A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe.
ASYLUM | MIGRATION | BORDERS | CITIZENSHIP
Asylum and migrant rights
13 April: A private Home Office visa service apologises for a data breach after copying over 170 email addresses of visa applicants into a message detailing a change of visa appointment locations. (Guardian, 13 April 2022)
17 April: Home secretary Priti Patel is accused of misleading parliament over her false claim that the Nationality and Borders Bill creates safe legal routes enabling asylum seekers to come to the UK without having to pay smugglers and risk their lives.(Guardian, 17 April 2022)
19 April: Hundreds of undocumented Ukrainians admitted as seasonal workers on UK farms are in limbo after fleeing conditions of ‘modern slavery’, charities reveal, being ineligible for the Ukraine visa extension scheme as they no longer work on farms. They are excluded from both the family and community sponsorship schemes. (Guardian, 19 April 2022)
20 April: MPs reject the House of Lords’ amendments to the Nationality and Borders bill and back plans for a two-tier refugee system and the offshoring of asylum seekers, with only 11 Conservative MPs voting against the government. (Guardian, 20 April 2022)
20 April: Denmark, having already signed a framework agreement with Rwanda to strengthen cooperation on immigration issues, announces further talks aimed at setting up a reception centre for asylum seekers similar to the UK’s scheme. (Euronews, 20 April 2022)
23 April: A Homes for Ukraine whistle-blower claims that the scheme is ‘designed to fail’ in order to limit numbers entering the UK, with low morale, confusion and lack of training meaning staff ‘make up’ responses to queries. While 40,000 UK visas have been issued under the scheme, only 6,600 Ukrainians have arrived, often because one family member’s visa is withheld and the whole family has to wait. (Guardian, 23 April 2022)
Borders and internal controls
13 April: The government announces a deal to send people seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda on a ‘one-way ticket’ within seven days of arrival, as part of its crackdown on visa-less refugees. The prime minister also announces that the Royal Navy has been given control over the Channel. (Guardian, 13 April 2022)
THREAD 🧵
The government's deal with Rwanda spells the end of the Refugee Convention in the UK and a return to the 1930s and ‘40s, when desperate refugees from Nazism were forced to seek sponsors and prove that they would not be a charge on public funds in order to get visas.
— Institute of Race Relations (@IRR_News) April 14, 2022
14 April: The UNHCR condemns the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as ‘unworkable, expensive, and discriminatory’. Rwandan opposition parties criticise the deal as offloading the UK’s international responsibilities, and a Rwandan journalist, who fled torture to seek asylum in the UK, raises concerns over the freedom of speech in the country. (Guardian, 14 April 2022; Guardian, 14 April 2022; Guardian 15 April 2022; Guardian, 16 April 2022)
17 April: Amid continuing anger over the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, which the chief Home Office civil servant says is unlikely to deter asylum seekers, the Archbishop of Canterbury argues that the proposal does not ‘stand the judgment of God’. (Guardian, 17 April 2022; Independent, 17 April 2022)
18 April: Refugee groups accuse the UK government of an ‘immoral trade in human bodies’ as it emerges that it will take 50 refugees currently in Rwanda in part-exchange for the asylum seekers, including trafficking victims, it plans to send there. (Independent, 18 April 2022; Independent, 19 April 2022)
20 April: Home Office staff threaten a mutiny over the Rwanda offshoring deal as civil servants express ‘deep shame’ over the policy and some reconsider their jobs. (Guardian, 20 April 2022)
23 April: Home secretary Priti Patel is accused of misleading Parliament after a court ruling reveals that unpublished parts of the government’s policy on pushbacks in the Channel say the tactic will not be used against asylum seekers. (Guardian, 23 April 2022)
24 April: Lawyers for an asylum seeker launch a legal challenge against Home Office plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. They say that the asylum seeker, who would be eligible for removal under the policy, say it would breach the European Convention on Human Rights and the Geneva Convention and argue that Rwanda cannot be considered a ‘safe country’. (Independent, 24 April 2022)
25 April: The government officially withdraws its ‘pushback’ policy to force migrant boats back to France, days before the scheduled hearing of a judicial review of the policy brought by three refugee charities and the union representing Border Force officials. (Guardian, 25 April 2022)
