisation and the European security policy architecture’. (Politico, 5 April 2023)
5 April: Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson condemns the UK’s home secretary for ‘discriminatory and xenophobic’ comments signalling her ‘intent to target and treat British Pakistanis differently’. Braverman had told Sky News that British Pakistani men ‘hold cultural values at odds with British values’. (Al Jazeera, 5 April 2023)
6 April: During an Italian parliamentary debate opposing legislation aimed at improving prison conditions for pregnant women and young mothers (subsequently withdrawn), the far-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini (The League) declared: ‘The Democratic Party frees Roma pickpockets who use children and pregnancy to avoid prison and continue to commit crimes.’ (ERRC, 6 April 2023)
7 April: Amidst criticism from Conservatives, Scottish nationalists and even within her own party, Labour’s shadow justice minister Lucy Powell defends a ‘law and order’ ad, released before the May elections, claiming Rishi Sunak does not believe child sexual abusers should be jailed, as a ‘skit’ and part of the ‘cut and thrust’ of political debates. (Guardian 7 April 2023)
7 April: The deputy chair of the far-right Alternative for Germany, Norbert Kleinwaechter, defends using AI-generated images of ‘angry and aggressive’ ‘dark-haired bearded’ migrants even though the picture is fake, saying ‘We have a horde of migrants in the streets of Berlin, and they make the city unsafe and yell’. (WorldCrunch, 7 April 2023)
8 April: As former Labour minister David Blunkett criticises the child abuse Labour advertisement, the party issues a second with a similar format, accusing Sunak of being soft on gun crime. Shadow attorney-general Emily Thornberry says those who criticised the first ad as racist are wrong. (Guardian, 8 April 2023)
9 April: London mayor Sadiq Kahn accuses Suella Braverman of dragging her feet over drafting new laws giving police chiefs power to sack dangerous officers. (Observer, 9 April 2023)
10 April: In a Daily Mail article, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says he stands by the party’s recent controversial child abuse advert and will ‘make absolutely zero apologies for being blunt’, adding that over the last decade ‘the UK has become a country where thugs, gangs and monsters mock our justice system and make decent people’s lives a misery’. (Guardian, 10 April 2023)
10 April: In Austria, the ÖVP (Conservative) party finance minister Magnus Brunner is forced to retract a statement indicating his openness to forming a coalition government with the far-right Freedom party. (Euractiv, 10 April 2023)
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.
30 March: A 16-year-old boy who planned to attack two West Yorkshire mosques and was inspired by the Christchurch mass murderer is found guilty of terrorist offences at Leeds Crown Court. (Mirror, 30 March 2023)
1 April: Former Gloucestershire boarding school pupil Oliver Riley, 19, avoids jail after admitting terrorism offences, including posting 23 videos that glorified Nazism and terrorist attacks and had racist and homophobic content. A three-year community order is justified on grounds of ‘genuine remorse’. (BBC, 1 April 2023)
5 April: In response to a parliamentary question, the German justice ministry states that the police are aware of 16 ‘enemy lists’, including politicians and their staff, compiled by the extreme Right, Covid-19 deniers and Citizens of the Reich. (News in Germany, 5 April 2023)
7 April: The Police Authority in Sweden appeals a court ruling overturning a decision to block two gatherings where far-right protesters had planned to burn the Koran. (The Local, 7 April 2023)
11 April: Britain First leader Paul Golding is confirmed as a candidate in May local elections for Dartford council, Swanscombe ward, under the banner ‘Britain First – Housing for Locals’. (Kent Online, 11 April 2023)
POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Cases of police racism and sexism – and the way they are dealt with – are often linked, and as a reflection of this, this section includes information on police misogyny.
