The documentation of the violence surrounding a Europa League football match in Amsterdam, between local team Ajax and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, crosses many sections of this week’s calendar. For the full picture, look at the following sections: electoral politics, policing | criminal justice, media | culture| sport and racial violence.
ELECTORAL POLITICS | GOVERNMENT POLICY
30 October: Hope Not Hate accuses Conservative leadership candidates Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, as well as Reform MPs, of ignoring police advice to avoid speculation about the motives of the man accused of murdering three young girls at a dance club in Southport, possibly prejudicing the trial of Axel Rudakubana. (See also national security and anti-terrorism below) (Hope Not Hate, 30 October 2024)
4 November: Prime minister Keir Starmer tells an INTERPOL assembly that people smuggling gangs sending people across the English Channel are a serious threat to global security and should be treated like terror networks, as he announces a further £75m for the Border Security Command. (inews, 4 November 2024; AP, 4 November 2024)
7 November: The German parliament passes a resolution on antisemitism and protecting Jewish life which prohibits public funding for any organisation or project that promotes antisemitism, questions Israel’s right to exist or calls for support for the BDS movement. (Middle East Monitor, 7 November 2024)
7 November: Prime minister Keir Starmer announces new agreements with Serbia, North Macedonia and Kosovo to combat organised immigration crime by increasing intelligence sharing. (inews, 10 November 2024)
8 November: Following violence surrounding a Europa League football match in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, between local team Ajax and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, Amsterdam’s mayor declares a partial state of emergency; the public prosecutor announces an investigation that will focus on antisemitism as motive for the violence; the prime minister invites the Israeli foreign minister for talks on how to fight antisemitism and the leader of the far-right anti-Islam party PVV, Geert Wilders, condemns the ’Jew hunt’ in Amsterdam, calls Islam ‘an ideology of a retarded culture’ and says Moroccans are ‘scum’. (Guardian, 13 November 2024)
11 November: In the Netherlands, Amsterdam mayor Femke Halesma announces that as part of an independent inquiry into violence around the Europa League football match, the role of the Dutch authorities, including police and intelligence services, before, during and after the match will be investigated. (Guardian, 13 November 2024)
12 November: In relation to violence surrounding a Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax fixture in Amsterdam, the Dutch prime minister says those who attacked ‘Israelis’ were people ‘with a migration background’ engaging in ‘unadulterated antisemitic violence’. The Erev Yav Jewish Collective say that authorities ignored warnings that many Maccabi fans were IDF soldiers who had served in the Gaza strip. (Al Jazeera, 12 November 2024)
ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
30 October: Hope Not Hate reports that, following new terrorist-related charges for the suspect in the Southport killings, the far Right have indulged in an outpouring of anti-Muslim hate online, while also calling for the release of ‘prisoners’ jailed during the far-right riots. (Hope Not Hate, 30 October 2024)
💥NEW: Reactions to the news about the Southport attacker’s charges has seen many ignore the police’s call to avoid speculation.
From Tory party leadership hopefuls and Reform MPs, to far-right activists, read our analysis of the worrying reactions at: https://t.co/AI7P84qtGN pic.twitter.com/414QBS6mKZ
— HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) October 30, 2024
30 October: A man from Weston-super-Mare who possessed Nazi memorabilia and literature, and a 3D-Printed firearm, is sentenced to 12 years in prison by Winchester Crown Court. (UK Defence Journal, 30 October 2024)
4 November: Spanish government sources claim that neo-Nazi groups and people associated with the Vox party were the instigators of riots that greeted the King and the prime minister’s visit to flood regions in the east of the country. (Plenglish, 4 November 2024; Blue News, 4 November 2024)
5 November: In raids in Germany, Austria and the Polish border town of Zgorzelec, police arrest eight members, including minors, of the far-right paramilitary ‘Saxonian Separatists’ group which plotted to take control of parts of Saxony and carry out ethnic cleansing. The arrested are accused of training in military gear and urban warfare, and of procuring combat helmets, bulletproof vests and gas masks. (Financial Times, 5 November 2024; Al Jazeera, 5 November 2024)