Reception and detention
13 April: After reports that predatory men are using the Homes for Ukraine scheme to target lone Ukrainian women and sometimes unaccompanied children, the UNHCR urges the government to put in place a ‘more appropriate matching process’. (Guardian, 13 April 2022)
18 April: Charities say hundreds of unaccompanied children arriving in the UK on small boats in the last few months are being put in hotels and neglected. Concerns include going hungry, prison-style grey tracksuits and scabies outbreaks that have forced children to shave each other’s heads. (Guardian, 18 April 2022)
19 April: After the media reports lack of food, signs of mice and mildew at the former Hvalsmoen military camp and other shabby barracks accommodating 14,000 refugees from Ukraine in Norway, the private firm subcontracted by the immigration department apologises for the ‘shoddy’ and overcrowded reception conditions. (newsineglish.no, 19 April 2022)
21 April: Following the intervention of the Nigerian Ambassador to Poland, thirteen Nigerians who had fled Ukraine are released from a Polish detention camp. The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) says that most of those detained in Poland are now free (Euronews, 21 April 2022)
22 April: Home secretary Priti Patel is accused of hypocrisy after announcing plans to place up to 1,500 asylum seekers in a new asylum reception centre in a former RAF site in the small village of Linton-on-Ouse, two years after ordering the removal of asylum seekers from a hotel in her constituency because the area was too rural. Humanitarian groups also raise concerns over the use of military barracks to house asylum seekers. (Independent, 22 April 2022)
25 April: Medical Justice issues a report, Harmed not heard, on Home Office failures in safeguarding the most vulnerable people in immigration detention. (Medical Justice, 25 April 2022)
26 April: After assessing the vacant properties across Ireland intended to house Ukrainian refugees, the Irish Red Cross finds that only a quarter are viable accommodation offers, largely due to the number of housing pledges that have been revoked. (Irish Times, 26 April 2022)
Deportations
19 April: Family members of Jamaicans urge the Jamaican high Commission to intervene with the UK government to end ‘tortuous detentions and unjust deportations’, in particular cancelling upcoming deportation flights and challenging the ‘racist [and] hostile environment’. (The Voice, 19 April 2022)
ELECTORAL POLITICS | GOVERNMENT POLICY
15 April: In Piedmont, Italy, Maurizio Marrone, far-right councillor (Brothers of Italy) responsible for the region’s social policies, sparks outrage after proposing to make a €4,000 payment to women not to seek abortions, with the distribution of money vested in anti-abortion associations. (Guardian, 15 April 2022)
16 April: Several hundred thousand people demonstrate in cities across France against Le Pen. Student occupations, including at the Sorbonne, Paris, protest about the ‘fake choice’ between Macron and Le Pen. (The Local, 16 April 2022).
16 April: In Germany, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, foreign policy expert for the neoliberal FDP party, describes thousands of peace activists demonstrating against the arms race and war in Ukraine as ‘Vladimir Putin’s fifth column’. (Deutsche Welle, 16 April 2022)
17 April: The governor of South Moravia, Czech Republic, accuses ‘Hungarian Ukrainians’ of attempting to abuse the country’s welfare system while other mayors accuse them of theft and advocate a different approach towards Romani refugees from Ukraine who hold dual Hungarian-Ukrainian citizenship. (Romea, 17 April 2022)
21 April: In a televised French presidential debate between Le Pen and Macron, Le Pen says that if elected she will outlaw the headscarf in public spaces and hold a referendum on a ‘citizenship, identity and immigration’ law to enshrine national preference for French citizens in employment, welfare and housing. (Guardian, 21April 2022)
22 April: City councillors in Litvínov, Czech Republic are accused of maligning Romani refugees from Ukraine by claiming that the police have been constantly called to the temporary accommodation where they are housed. Police say they have never been called out. (Romea, 22 April 2022)
25 April: On the lowest turnout since 1969, Macron wins the second round of the French presidential election with 58.55% of the vote, but far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, with 41.45% secures her highest vote ever. (BBC News, 25 April 2022)
ANTI-FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
With anti-migrant, anti-equalities, anti-abortion, misogynistic and anti-LGBTQI activities increasingly interlinking, we now incorporate information on the Christian Right as well as information relating to the incel movement.