30 March: The Independent Office for Police Conduct refers Met firearms officer NX121 to prosecutors to consider a potential murder charge for shooting dead Chris Kaba in Streatham, south London, in September 2022. (Guardian, 30 March 2023)
31 March: An investigation by Open Democracy finds that the legal budget for the Police Federation of England and Wales has increased by 25% since 2018, with the 2023 legal budget at a record £12m. (Open Democracy, 31 March 2023)
1 April: 25 years after the death of Christopher Alder, South Yorkshire police admit that they ‘may have’ used his body for training of recruits, years after he was believed to have been buried. (Guardian, 1 April 2023)
3 April: In Paris, France, the trial in absentia begins of Lebanese-Canadian university professor Hassan Diab, accused of the 1980 Copernic synagogue attack, in which four people died. AI supports calls for the charges to be dropped. (Guardian, 3 April 2023)
4 April: At a police misconduct hearing, it emerges that six Manchester officers formed ‘The Dispensables’, sharing offensive remarks about British Pakistanis and others. (Manchester Evening News, 4 April 2023)
6 April: According to Liberty Investigates data analysis based on FOI requests, 47% of girls subjected to strip-searches by the Met police between 2021 and 2022 were black. Black girls were almost three times more likely than their white counterparts to be subjected to the most invasive form of strip search in which their intimate parts were exposed. 75% of these strip searches resulted in no further action. (Guardian, 6 April 2023)
6 April: The Met police commissioner says that one in 200 of his officers has a criminal conviction and that if he is to deal with the biggest corruption crisis since the 1970s he needs more legal powers to remove suspect officers. Sir Mark Rowley is criticised for not extending Operation Onyx, which looks at sexual or offence or domestic abuse allegations against officers, to officers accused of racism. (Guardian, 6 April 2023; Mirror, 6 April 2023; Met Police, 6 April 2023)
6 April: Refugees for Justice demand that the Crown Office ‘urgently’ publishes its investigation which described as ‘proportionate’ the fatal shooting by police of asylum seeker Badreddin Abdalla Adam Bosh, who had attacked six people with a knife at the Park Inn hotel, Glasgow, Scotland, in June 2020. Badreddin’s brother calls for an independent investigation. (BBC News, 6 April 2023)
📣📣📣 🚨🚨🚨
REFUGEES FOR JUSTICE RESPONSE TO STATEMENT FROM CROWN OFFICE THAT PARK INN FATAL SHOOTING WAS 'ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY'
— Refugees for Justice 🧡 (@refugee4justice) April 11, 2023
8 April: An administrative court in Greece orders the state to pay €19,000 compensation to three anti-fascists for degrading treatment at the hands of the Attica General Police Directorate in September 2012 following a protest against Golden Dawn. Lawyers for the plaintiff issue a statement saying the treatment amounted to torture (Efsyn, 8 April 2023)
8 April: South Wales Police says it will continue the use of facial recognition technology after a study it commissioned jointly with the Met police concluded the technology does not discriminate. The civil liberties organisation Liberty state that it will be used ‘disproportionately against communities of colour’. (BBC News, 8 April 2023)
DISCRIMINATION | EQUALITIES | HUMAN RIGHTS
28 March: Research from the University of Glasgow shows that Romanian migrants, who comprise the second-largest migrant group in the UK, have experienced an increase in racism since the Brexit vote of 2016. The report also notes that the economic, physical and mental health impact of Covid-19 has further disadvantaged this group. (TFN, 29 March 2023)
30 March: The Amaro Foro DOSTA centre in Berlin, Germany, records 374 incidents of anti-Roma discriminatory acts in 2021 and 2022. Roma refugees from Ukraine and from Moldova are treated as ‘illegitimate refugees’, with one woman, receiving chemotherapy, thrown out of a Berlin hospital by security guards who said ‘You only come here to eat and drink anyway’. (Deutsche Welle, 30 March 2023)
9 April: An ESRC-funded academic research project that surveyed more than 14,000 people across 21 ethnic groups, including white British, provides evidence of discrimination and unfairness in education, employment, housing and policing, concluding that the government-commissioned Sewell report on racial disparities downplayed the existence of structural and institutional racism. (Guardian, 9 April 2023)
EDUCATION
