Worst rise in UK hate crimes caused by EU referendum: Police
British police believe the spike in hate crime in the UK following the European Union (EU) referendum was the worst on record and caused by the nature of the EU referendum debate.
Recent figures released by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) showed that reports of hate crimes to police increased by 42 percent across Britain in the week before and the week after the vote compared to the same period last year.
In London, the police have reportedly recorded an average of three hate crimes an hour since the referendum.
“I believe the referendum debate has led to an increase in reporting of hate crime,” Mark Hamilton, the head of the NPCC, said on Monday.
“It is very clear in the last couple of weeks that more people have been aware of experiencing such incidents than we have had before,” he also said.
Hamilton noted that the rise in the offences had a direct link to the Brexit vote.
“Some people took that as a license to behave in a racist or other discriminatory way. We cannot divorce the country’s reaction to the referendum and the increase in hate crime reporting,” he added.
The most common of the 3,076 reported offences were mainly “harassment, common assault and other violence” directed against “visible minorities” and people from eastern Europe, police figures showed.
Hundreds of hate crimes were also perpetrated on social media, with members of the public telling people speaking foreign languages or people who are not white to “go home” and “leave” the UK.
A number of racist anti-immigrant graffiti were daubed on the walls across the country, including the one on the Polish cultural center in west London.
The government has condemned the offences and pledged to take further measures to tackle them.
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