14 April: Hope not Hate accuses the Scottish Family Party, standing in local elections in Lanarkshire, of extremist right-wing views. Founder Richard Lucas, formally of UKIP, argues that ‘there shouldn’t be Pride rainbow flags used in primary schools’. (Daily Record, 14 April 2022).
14 April: Following raids on 20 properties across Germany, police say a far-right plot by ‘United Patriots’, linked to Reich Citizens, to kidnap prominent public figures, including the health minister and destroy electricity supply facilities, has been foiled. (Euronews, 14 April 2022)
17 April: In Sweden, after the Danish hard right Stram Kurs party led by anti-Muslim activist Rasmus Paludan (who planned to burn the Quran) organises demonstrations across the country, counter protesters clash with police over three nights, in Orebro, the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby Landskrona, Malmö and Norrkoping, where police fire at crowds, injuring three people. Other cities ban Stram Kurs. (Reuters, 15 April 2022; Guardian, 17 April 2022)
20 April: As the Swedish justice minister suggests ‘foreign actors’ may have had a hand in the ‘Easter riots’, the national police commissioner and national police commander say that the violence was not against the far Right but ‘against society’ linking those involved to ‘criminal gangs’. (The Herald, 18 April 2022; Al Jazeera, 20 April 2022
20 April: Stop the Islamisation of Norway (SIAN) vows to go ahead with a Quran-burning demonstration in the Stovner district of Oslo, despite police attempts to relocate it. (Newsinenglish.no, 20 April 2022)
25 April: In Poland, a state-funded nationalist media outlet, Magna Polonia, publishes Poznaj Żyda (‘Meet the Jew’). It describes Jews as a ‘parasitic tribe’ and includes antisemitic caricatures, suggesting Jews are behind Communism, the LGBT movement, the media and various protest groups. (Notes from Poland, 25 April 2022)
POLICING | PRISONS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
12 April: Following an investigation into an incident in Greater Manchester in 2020 where a black man was Tasered repeatedly in front of his 5-year-old child, the Independent Office for Police Conduct decides police need training on using a Taser in the presence of a child. (IOPC, 12 April 2022)
13 April: A job advert for a new Met police commissioner says the new appointment must ‘restore the trust and confidence of Londoners’, especially BAME communities. (Guardian, 13 April 2022)
19 April: A Somali-born Londoner reports being stopped and searched by three officers, one of whom removed his body-cam, took his belt off and threatened to fight him. (MyLondon, 19 April 2022)
20 April: As anti-raids campaigners surround an immigration van holding a man arrested during an immigration raid on a Chinese takeaway in south-east London, video footage shows officers ‘manhandling’ protesters and using ‘excessive’ force, according to police monitoring organisation NetPol, leaving two women with injuries. (Huck, 22 April 2022)
Last night when we tried to resist an immigration raid the cops turned against us, brutally manhandling us. This is NOT okay.
We will not stand for cops or border officers using aggression to intimidate us. We will continue to stand up for our community. @netpol @AntiRaids pic.twitter.com/JVUwR84drI
— Lewisham Anti-Raids (@Lewisham_AR) April 21, 2022
20 April: The IOPC reports abuse of stop and search powers so serious that black people need ‘protecting’ from stereotyping and racial biases and research into ‘trauma’ caused by police is needed. One child was allegedly stopped 60 times in two years. Stop and Search rose by 24% to 695,009 in year to March 2021. Experimental Home Office statistics 2019/20 indicate black people 5.7 times more likely that white to have force used and 8 times more likely to be ‘compliant handcuffed’. (Guardian, 20 April 2022)
21 April: Police in Reykjavík, Iceland, are accused of racial profiling after special forces, looking for a wanted person, stop a bus to question a 16-year-old boy (who bore no resemblance to the fugitive) then question him again, the next day, while out with his mother. (Reykjavík Grapevine, 21 April 2022).
