A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe.

Asylum seekers and refugees

6 October: Corporate Watch reveals that NHS England has awarded G4S a series of contracts worth some £23 million to run medical facilities at four immigration removal centres in the UK. (Corporate Watch, 6 October 2014)

6 October A German police raid on the company headquarters of European Homecare, is followed by an announcement that the investigation into the abuse of asylum seekers has been extended with eleven security guards, employed by a subcontractor, SKI, now suspected of a series of assaults at shelters for asylum seekers in Bubach and Essen. (Deutsche Welle, 6 October 2014)

9 October: The Independent Family Returns Panel has published its Annual Report 2012-2014, which can be downloaded here.

9 October: Human rights and migrant support groups protest a decision, by the Italian interior minister, to end the rescue operation Mare Nostrum, credited with saving 140,000 lives in the Mediterranean since its launch in October 2013. Frontex’s Triton, offered as a replacement, will cost three times less, cover a much smaller area and focus on border management rather than rescue. (Asylum Information Database, 9 October 2014)

13 October: Twenty thousand police across the Schengen area are mobilised in a two-week joint operation, Mos Maiorum, to arrest undocumented migrants at border crossings, bus depots, railway stations and on the streets, and to gather intelligence on smuggling and trafficking networks. (Statewatch, 13 October 2014)

15 October: Thousands of migrants who have lived and worked in Britain for decades, in many cases having arrived in the country as children, are falling victim to the government’s more restrictive immigration laws, it is revealed in a report by the charity Legal Action Group. (Guardian, 15 October 2014)

16 October: Southwark Council is criticised by a judge after conspiring to cover up its unlawful eviction of a Sudanese refugee from his home and destroying several years worth of his research and personal belongings. (Independent, 16 October 2014)

Policing and criminal justice system

3 October: The former police marksman charged with the murder of Azelle Rodney in 2005 is named as Anthony Long, after reporting restrictions are lifted. The trial is due to take place in June 2015. (Guardian, 3 October 2014)

7 October: The CPS announces that two police officers whose evidence under oath about the death of Sean Rigg in police custody in 2008 was contradicted by CCTV evidence will not face criminal charges. (Guardian, 7 October 2014)

7 October: The IPCC announces that it has completed its investigation into the conduct of police officers in the days leading up to the murder of Bijan Ebrahimi in 2013. (BBC News, 7 October 2014)

7 October: A new date, in February 2015, is set for the inquest into the death of Habib Ullah in the custody of High Wycombe police after it was halted in December 2010 when it was revealed that police officers had changed their statements. (Slough Express, 8 October 2014)

8 October: A pre-inquest hearing into the death of Philmore Mills, who died in 2011 after being restrained by the police in Slough, takes place in Windsor Guildhall. The inquest is scheduled for 2015. (Slough Express,9 October 2014)

11 October: Senior police representatives defend the right of officers to confer in the aftermath of fatal shootings. A solicitor acting for the Metropolitan police says that officers may be too traumatised by such incidents to provide immediate witness statements. (Guardian,11 October 2014)

13 October: The family of Mark Duggan lose their attempt to overturn the inquest verdict that the police shooting was lawful. (Guardian, 14 October 2014)

13 October: A woman in Bristol wins a lawsuit for racial discrimination against Avon and Somerset police after being wrongfully charged with assault. (Bristol Post, 14 October 2014)

14 October: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary announces that there are currently over 1,200 undercover police officers deployed throughout thirty-nine units across England and Wales. (Guardian, 14 October 2014)

Violence and harassment

3 October: Ryan McGee, a former soldier, admitted terrorism offences and was granted bail before sentencing in November. He was found to have made a nail bomb and his Facebook page had several photos of him wearing EDL clothing, as well as images of him in KKK costume. (Manchester Evening News, 3 October 2014)

8 October: Austin Bayford, 37, is given two life sentences for the murder of Helen Dawson and Ivor Spratek in a violent attack in Bradford. The court is told the attack on Czech Republic national Spratek was racially motivated, and his partner Helen Dawson was stabbed to death afterwards as she witnessed the original incident. (BBC News, 8 October 2014)

8 October: Thomas Deane, a 24-year-old man from Derry is given a fifteen-month prison sentence for a racist attack described by a judge as ‘outrageous’, leaving the victim needing twenty-two stitches in a mouth wound. (BBC News, 9 October 2014)

8 October: During a Greek parliamentary debate on a vote of confidence in the centre-Right coalition government, health minister Makis Voridus accuses his leftwing opponents in the SYRIZA party of ‘hate speech’, claiming that their rhetoric had ‘played a part in the murder of Pavlos Fyssas and the assassination of two members of Golden Dawn. (Kathimerini, 8 October 2014)

15 October: Figures published by the Police Service of Northern Ireland indicate that racist attacks in Belfast have doubled in a year, with about six incidents reported per week. (Belfast Telegraph, 15 October 2014)

16 October: An Asian couple who run a takeaway in Newport speak of their terror after having their business vandalised, receiving death threats and being subjected to racist and physical abuse by several youths. (South Wales Argus, 16 October 2014)

National Security

3 October: Former Guantánamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg describes his detention as ‘malicious’ and ‘vindictive’, saying that it is inevitable he will bring proceedings against MI5 after a terrorism case against him collapses. (Guardian, 3 October 2014)

Employment

11 October: The Public Prosecution Service announces that a £500 fine handed to a gangmaster in Northern Ireland, convicted of keeping migrant workers in ‘appalling’ conditions ‘unfit for human habitation’, cannot be appealed despite the Gangmasters Licensing Authority arguing that the fine is so small it does not act as a deterrent. (News Letter, 11 October 2014)

14 October: A court in London hears how two men and two women acting as illegal gangmasters have forced migrants to work in farm fields in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk for as little as £1 per week. (BBC News, 14 October 2014)

Education

15 October: The General Teaching Council for Scotland announces that a teacher who racially abused a nightclub bouncer in Aberdeen is allowed to return to her profession, less than a year after being banned. (Press and Journal, 15 October 2014)

Extreme-Right politics

6 October: Two people are arrested after around 100 Britain First supporters march in Rotherham, the group’s second visit to the town in a month. (Doncaster Free Press, 6 October 2014)

11 October: Ten people are arrested, mainly for public order offences, during an EDL rally in Birmingham after about 300 EDL supporters hold a demonstration. (Voice, 13 October 2014)