In Greece,
some 70 local residents in March attacked a hotel in Vilia (wider Attica region) where refugee families were sheltered in the context of a program implemented by the International Organization for Migration, media reported. The municipal council had previously adopted a decision banning the hosting of refugees in the area. The crowd protested outside the hotel and then started throwing stones, breaking the entrance’s window. The NGO ‘Racist Crimes Watch’ filed a report against racist violence with the local police, asking for the initiation of criminal proceedings against the participants. The Prosecutor of the Supreme Court also ordered preliminary investigations into whether charges of racism can be brought in connection with this incident, the media reported.
Also in Greece, in mid-March, a group of hooded offenders attacked unaccompanied children hosted in Konitsa (in Epirus, near the Albanian border) at a facility run by the Association for the Social Support of Youth (ARSIS) while 33 32 the children were playing basketball. One of the children was taken to hospital for first aid. When the children went to the local police station to denounce the attack, they were mocked, according to ARSIS. One day later in Athens, a group of 7 or 8 individuals attacked and beat up an interpreter for the Greek Council for Refugees, a recognised refugee, the NGO ‘Racist Violence Recoding Network’ reported.
The media and NGOs reported numerous hate crime incidents
in Italy.
The Child Neuropsychiatric Service of the Local Health Authority (Azienda sanitaria locale, ASL) of Bolzano (Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol), required secondary-school teachers to fill in a form asking about the racial group of their students. The teachers refused to reply to this specific question, and reported the incident to the local newspaper. The media reported that, on the wall of the house of a family with an adopted child of Senegalese origins in Milan, unknown perpetrators wrote that the “
” should be killed and sprayed a Nazi symbol. The press also reported that a primary-school teacher in Foligno (Umbria) had forced a black pupil to stand with his back turned to his classmates, and described him as “too ugly to be looked at in the face”. Nobody intervened when a 47-year-old Ivorian woman working in the catering industry was violently attacked in Bari (Apulia). The ‘Alterego – Fabbrica dei diritti’ association reported a number of episodes of racial profiling in Rome’s public transport network. According to witnesses, police officers more and more often get on public buses to conduct checks only of dark-skinned passengers. A black Italian lawyer reported that, while standing in the line for EU citizens at passport control at the airport in Rome, an employee of the security service repeatedly told her to move to the line for non-EU citizens, as – considering the colour of her skin – she could not be an EU citizen. A 44-year-old white Italian man attacked a woman of African origin in the main square of Parioli, a rich district of Rome, as she was holding two small children. The man tried to make her fall and then, while shouting at her “Black woman, get out”, kicked and punched her face and buttocks. The intervention of an off duty policeman saved the woman and the children. The man was arrested by the police and charged with racial discrimination, outrage, violence and threats to a public official and refusal to provide indications on his identity, according to La Repubblica.
In Hungary,
anti-migrant rhetoric prevails in the European Parliament elections campaign. The Prime Minister stressed that “pro-immigration forces led by George Soros” aimed to turn Europe into a coalition of “immigrant nations” with “mixed populations”. He positioned himself and the Hungarian government as the leaders of the movement for “no-mixed nations” in Europe.
Also in Hungary, in the context of the campaign for the municipal elections later this year, the mayor of Kunszentmárton (a town in the south-eastern part of the country) stressed in a citizens’ forum that “migrants can only come to Kunszentmárton through my body”, according to media reports. Local policemen near the border police station in Cetingrad, Croatia forced migrants sitting on the floor next to a police patrol car to shout the name of Zagreb’s football club as well as the Nazi-fascist regime’s salute “Ready for the Homeland”, as a video published on various media sources revealed. Disciplinary procedures were initiated against the policemen. In an answer to a parliamentary question in Austria, the Federal Minister of Constitutional Affairs, Reforms, Deregulation and Justice reported that Austria does not systematically collect statistical data of criminal acts with right-wing, 35 34 racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and/or xenophobic background.
The only data the ministry could provide was that 1,005 criminal proceeding concerning hate speech (Verhetzung) and 1,328 criminal proceeding concerning the law banning National Socialist activities (Verbotsgesetz) were initiated in 2018. Between 1 January and 31 March 2019, the Antidiscrimination Office Styria documented 28 islamophobic insults (in particular against women wearing headscarves); 11 insults based on ethnicity, and seven on skin colour; as well as five bodily attacks (one based on ethnicity, four on religion) in the region of Styria. According to a study on legal awareness and equal treatment published by the Ombudsman in Poland, some of the most common grounds of discrimination were race, ethnicity or nationality, with Muslims being amongst the least tolerated groups in the country.
In Spain,
according to a media report, a group of neighbours in the municipality of Canet de Mar in Catalonia staged a public protest in front of a youth centre hosting unaccompanied children in government custody, accusing them of delinquency in the municipality. Five days after the event, a man holding a large knife reportedly entered the same centre. Some days later, the media reported that 35 hooded young persons threw stones at a centre in Castelldefells hosting unaccompanied migrant children, injuring two staff members and one child, who had to be hospitalised. These events have caused concern among civil society organisations, which have stressed that these attacks are unprecedented and show a rise of racism towards unaccompanied children in the region. Eight train security guards at Plaza Catalunya metro station in Barcelona beat a young migrant who did not have a ticket and pushed him to the ground, the media reported. The rail operator Renfe has taken the eight officers off duty and has opened an investigation into the case.
During the fourth quarter of 2018, the police in Germany registered 31 incidents where a reception centre for asylum seekers was either the target or the scene of a hate crime incident. 29 of these hate crimes had a right-wing political background. During the same time period, there were 271 politically motivated offences targeting asylum seekers and refugees outside of reception centres. 263 of these offences were connected to a right-wing political background. In 2018, 315 individuals were injured as a consequence of violence in or against reception centres for asylum seekers; 14 were children. According to “Courage against right-wing violence”, an alliance formed by several anti-racism and anti-discrimination actors, five attacks on asylum seekers and one attack on a reception centre for asylum seekers, resulting in nine cases of bodily injury, occurred in Germany between 1 January and 8 March 2019.
In Belgium,
the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism received complaints regarding anti-immigration posts on the Facebook page of the political party Vlaams Belang. In one of the posts, the party called for a radical change in policy to stop immigration to protect Belgian people. In another one, the party shared a link to a news article reporting on a young woman who was assaulted by a foreign bus driver, saying: “Criminal foreigners do NOT belong here anymore! A normal society protects its citizens and we want to ensure that. Time for a HARD approach.” After receiving the complaints, all posts were removed from the party’s Facebook page.
Re: German Jews warned against wearing kippah in public.
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Originally Posted by Clodia_Metelli