21 April: According to data from FOI requests, UK police forces are extending their use of surveillance technology, including fingerprint scanners, which heavily target BAME communities. (Huck, 21 April 2022)
22 April: In Brussels, Belgium, the long-delayed trial of 18 members of KU Leuven’s student fraternity Reuzegom, who allegedly killed Black engineering student Sanda Dia in a brutal initiation ceremony, begins. Leaked images of Dia’s last hours were distributed without his parent’s permission. (Brussels Times, 22 April 2022)
22 April: A survey carried out for the police magazine L’Essor reveals that in the first round of the French presidential elections, 38% of gendarmes voted for Le Pen, and 31% for Zemmour, with 81% of gendarmes declaring that they would vote for Le Pen in the second round. (Richochets, 22 April 2022)
24 April: In response to police violence at a peaceful protest in Sheffield, the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group demands an immediate investigation by the Chief Constable and Police Commissioner into the tactics and violence of the South Yorkshire police. (SYMAAG, 24 April 2022)
25 April: A blue plaque commemorating David Oluwale, a British-Nigerian man killed by police in 1969, is inaugurated in Leeds. The next day the plaque is stolen. (Guardian, 25 April 2022; (Guardian, 26 April 2022)
26 April: Responding to a parliamentary question, the Belgian interior minister says that police used pepper spray 318 times in 2021, a doubling of the figures since 2018. (Knack, 26 April 2022)
COUNTER-TERRORISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY
26 April: Right-wing think tank Policy Exchange issues a report, with a foreword by former prime minister David Cameron, telling the government that it risks ‘enabling terrorism’ if it fails to defend its Prevent strategy against criticism from Muslim groups who claim it is ‘Islamophobic’. (Guardian, 26 April 2022)
EMPLOYMENT | EXPLOITATION | INDUSTRIAL ACTION
19 April: Following a case brought by over 100 Deliveroo riders in 2015, a Paris court finds Deliveroo in France guilty of ‘undeclared labour’ by using freelance delivery riders who should have been considered employees. Suspended one year prison sentences were given to two former French executives at the Britain-based Deliveroo. (RFI, April 2022)
21 April: As Unite launches a new ‘migrant food retail and services branch’, it warns that in the supermarket, wholesale, restaurant and delivery sectors migrants are earning less than the minimum hourly wage of £9.50. (Morning Star, 21 April 2022)
EDUCATION
12 April: During the National Education Union’s annual conference in Brighton, three letters signed by around 300 signatories in total are sent to the NEU alleging that the union is institutionally racist, citing poor treatment of Black and Asian staff members and delegates. (Independent, 12 April 2022)
14 April: The Scottish parliament proposes to give Ukrainian students who have submitted applications under the Ukraine Family, Homes for Ukraine, or Ukraine Extension scheme the chance to continue in higher education with no tuition fees and additional living cost support. (The National, 14 April 2022)
16 April: The Cambridge Student Union says it supports investigation of antisemitism within the National Union of Students but warns that the media and the government could be using ‘student concerns’ about antisemitism to ‘silence students of colour and those advocating for Palestinian rights’. (Varsity, 16 April 2022)
20 April: The Education Secretary, Nadihm Zahawi tells the education parliamentary committee that he worries about the allegations of antisemitism within the National Union of Students and tells MPs that the government may need to ‘sever links with the organisation unless it reforms’. (Guardian, 20 April 2022)
20 April: The school where Child Q was ‘unjustly’ strip-searched announces that the headteacher has stepped down ‘due to ill health.’ The departure follows a backlash from community members and the mayor of Hackney, Philip Glanville, who had called for the headteacher’s resignation. (Guardian, 20 April 2022)
21 April: A study by the University of York finds that the education achievement gap between poor and wealthy students has remained the same for the past century, causing researchers to advocate for more equality in learning outcomes rather than in educational opportunities. (Independent, 21 April 2022)
25 April: Cambridge University lowers the entry requirements for its fully funded Cambridge Foundation Year programme in an effort to increase diversity within the university and enable under-represented students to ‘reach their academic potential’. (BBC News, 25 April 2022)
HOUSING | POVERTY | WELFARE
19 April: Campaigners from Voice 4 Deptford in south-east London draw up a plan for ‘a greener and more locally rooted’ housing scheme in a bid to halt the impending gentrification of Convoys Wharf by the Hong Kong-based developer, Hutchison Whampoa. (Guardian, 19 April 2022)
19 April: In Cardiff, Wales, two new community housing projects plan to change the overwhelmingly white presence on the boards of housing associations by training members from BAME backgrounds. (Inside Housing, 19 April 2022)
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.
