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.

7 March: As France, the Netherlands and Switzerland cut foreign aid budgets to increase defence spending, global health programmes (which receive around 10 percent of all foreign aid) warn of catastrophe for countries reliant on foreign cash to combat malaria, HIV and tuberculosis. The Dutch government says the cuts are necessary to ‘prioritise the interests of the Netherlands’. (Euronews, 7 March 2025) 

8 March: German chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz says he will stop admitting Afghan refugees and deny undocumented refugees access to asylum procedures from day one of his government. (AMU TV, 9 March 2025)

9 March: Senior Conservative politicians call for the Human Rights Act to be disapplied in immigration cases to prevent those facing deportation from relying on it. (BBC, 9 March 2025)

10 March: Riots break out in Bucharest after Romania’s central election body disqualifies far-right candidate Cǎlin Georgescu from running in May’s presidential election rerun. After Georgescu won the December presidential election, the Constitutional Court annulled the vote, citing Russian interference. (Al Jazeera, 10 March 2025)

11 March: GB News host Andrew Pierce, speaking on the Good Morning Britain show, says that the suspended Reform UK MP, Rupert Lowe, wants to send all migrants to an island off the coast of Scotland and ‘let the midges do their work’. (National, 11 March 2025)

13 March: The Swiss senate votes to restrict the movement of asylum seekers charged with criminal offences and to expel migrants who commit crime. (Swiss Info, 13 March 2025)

14 March: The Greek prime minister appoints a far-right former student activist, Makis Voridis, as migration minister. Voridis, a self-described nationalist, depicts Muslim immigrants as a threat to Greek social cohesion. (Guardian, 14 March 2025)

14 March: Former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell criticises the prime minister and Downing Street for using ‘Musk-like language’ about the civil service and backing think tank Labour Together’s plans for government cuts, dubbed ‘project chainsaw’ in reference to Musk wielding a chainsaw to symbolise cuts for the Trump administration. (Guardian, 14 March 2025)

15 March: Following the earlier exclusion of far-right Georgescu, Romania’s electoral commission excludes a second far-right candidate, Diana Şoşoača, from standing in May’s presidential election. (Guardian, 15 March 2025)

15 March: In a speech on the national commemoration of the 1848 revolution against Habsburg rule, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán compares media outlets and organisations that receive funding from foreign powers to insects, and claims that a shadowy empire is plotting ‘to mix and then replace the indigenous people of Europe with invading masses arriving from foreign civilizations’. (AP News, 15 March 2025)

16 March: Jack Aaron, a controversial former Reform UK election candidate who called Hitler ‘brilliant’, is now in charge of the party’s vetting process, it is revealed. (Guardian, 16 March 2025)

18 March: Hungary bans Pride marches and allows authorities to use facial recognition software to identify attendees so they can be penalised, in what Amnesty International describes as a ‘full-frontal attack’ on LGBTQ+ people. (Guardian, 18 March 2025)

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.

5 March: An anonymous anarchist cell of an ‘international movement’ targeting the Elon Musk corporation Tesla claims responsibility for an arson attack on a number of Tesla battery electric cars in Toulouse, France, citing the ‘acceleration of the fascist, patriarchal, ecocidal and colonialist project’. Other attacks on Tesla have mostly occurred in the US.  (Freedom News, 5 March 2025)

6 March: Five members of a German far-right group linked to Citizens of the Reich are jailed for plotting to overthrow the government and kidnap health minister Karl Lauterbach, with four leaders receiving sentences from nearly six to eight years and a fifth receiving a 34-month sentence. (BBC News, 6 March 2025)

11 March: In Rennes, France, far-right figure Yovan Delourme deploys his fascist militia to attack a student anti-fascist party at an abandoned cinema near his nightclub, using tear gas to evict attendees. Delourme, who uses his social media platform to promote racist and reactionary rhetoric, openly claims his team ‘controls the territory’ against the youth of Rennes. (Contre Attaque, 11 March 2025)

14 March: Following a fundraiser at a Tommy Robinson rally for the family of Peter Lynch, who committed suicide while serving a sentence for violent disorder during the summer riots, Robinson’s media company Urban Scoop admits that Lynch’s family rejected the money, which went to Robinson’s children instead. (Daily Mail, 14 March 2025)

14 March: On Friday, a court of appeal in Ghent, Belgium, confirmed that the far-right organisation Project Thule was a ‘private militia’, sentencing 16 of the group’s members for participating in or supporting its activities. Seven defendants receive a prison sentence, eight are ordered to do community service and one is is given three years’ probation. (Brussels Times, 14 March 2025)