31 March: After Czech Senator Jana Zwyrtek Hamplová proposes segregating Romani children in school, the Commissioner for Romani Affairs objects to open racism and apartheid. (Romea, 31 March 2023)
4 April: Sweden’s education minister Mats Persson asks the Swedish Higher Education Authority to investigate academic freedom on campus, alleging that action is needed to tackle a widespread ‘cancel culture’ highlighting the ‘very problematic’ issue of ‘intersectional feminism’. (THE, 4 April 2023)
5 April: Dutch student Robin Pocornie takes a case to the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights claiming the anti-cheating exam software Proctorio used by VU Amsterdam is racially discriminatory, as it fails to recognise black students unless a lamp is directly shone on their face. (Wired, 5 April 2023)
9 April: It emerges that foreign students from African and Asian countries who fled Ukraine when Russia invaded have been forced to return to the country to take an exam to secure their diplomas, with the Kyiv Medical University telling them they are ‘responsible for their own safety and life’. (Euronews, 9 April 2023)
HOUSING | POVERTY | WELFARE
28 March: Somali families supported by Coffee Afrik protest outside Tower Hamlets Council saying that it is guilty of racial discrimination and social cleansing through the housing waiting list. (Open Democracy, 28 March 2023)
2 April: FOI requests reveal that 1,173 homeless people in England and Wales have been arrested for sleeping rough or begging under the archaic Vagrancy Act, despite a government pledge to scrap it. (Observer, 2 April 2023)
4 April: In an official communication, the UN special rapporteurs on housing, extreme poverty and human rights criticise France’s proposed ‘anti-squatting’ law for introducing new crimes, heftier prison sentence and fines of up to €7,500 for tenants who remain in their dwellings after eviction proceedings, and for further threatening the housing rights of the already vulnerable. (Le Monde, 4 April 2023)
9 April: Figures released by the government reveal that the number of homeless families housed in hotels and B&Bs for longer than the legal limit by English councils has doubled in a year, from 570 in 2021 to 1,210 families. Data from London councils reveals an 180% increase in families being housed in hotels and B&Bs for more than six weeks from 2021 to 2022. (Guardian, 9 April 2023)
EMPLOYMENT | EXPLOITATION | INDUSTRIAL ACTION
30 March: New research from Colorintech, backed by the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology, reports that 61% of ethnic minorities experience discrimination working in the tech sector and suggests improved pathways for ethnic minority employees. (Response Source, 30 March 2023)
30 March: HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services reports that discrimination, bullying and harassment are rife within every fire and rescue service in England, describing a culture of misogyny, racism and homophobia supported by a ‘pack-like’ mentality where employees fear reporting colleagues’ behaviour. (HMICFRS, 30 March 2023)
3 April: A study by the Chartered Institute for Procurement and Supply finds that only 29% of companies required to produce a modern slavery statement submitted one in 2022, a 46% drop from the previous year. (Guardian, 3 April 2023)
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.
31 March: Five former Yorkshire cricket players and coaches, John Blain, Tim Bresnan, Andrew Gale, Matthew Hoggard and Richard Pyrah are found to have brought the game into disrepute by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) by the use of racist language, following complaints by former Yorkshire player Azeem Rafiq. Former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan is cleared of charges. (Guardian, 31 March 2023)
31 March: The magazine Gal-dem, an online and print publication for women and non-binary people of colour, announces its closure after eight years due to financial difficulties. (Guardian, 31 March 2023)
3 April: The YouTuber KSI apologises and announces he will be stepping back from social media after using a racist slur against south Asian people in a video made with his group Sidemen. (Guardian, 3 April 2023)
4 April: Research into rugby players’ experience of discrimination shows that racism is present in every area of the elite level in men’s and women’s rugby, while efforts made by the Rugby Football Union to respond to racism have been short-lived or perceived to be performative. (Guardian, 4 April 2023; Telegraph, 4 April 2023)
5 April: In Italy, Romelu Lukaku is sent off for a provocative celebration after the player celebrated in front of Juventus fans who had racially abused him. (Guardian, 5 April 2023)