13 April: The Archbishop of Canterbury restates his support for those seeking to remove a memorial plaque in the chapel at Jesus College, Cambridge to Tobias Rustat, a 17th-century benefactor who invested in slavery. (Guardian, 13 April 2022)
16 April: In Poland, the celebrated Jewish journalist Konstanty Gebert quits his post as columnist at the Gazeta Wyborca after it instructs him to stop using the word ‘neo-Nazi’ to describe Ukraine’s Azov Battalion which is incorporated into the Ukraine military. (Times of Israel, 16 April 2022)
22 April: Billie Jean King issues a statement saying that sports people should not be banned because of their nationality, after Wimbledon bans Russian and Belarussian players from competing. The governing bodies ATP and WTA also call for a rethink. (Al Jazeera, April 2022)
23 April: Muslim Hikers, Right to Roam and other groups organise a ‘Kinder in Colour’ walk in the Peak District to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Kinder mass trespass. Campaigners say that despite making up 13 per cent of the population, just 1 per cent of visitors to national parks are BAME, with many having limited access to open land. (iNews, 23 April 2022)
23 April: A football fan is arrested after racially abusing Shrewsbury Town goalkeeper Marko Marosi in Shrewsbury’s League One match at Charlton Athletic. (Guardian, 23 April 2022)
23 April: The French news channels LCI, CNews and BFMTV are criticised for Islamophobic reporting during Ramadan, including blaming a shortage of sunflower oil on Muslims. Chief LCI journalist Vincent Hervout had said the month of Ramadan is conducive to the stealing of sheep, seemingly attributing this as a cause of high suicide rate amongst farmers. (Anadolu Agency, 23 April 2022)
RACIAL VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT
12 April: A 31-year-old man convicted of racially/religiously aggravated harassment of a police officer in Bradford on April 4, is fined a total of £380 and sentenced to 250 hours of community service. (Telegraph & Argus, April 12 2022)
13 April: Two men from Romford and Dartford are charged with racially aggravated harassment following an incident in 2021, when November 2021, when two West Ham fans on a flight to see a match in the Netherlands allegedly directed abusive chants towards a fellow passenger in Orthodox Jewish dress. (Jewish News, April 13 2022)
14 April: A 36-year-old man is served an eight-week suspended prison sentence and a £500 fine for a racially aggravated assault in April 2018 in a South Tyneside Indian restaurant in which he threw food at an Asian man, verbally abused him and sprayed him with a fire extinguisher. (Daily Mail, April 14 2022)
14 April: The Campaign Against Antisemitism is offering a £10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of a man who smashed a Chanukah candelabra, then threatened a man saying he would ‘kill his first Jew’ and beat him repeatedly in West Hampstead in December 2021. The victim calls the police’s response – an hour’s wait – ‘disgraceful’. (ITV News. 14 April 2022)
17 April. In Cyprus, the anti-racist organisation KISA accuse Paphos police of covering up racist assaults inspired by a key member of the neo-Nazi ELAM party. Social media, it claims was used to falsely accuse a group of Syrians of racially attacking residents of Emba, when in fact it was Cypriots who launched assaults on refugees, with the known neo-Nazi threatening Syrians with a gun. (KISA press statement, April 2022)
19 April: 15 men armed with poles, bottles, hockey sticks and tubes attack worshippers leaving a mosque in East Ham, London. (The New Arab, 21 April 2022)
20 April: Despite pleading not guilty, a 61-year-old man, appearing at Salisbury Magistrate’s Court, is handed an 8-week suspended prison sentence following a racially and religiously aggravated road rage incident involving the use of an object in Marlborough. (Gazette & Herald, 20 April 2022)
22 April: Craigavon Magistrates’ Court sentences a 49-year-old man to 3 months in prison for racially abusing a business owner on 27 August 2021. (The Irish News, 22 April 2022)
The calendar was compiled with the help of Graeme Atkinson, Sira Thiam, Sigrid Corry, Donari Yahzid, Sophie Chauhan and Joseph Maggs. Thanks also to ECRE and Stopwatch, whose regular updates on asylum, migration 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.