‘Hate crimes against Sikhs jumped by 7.3% in England in 2019-20’

LONDON: Racially aggravated attacks registered a spike in hate crimes recorded in England and Wales in 2019-2020 even as religious hate crimes showed a downward trend, according to official UK Home Office statistics released on Tuesday.

There were 105,090 hate crimes recorded in the past year, which marks an increase of 8 per cent on the previous year, with race hate crimes rising by around 4,000. “As in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were race hate crimes, accounting for around threequarters of offences (72 per cent or 76,070 offences). These increased by 6 per cent between 2018/19 and 2019/20,” notes the Home Office report.

“Religious hate crimes fell by 5% (to 6,822 offences), down from a peak of 7,203 in the previous year. This was the first fall in religious hate crimes since 2012-13,” it said. In 2019-20, where the perceived religion of the victim was recorded, 50 per cent of religious hate crime offences were targeted against Muslims (3,089 offences), with the next most commonly targeted group being Jewish people, who were targeted in 19 per cent of religious hate crimes (1,205 offences).

Sikh Federation UK claimed that while reported religious hate crimes in the last 12 months fell for other religions, for Sikhs it has increased by 7.3 per cent, and related it to raised awareness within the Sikh community of the importance of reporting hate crimes.

The Home Office analysis also shows that racially aggravated hate crime jumped significantly during the Black Lives Matter protests. During the coronavirus lockdown, hate crimes showed a drop, but in June-July the number of such offences was up a third on the previous year.

PTI