NATIONAL SECURITY AND COUNTER-TERRORISM

13 March: A review commissioned by Yvette Cooper in January 2025 concludes that it was right not to extend the definition of terrorism to cover extreme violence of ‘loners’ such as Axel Rudakubana, who killed at Southport. (Guardian, 13 March 2025)

POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

4 March: Andy George, president of the National Black Police Association, says that a decision by the Police Service of Northern Ireland to place him under a misconduct inquiry over a tweet about the promotion of Chis Kaba’s killer sends ‘a chilling message’ and ‘stifles free speech’ on racial disparities in policing. (Guardian, 4 March 2025)

6 March: Following claims by shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick that the Sentencing Council’s new pre-sentencing report guidelines (aimed at tackling bias by taking into account ethnicity or faith of an offender) constitutes ‘two-tier justice’, the Lord Chancellor orders a review of the role and powers of the Sentencing Council and the Independent Sentencing Review. (Guardian, 6 March 2025)

9 March: In Berlin, Germany, the organisers of an internationalist feminist demonstration supporting Palestine say police used brutal force and sexual violence against demonstrators. Several report hand, facial, leg and knee injuries due to aggressive police grips and that kicking and pepper spray was deployed indiscriminately, leaving demonstrators suffering severe respiratory distress and skin burns. (Instagram, 9 March 2025)

10 March: The justice minister tells prisons to prepare hundreds of extra makeshift ‘rapid deployment cells’ and newly refurbished cells to cope with a sudden influx of offenders in case there is a repeat of last summer’s riots. (Guardian, 10 March 2025)

11 March: A preliminary hearing in a fatal accident inquiry opens in Glasgow into the death of asylum seeker Badreddin Abdalla Adam Bosh, who was shot and killed by armed police after he attacked six people, stabbing and seriously injuring five of them at Park Inn Hotel, Glasgow, in 2020. (Morning Star, 11 March 2025)

18 March: French riot police raid a Paris cultural centre and evict migrant squatters who have occupied the centre for three months, using teargas and riot shields to push back protesters seeking to stop the evictions. (Guardian, 18 March 2025)

ASYLUM|  MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP

Asylum and migrant rights

4 March: Statewatch reveals an important legal victory in Italy over the authorities’ refusal to divulge data held on migrants used for bans, exclusions and deportations. (Statewatch, 4 March 2025)

6 March: The ECtHR condemns Belgium for performing a bone age test on a young asylum seeker, which it rules breached her right to privacy, and orders the Belgian authorities to pay her €5,000 in moral damages. (RTBF, 6 March 2025)

12 March: The Home Office announces a visa requirement, effective immediately, for visitors from Trinidad and Tobago. Dr Amery Browne, Trinidad and Tobago’s minister of foreign and Caricom affairs, expresses disappointment at the announcement, calling it disproportionate. (Guardian, 12 March 2025)

12 March: The new Austrian government orders an immediate freeze on family reunification applications for asylum seekers, invoking EU emergency provisions relating to national security. (Reuters, 12 March 2025)

14 March: The government announces the imposition of immigration restrictions on social care providers from 9 April, saying they must prioritise the recruitment of foreign care workers already in the UK before recruiting workers from overseas. (Info Migrants, 14 March 2025)

16 March: The independent anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, says that the care worker visa route is causing widespread horrific exploitation, abuse and cases of modern slavery, as more than 470 care companies have their licences revoked, and calls on the government to change the tied visa system to make it easier for exploited workers to change employer. (Observer, 16 March 2025)

16 March: Using Ministry of Justice figures, the Refugee Council finds a 500 percent increase in the number of asylum appeals waiting to be processed, with a backlog of 41,987 asylum appeals at the end of 2024, up from 7,173 at the start of 2023, 12,183 lodged in the last three months, as the grant rate for asylum applicants fell to 47 percent in 2024. (Observer, 16 March 2025)

17 March: The Dutch asylum minister refuses to allow Syrians to go home on exploratory visits without losing residence rights, as those living in Germany and France can, despite a motion from the House of Representatives to allow Syrians to make such trips. (NL Times, 17 March 2025)

Borders and internal controls 

5 March: The trial opens of six officers of the Italian coastguard and financial police, charged with shipwreck and multiple manslaughter over the deaths of at least 94 people, including 35 children, in the Cutro shipwreck off the coast of Calabria in 2023. (ECRE Bulletin, 13 March 2025)