5 November: In Germany, the far-right AfD party expels three members who were among those arrested in police raids targeted at the Saxonian Separatists, an ‘extremist’ paramilitary group listed as a terrorist organisation. (Al Jazeera, 5 November 2024)
5 November: In Sweden, the leader of the far-right Danish party Stram Kurs (Hard Line) is charged with two counts of inciting hatred against an ethnic group and insult to Arabs and Africans for burning the Qu’ran in 2022, provoking riots across Sweden. (AA, 5 November 2024)
POLICING| PRISONS| CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
1 November: At the inquest into the death of Wayne Bayley, a Black sickle cell patient who died, ten hours after being restrained by prison officers, ‘naked and alone’ in Pentonville prison in 2022, the jury returns a narrative verdict highly critical of prison and healthcare, concluding that ‘gross failures on basic medical attention’ contributed to his death (Inquest, 1 November 2024)
4 November: Camden police say they are treating as a hate crime an incident where paint was thrown over the Hampstead offices of Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) and those of the Jewish National Fund in Hendon, Palestine Action post photos of the attacks, adding ‘Dismantle Zionism’. (Camden New Journal, 4 November 2024)
4 November: The trial begins of eight adults in connection with the murder of Samuel Paty, a French school teacher who was killed in October 2020 after accusations of Islamophobia were circulated online. (Guardian, 3 November 2024)
4 November: An anti-immigration protester holding an Irish tricolour who led a march in Belfast on 3 August which was followed by serious rioting is sentenced to 3 months for taking part in an unnotified procession. (BBC, 4 November 2024)
6 November: Teesside Crown Court gives 23-year-old Jake Wray, filmed stopping motorists to check they were white during the far-right riots, a 38-month jail sentence for violent disorder, including arson and racist chanting. (BBC, 6 November 2024)
6 November: At a preliminary hearing of a case about a disabled Roma man who fell from a bedroom window during an unauthorised police raid in Primaville, Italy, in 2022, the interior ministry is named as a responsible party and three police officers are accused of false testimony and torture. (European Roma Rights Centre, 6 November 2024)
7 November: The appeal court rejects the appeal of Aminadab Temesgen, sentenced to 14 months in jail for throwing a can and water bottle at police and a far-right group that had racially abused him in Plymouth during the summer far-right riots. It rules that an error in sentencing means he should serve his sentence in a young offender institution rather than a prison. (Guardian, 7 November 2024)
8 November: A 37-year-old woman who took an 11-year-old boy to a riot in August in which a far-right mob attacked a Tamworth hotel housing asylum seekers is jailed for 27 months for violent disorder. The woman was filmed shouting racist comments at police protecting the hotel’s occupants. (Independent, 8 November 2024)
8 November: According to the Justice Ministry, by 3 October 388 people had been sent to prison for the summer violence against migrants and Muslims. (Independent, 8 November 2024)
9 November: Experts warn the family division of the high court that children are at risk of removal from parents through faulty and racially biassed interpretation of ‘hair strand’ drug testing, meaning that people of African, Caribbean or Asian descent are more likely to lose custody of their children. (Observer, 9 November 2024)
10 November: In the Netherlands, Amsterdam riot police break up a Palestine solidarity rally and arrest 50 people after a three-day emergency ban is placed on such protests following clashes between Israeli football fans and local residents. (Deutsche Welle, 10 November 2024)
NATIONAL SECURITY AND ANTI-TERRORISM
30 October: 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana, who is accused of murdering three young girls and ten attempted murders at a dance class in Southport, appears in court charged with new offences of possessing terrorist material and producing ricin. (Guardian, 31 October 2024; Hope Not Hate, 30 October 2024)
ASYLUM | MIGRATION| BORDERS| CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
4 November: Following legal proceedings, the UK government drops its opposition to allow the vast majority of Tamils who have been living in inhumane conditions on Diego Garcia since 2021 to travel to the UK. Future arrivals to the island are to be relocated to St Helena. (Guardian, 4 November 2024)
Borders and internal controls
30 October: A 28-year-old man, one of 15 people to fall from an overcrowded migrant boat off Hardelot, northern France, is declared dead after being airlifted to hospital. (Dawn, 31 October 2024)
