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New figures supplied by the Metropolitan Police show hate-related crimes in London have risen considerably over the last year. Nearly all forms of hate crimes have increased, with the number of victims subject to religious and racist attacks going up by almost 20 percent from 14,004 to 16,618 while homophobic incidents increased by 12 percent, from 1,816 to 2,033. Faith-related crime has gone up by 18 percent and disability-hate victims have increased by a shocking 216 percent from 215 in 2015-16 to 794 in 2016-17.
Charities including Amnesty International and Stop Hate UK have voiced their alarm following the release of the new figures, and have pinpointed last year’s EU referendum as playing a major role in fuelling such crimes. The figures, published by the Evening Standard, show a surge in the number of 999 calls made to report hate crimes with that increase beginning around two weeks before the Brexit vote on June 23 2016.
Speaking to The Independent earlier in the week, Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK’s campaign director, said: 'If accurate, these figures are deeply worrying, and they bear out our initial concerns that divisive political campaigning last summer gave licence to the expression of discriminatory views in a way we haven’t seen for decades.'
Moscogiuri added: 'There needs to be a much stronger message from all quarters of the political establishment that racially charged and demonising language is totally unacceptable in modern Britain.'
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