7 March: The Italian Court of Cassation orders the government to pay compensation for unlawful detention to 177 people, mostly from Eritrea, who were prevented from disembarking from a coastguard ship for ten days after being rescued off the coast of Lampedusa in August 2018. (InfoMigrants, 7 March 2025)

13 March: A leaked EU document reveals that Malta is refusing to cooperate in rescue missions for migrants in its search and rescue area, violating its obligations to save lives at sea. (Times of Malta, 13 March 2025)

17 March: A report by Oxfam and Polish partner Egala alleges systematic sexual violence, rape and gang rape by Belarussian border guards of women and girls seeking to cross the Polish border, as well as systematic pushbacks by Polish border guards. (EU Observer, 17 March 2025)

18 March: As a search continues for survivors of a shipwreck off the coast of Cyprus in which at least 7 people died, search and rescue NGO Alarm Phone accuses the rescue authorities of fatal delay, releasing messages it sent them on 16 March that the boat was in distress and they could not reach it. (Phile News, 18 March 2025)

Reception and detention

11 March: The preliminary hearing of the fatal accident inquiry into the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Badreddin Abdalla Adam Bosh (see Policing above) hears that Bosh made 72 calls for help due to his deteriorating mental health at the hotel he was moved into during the Covid-19 lockdown, ‘apparently without intervention’. (Morning Star, 11 March 2025) 

14 March: The high court rules that the home secretary acted unlawfully by placing four asylum seekers, vulnerable through torture, violence, trafficking or disability, at the RAF Wethersfield asylum accommodation centre, and failing to assess the impact of policy change on asylum seekers with special needs. (Independent, 14 March 2025)

15 March: It is revealed that up to 39 asylum seekers thought to be children, living at the RAF Wethersfield asylum accommodation centre, have been referred to the local council’s children’s services, as the Home Office confirms that ‘age disputed’ young people had been housed there despite a promise that they would not be placed in large adult accommodation sites. (inews, 15 March 2025)

17 March: The House of Commons home affairs committee’s investigation of asylum accommodation hears from the Red Cross that it had to use £220,000 from its disaster fund to clothe 12,000 asylum seekers, that 600 age-disputed children share rooms with unrelated adults; 240 children in one hotel unable to go to school because they could not afford the uniform; and children with severe malnutrition due to inedible hotel food. (Guardian, 17 March 2025)

17 March: The Scottish Refugee Council criticise two Tory councillors, Ron McKail and Craig Miller, over distributing a leaflet that they say aims to ‘sow fear and create division’ about asylum seekers housed in the Westhill area, Aberdeenshire, and for naming the hotel where asylum seekers are housed. (National, 17 March 2025)

18 March: A Women for Refugee Women report on women in detention finds that male staff still watch women detainees in intimate situations such as using the toilet and showering, despite a 2016 ban on the practice. Two-thirds of the women surveyed feel suicidal; 85 percent feel anxious or depressed. Most are survivors of gender-based violence. (Women for Refugee Women, 18 March 2025)

Deportations

11 March: Amnesty International condemns draconian new provisions on deportation of non-EU citizens introduced by the European Commission today, featuring possible ‘return hubs’ in third countries with which deportees have no connection; more detentions and entry bans; shorter windows for voluntary departure and derogations from fair trial rights for those deemed a ‘security risk’. (Amnesty International, 11 March 2025)

16 March: Historian Manikarnika Dutta reveals that her application for indefinite leave to remain was refused and she was told to leave the UK, as research trips essential to fulfilling her academic obligations exceeded the permitted absences of 548 days—a problem faced by other academics. (Observer, 16 October 2025)

Crimes of solidarity

6 March: A European parliament study of a draft new EU Facilitation Directive warns that it could lead to long prison sentences for humanitarian smugglers of refugees. (EU Observer, 6 March 2025)

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.