6 April: St Johnstone FC imposes a lifetime ban on a supporter who racially abused an Aberdeen player during a match in Perth on 1 April. (BBC, 6 April 2023)
6 April: The England and Wales Cricket Board bans ‘banter’ from cricket culture after a Cricket Discipline Commission hearing finds that the use of racial slurs and discriminatory language was dismissed as ‘friendly banter’ in an initial Yorkshire Cricket Club report. (Mirror, 6 April 2023)
6 April: In Italy, Juventus FC will have part of their stadium section cordoned off at the next home game as punishment for the racist abuse of an Inter Milan player by two fans on 4 April. (The Athletic, 6 April 2023)
6 April: As the monarchy’s personal involvement in the slave trade is revealed by historical including a transfer to King William III of £1,000-worth of shares in slaver Edward Colston’s company, King Charles, who made a statement supporting the research, is urged to do more and to take some responsibility. (Guardian, 6 April 2023, Guardian, 7 April 2023)
8 April: In Ireland, a charity challenge hurling game between Tipperary and Wexford at Carrick-on-Suir is called off prematurely after a Wexford player is racially abused by a spectator. (Belfast Live, 9 April 2023)
10 April: Whether or not the home secretary rebuked Essex police officers investigating hate crime in Grays, Essex becomes the subject of intense media speculation after officers took away a collection of golliwog dolls on display at the White Hart pub, and the MailOnline, citing a source close to Braverman, said she had reprimanded police about ‘getting involved in this kind of nonsense’. Essex police deny any rebuke. (Guardian, 10 April 2023)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
29 March: A 33-year-old man is convicted of racially aggravated abuse committed in Watford on 2 May 2020. He is sentenced by St Albans Magistrates Court to an 18-month conditional discharge and to pay £100 in compensation. (Watford Observer, 29 March 2023)
1 April: A 26-year-old man from Cwmbwrla is sentenced to 12 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, for sending racially abusive tweets to a Swansea City football player. Swansea Magistrates’ Court further order him to observe an alcohol ban of 120 days, 25 days of rehabilitation and 160 hours of unpaid work. (BBC, 1 April 2023)
3 April: A psychiatric evaluation of William Malet, who shot dead three Kurds at a Kurdish cultural centre in Paris, France, finds no signs of mental illness but a pathological hatred of Muslims as well as the Kurdish PKK. It emerges that in addition to a previous attack on a migrant camp, Malet served 12 months in prison for an attack on three homeless people of north African origin who entered his home. (Le Monde, 3 April 2023)
3 April: Following a road rage incident in Lowescraft, an unidentified white perpetrator drags a 20-year-old man from his vehicle in a Tesco car park, shouts racial abuse at him and punches him in the face. (Suffolk Live, 11 April 2023)
6 April: The offices of the Collectif pour l’Inclusion & contre L’Islamophobia in Belgium are vandalised. (CIIB, 6 April 2023)
5 April: Lincoln magistrates sentence a 26-year-old man to 10 months in jail for a series of public order offences committed in Lincoln between January and March, including racially aggravated behaviour. (Lincolnshire Live, 6 April 2023)
6 April: Dunfermline Sheriff Court jails a 53-year-old man for 160 days for racially abusing a shop worker in Cowdenbeath in October 2021. (Central Fife Times, 6 April 2023)
9 April: The ESRC-funded survey (see human rights/discrimination above) finds that, prior to the pandemic, more than a third of people from ethnic and religious minorities experienced racially motivated physical or verbal abuse, with Jewish people and Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people most affected and a rise in racist abuse against Chinese and Asian groups during the pandemic. (Guardian, 9 April 2023)
9 April: In Pruchnik, a small town in south-east Poland, residents hang and then burn an effigy marked with Jewish stereotypes in a repeat of an incident to commemorate Easter in 2019 which led to global condemnation of an antisemitic tradition that dates back to medieval times. (Ynet News, 9 April 2023)
The calendar was compiled with the help of Graeme Atkinson, Sophie Chauhan, Margaret McAdam, Louis Ordish, Kimia Talebi and Joseph Maggs. Thanks also to ECRE, the Never Again Association, Stopwatch and The Week in Work, 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.