1 November: France re-introduces border controls at all its land, sea and air borders, until at least April 2025, citing serious threats of terrorism, criminal networks facilitating irregular migration and rising violence by migrants. (RFI, 31 October 2024)
4 November: The Italian government engages the naval ship Libra to transfer migrants seeking asylum in Italy to Albania for processing despite court rulings against the outsourcing scheme and a referral of a government decree on ‘safe countries’ to the European Court of Justice. (Euractiv, 4 November 2024)
8 November: PSP public security police in Lisbon, Portugal, working with tax and customs, social security and other government departments , carry out immigration raids in the Martim Moniz area, stating that the focus of the operation is to ‘inspect commercial establishments and people’ and check their ‘legality on national territory’. (Portugal Resident, 8 November 2024)
11 November: Migrants’ rights campaigners call on the Home Office to withdraw its AI system, Identify and Prioritise Immigration Cases (IPIC), used to speed up decision-making on enforcement action, which is fed information on potential subjects including biometrics, ethnicity, criminal convictions and health. PI fears that officials will simply rubber-stamp the algorithm’s recommendations. (Guardian, 11 November 2024)
Reception and detention
7 November: A report by Rape Crisis England and Wales and Imkaan finds that women and girls fleeing rape and sexual abuse face being retraumatised in an asylum system in which abuses are compounded and repeated—in mixed-sex accommodation; from predatory staff and residents; due to poor living conditions and a lack of support; and through the scrutiny they face throughout the asylum process. (Guardian, 7 November 2024)
10 November: Serco, which manages Brook House immigration removal centre, circulates letters to detainees linking the death in his cell of a 26-year-old French national to drug use. Staff had warned in 2023 that such a death was likely. (Observer, 10 November 2024)
Deportations
1 November: Costa Koushiappis, a 39-year-old Greek Cypriot, is deported with 3 days’ notice despite a pending administrative review of the 2022 refusal of his EU pre-settled status, which the Home Office says may take 2 years to process. His solicitor accuses the Home Office of breaching the EU withdrawal agreement. (Guardian, 1 November 2024)
8 November: The Home Office announces it is recruiting a Head of the National Returns Progression Command to accelerate the speed of deportations of refused asylum seekers and people who have overstayed their visas and to maximise the strategy of enforcement and deportations. (Standard, 8 November 2024)
EDUCATION
4 November Government data shows that persistent absence rates are more than double for Free School Meals eligible pupils and are highest among Black Caribbean and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils. Data from FFT Data lab reveals the limited effect of increasing parental fines for absence, as ‘persistent and severe absence remain much higher than pre-pandemic, particularly at secondary level’. (TES, 5 November 2024)
HOUSING| POVERTY| WELFARE
31 October: Oxford Brookes University finds that in December 2023 alone, at least 3,797 households, including 1,500 children and domestic violence victims, were trapped in temporary accommodation because of council rules that render ‘ineligible or deprioritised for social housing’ those in housing-related debt. (Oxford Brookes University, 31 October 2024)
12 November: Loughborough University research for Marie Curie finds that more than 111,000 people in the charity’s end-of-life care died in poverty in 2023, up by almost one-fifth from 2019, with 128,000 people dying in fuel poverty in 2022. (Morning Star, 12 November 2024)
EMPLOYMENT| EXPLOITATION| INDUSTRIAL ACTION
4 November: Salford council is the first signatory of a migrant care workers charter, designed by care workers and Unison, which aims to prevent the exploitation of people on sponsored visas and help them stay in the UK. In doing so, the council commits to act as an employer of last resort for victimised migrants. (Guardian, 4 November 2024)
12 November: A Work Rights Centre study shows major gaps in the government’s oversight of the migrant care workers’ system, where many face exploitation and poor working conditions, as 177 companies are granted licences to sponsor care workers despite having a history of mistreatment and labour violations. (Guardian, 12 November 2024)
We’ve added more tickets for the launch of our new report: The Forgotten Third, improving conditions for migrant carers.
Our research finds that breaches of employment rights are pervasive, and sponsor non-compliance is endemic. Join us to understand how to fix this.