7 March 2025: The University of Manchester Student Union and Crimestoppers are criticised for distributing leaflets to the Kurdish Society alone of all university societies, asking it to report people smugglers. (Mancunian Matters, 7 March 2025)

13 March: Nine organisations pull out of Goldsmiths, University of London’s investigation into antisemitism, claiming a ‘loss of confidence’ in the inquiry and ‘a lack of transparency as to who and what is being investigated’. (THE, 13 March 2025)

13 March: After Liverpool MP Kim Johnson calls for a parliamentary inquiry into the 1960s and 70s labelling of Black pupils as ‘educationally subnormal’, the education minister says the government ‘doesn’t currently plan to establish a public inquiry’. (Guardian, 14 March 2025)

17 March: A report by the Education Policy Institute finds that poorer pupils’ ‘higher absences’ are a ‘key and growing driver of the disadvantage gap’, as seen by the growth in the attainment gap between poorer 16-year-olds and their better-off peers between 2019 and 2023. (Schools Week, 17 March 2025)

17 March: Academic publishers warn that Trump’s defunding of diversity-related research may lead to a slump in sales as US university librarians become cautious about buying books on race, gender or politics in light of attacks on ‘woke’ research. (THE, 17 March 2025)

HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE

7 March: A report from IPPR and Praxis shows that tens of thousands of children in migrant and refugee families live in poverty, and are denied access to government-funded childcare, because of the ‘no recourse to public funds’ provision attached to parents’ immigration status. (Guardian, 7 March 2025)

Our new report finds that children with migrant parents are more likely than other children to not have their own bedrooms, go on school trips, have a hobby, have friends over, celebrate special occasions, and eat nutritious food.

Read more here: https://t.co/bim2vq1fst pic.twitter.com/t6kk13RcdZ

— IPPR (@IPPR) March 7, 2025

HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE 

6 March: An inquest into the suicide of 23-year-old Eritrean national Henok Zaid Gebrsslasie in August 2021 at the Caludon centre, Coventry, identifies a lack of supervision and failure to follow procedures on the intensive care psychiatric ward where he died. Nurses falsified paperwork to cover up the lack of checks on him. (BBC, 6 March 2025)

13 March: Data from the Care Quality Commission shows that the number of adults sent for urgent mental health care doubled between 2023 and 2024 and that Black people are 3.5 times more likely to be detained than white people. (Guardian, 13 March 2025)

EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION

See also migration and asylum rights

7 March: The Royal College of Nursing general secretary calls on home secretary Yvette Cooper to expedite the investigation of abuse and exploitation of migrant care workers she promised in June 2024, amid soaring complaints to the RCN hotline of low pay, illegal fees and unfit housing. (Guardian, 7 March 2025)

14 March: An RCN survey shows that one in seven nursing and midwifery staff have faced discrimination at work in the past year with two-thirds of complaints relating to ethnic background, while 35 per cent have experienced bullying or abuse at work. (Morning Star, 14 March 2025)

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.

6 March: In a late decision, the Royal Television Society scraps a special recognition award for journalists in Gaza at the annual TV Journalism Awards, on the grounds that it did not wish to ‘add fuel to the fire’ around the BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone. (Deadline, 6 March 2025)

6 March: A review by the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s hate crime lead concludes that Essex police were right to investigate Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson over her allegedly racist tweet, which, while not justifying prosecution, should have been recorded as a non-crime hate incident, affirming the necessity of the investigation. (Guardian, 6 March 2025)

9 March: Jean-Michel Aphatie, a prominent French journalist, steps down as analyst for broadcaster RTL after being suspended for a remark comparing French atrocities in Algeria to a WWII Nazi massacre in France. (Guardian, 9 March 2025)

10 March: An Israeli high school student on a trip to Auschwitz is detained by Polish police and fined 1,500 zloty for making a Nazi salute, although a fellow student claims he was waving to disrupt a photo. The incident, captured on video, is condemned by both the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum and the Israeli Education Ministry. (Times Of Israel, 10 March 2025)

11 March: Belgian satirist Herman Brusselmans is acquitted of antisemitism and inciting hatred after a Ghent criminal court rules that his column, where he imagines ramming a pointed knife down the throat of every Jew he meets, is protected by freedom of speech. The verdict is condemned by the president of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin. (Politico, 11 March 2025)

15 March: A media investigation discovers that Dundee man Lennon Lawson hosts a Discord server where children as young as 14 talk about deporting Muslims or murdering them if they refuse. (The National, 15 March 2025)

RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT

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

8 March: It is revealed that the government is cutting all grant funding to Tell Mama, the reporting service for anti-Muslim hate incidents in Britain, just weeks after the government announced a new working group on anti-Muslim hatred. (Guardian, 8 March 2025)

17 March: Aberdeen Mosque and Islamic Centre in Spittal is attacked on 15 March with paints and rocks while worshippers gather inside. Mosque authorities issue a statement thanking neighbours and well-wishers for their support. A teenager is subsequently arrested for a hate crime. (Sky TV, 17 March 2025; Aberdeen Live, 17 March 2025)

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.