Anadolu has compiled data on attacks and racial rhetoric across Europe ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which is marked on Friday.
While racist attacks have increased in France and Britain, political rhetoric in the Netherlands and Bosnia and Herzegovina could lead to increased anti-Muslim discrimination.
Anti-religious offences in France
According to a report by the French Interior Ministry’s statistics service, 16,000 racist, xenophobic and anti-religious offences were recorded in 2024, an 11% increase on 2023. Of these, 9,400 were classified as crimes of high or medium severity.
The majority of victims were men aged between 25 and 54, most often of African descent. The report also found that racist offences in Paris are three to four times higher than in the rest of the country. Attacks on Muslims have increased. A disabled Muslim woman was attacked outside a shopping centre last year, and racist graffiti continues to appear on the walls of mosques.
More than 1,000 people have been attacked in the UK for being Muslims
Police in the UK recorded a peak in racial hate crime between 2021 and 2022, with 109,843 incidents recorded.
Although there has been some decline since then, the figures are still well above the average for the decade. Between March 2023 and March 2024, 70% of all hate crimes were racially motivated, with 98,799 out of 140,561 reports classified as racist attacks.
According to the UK Office for National Statistics, 6% of victims were injured and 15% were physically assaulted without injury. In 31% of cases, the attacks were directed at Asians, 31% at whites, and 24% at blacks. In late July and early August 2023, the far-right also targeted Muslims of various ethnic groups.
The anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring group Tell MAMA reported that 1,029 people were attacked last year because of their perceived Muslim identity. Of these, 53 per cent wore headscarves, 30 per cent wore beards and 3 per cent covered their faces.
Muslim women were often subjected to sexist and racist insults, and men were often accused of exploitation, with Pakistanis being the main targets.
Netherlands among most discriminatory countries in Europe
Discrimination is a growing problem in the Netherlands, especially after the electoral success of leader Geert Wilders and the coalition government led by his party.
The resignation of a Moroccan-born government minister over alleged racist remarks further exposed systemic bias. Customs and Social Welfare Minister Nora Achahbar resigned on 7 November last year in protest at racist rhetoric at cabinet meetings discussing the riots following the Ajax vs Maccabi Tel Aviv football match.
According to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2023, one in ten people in the Netherlands reported having been discriminated against, which is 1.6 million people, similar to the level in 2021. The most frequently cited reasons were race, colour and nationality.
The European Commission named the Netherlands as the European country where ethnic discrimination is most prevalent, with 82 per cent of respondents reporting having experienced prejudice.
One of the most high-profile cases of racial discrimination in recent Dutch history was the childcare allowance scandal, in which the tax authorities wrongly accused families of fraud on the basis of ethnicity.
As a result, more than 2,000 children were forcibly removed from families between 2015 and June 2022. The scandal led to the resignation of the Dutch government in January 2021 and compensation was paid to the affected families.
Growing separatist rhetoric in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Political tensions are rising in Bosnia and Herzegovina due to the separatist rhetoric of the leadership of Republika Srpska, one of the country’s two entities.
Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, has taken steps towards secession, deepening the country’s political crisis by refusing to recognise state institutions and initiating the creation of parallel structures.
In the face of instability, Bosnian Muslims in Serb-dominated areas continue to face pressure and discrimination, repeated attacks on mosques and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