— Work Rights Centre (@WORCrights) November 11, 2024
CULTURE| MEDIA| SPORT
30 October: The English Football Association apologises after a Muslim woman footballer was banned from playing for wearing tracksuit bottoms instead of shorts. (Sky News, 30 October 2024)
1 November: More than 230 members of the media industry, including 101 anonymous BBC staff, write to the BBC accusing it of giving favourable coverage to Israel and failing to commit to ‘fairness, accuracy and impartiality’ in its reporting on Gaza. (Independent, 1 November 2024)
5 November: In Belgium, over 30,000 copies of a comic book are withdrawn from circulation following a viral TikTok criticising its ‘hyper-sexualized’ images and depictions of Black characters as monkeys. (Guardian, 5 November 2024)
7 November: French interior minister Bruno Retailleau criticises PSG fans for displaying a giant ‘Free Palestine’ tifo before Tuesday’s Champions’ League match against Atletico Madrid. A UEFA spokesman states there will be no disciplinary case over the banner as it cannot ‘in this case be considered offensive’. (Al Jazeera, 7 November 2024)
7 November: The Charity Commission opens a regulatory compliance case into Citizens Advice after the charity receives a complaint from UK Lawyers for Israel alleging that some staff were taking part in political campaigning outside the organisation’s charitable objects. (Third Sector, 7 November 2024)
8 November: The mayor of Amsterdam, the Netherlands says that young people were riled up on social media to target Jewish people and that on Telegram there was ‘talk of people going on a Jew hunt’. (AP, 8 November 2024)
8 November: Social media analysis shows that within hours of the football-related violence in Amsterdam, Netherlands, prominent Telegram groups were urging Israelis in Amsterdam to ‘burn down mosques’, with Israeli social media accounts framing the violence as ‘savage Islamic migrants’ attack peaceful Israeli football fans. (Helsinki Times, 8 November 2024)
10 November: German police launch an investigation after youth players from the football club TuS Makkabi are targeted in an antisemitic attack. (Tagesspeigel, 10 November 2024)
10 November: The German newspaper Tagesschau apologises to a Dutch journalist for abusing footage of a post-match clash in the Netherlands between Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters and Amsterdam locals so as to distort the truth that it was Maccabi supporters who attacked Amsterdam citizens at Central station. (X, Drop Site News, 10 November 2024)
11 November: Following the violence in Amsterdam surrounding a Maccabi Tel Aviv – Ajax fixture, Brussels authorities announce that they will not host a UEFA Nations League fixture between Belgium and Israel, as Belgium’s Coordination Body for Threat Assessment warns of copycat behaviour. (Brussels Times, 11 November 2024)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
For details of court judgements on racially motivated and other hate crimes, see also POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
1 November: In Cyprus, the Alliance Against the Far-Right, Fascism and Racism calls for action against increasing racist violence, as migrant food delivery workers, mainly in Limassol, are targeted by the extreme Right. (National Herald, 1 November 2024)
2 November: A media investigation reveals that neo-Nazi Callum Parslow, jailed for stabbing an asylum seeker in Worcester, is a serial stalker previously referred to Prevent, with no action taken. Parslow sent videos of himself performing sexual acts and footage of a Black woman being flogged to former GB News presenter Mercy Muroki. (Guardian, 2 November 2024)
4 November: After red paint is thrown over the Hampstead offices of Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) and those of the Jewish National Fund in Hendon, Palestine Action post photos of the attacks, adding ‘Dismantle Zionism’, while Camden police say they are treating the incidents as hate crimes. (Camden New Journal, 4 November 2024)
6 November: In Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans tear a Palestinian flag down from the face of a building and burn it, shouting ‘fuck you, Palestine’, also vandalising a taxi, with taxi drivers responding to a call out dispersed by police. Maccabi fans are also caught on video chanting in Hebrew ‘olé, olé, let the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] win, we will fuck the Arabs’, and declaring that there were ‘no children’ ‘left in Gaza’. (Guardian, 13 November 2024)
7 November: Maccabi supporters chant anti-Arab slogans as police escort 2,600 fans to a Europea League football match in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Following the match, masked youths on scooters and ebikes chase and attack Maccabi fans, targeting those in Maccabi colours, with reports that some people were targeted simply because they were Jewish and the mayor of Amsterdam describing them as ‘hit and run’ attacks. Video footage shows Maccabi supporters close to Amsterdam central railway station chanting anti-Palestine slogans and taking iron scaffolding tubes and wooden planks to use as weapons. (Guardian, 13 November 2024)
7 November: A mother and a child are injured by shards of broken glass after a racist attack on their family home in south Belfast, where a window was smashed. The family members work in the healthcare system. (Belfast Media, 7 November 2024)
11 November: Five people, including minors, are arrested in Antwerp, Belgium, after calls circulate on social media to attack Jewish people, particularly in the Jewish neighbourhood around Harmoniepark, in response to events in Amsterdam. (Brussels Times, 11 November 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.