Incidences of racism in Ireland are being highlighted by the Irish Network Against Racism.
Today we launched 2020 findings from the https://t.co/4WPniTpqfQ racist incident reporting system.With the total nr of incidents reaching 700,iReport recorded 159crimes,a record nr of both racist assaults & #hatespeech incidents.Full report & press release:https://t.co/zSguLxlNPN pic.twitter.com/TsoeItsS17
— INAR - Irish Network Against Racism (@INARIreland) March 23, 2021
Reports of racism in Ireland reached record highs in 2020, with 700 reports of racist incidents made to the Irish Network Against Racism's iReport service.
That represents a 25 per cent increase on 2019 record numbers of hate speech incidents and racist assaults.
The highest ever number of racist assaults and hate speech incidents were also recorded, at 51 and 594 respectively, while there were 159 criminal incidents.
The report's author Dr Lucy Michael has said it is a worrying development:
"Reports overall were up, including criminal offences, hate speech and graffiti. We saw that very high rate of physical injury continuing too, along with psychological impact and social isolation that result from that, doubling for victims of racist crime and violence in 2020."
Tackling racism
iRadio's iScore recently spoke to Troy Townsend, Head of Development with Kick It Out, an organisation that campaigns for equality in football.
He called for social media companies to be "held accountable” for racial abuse on their platforms.
You can listen to Troy's full conversation with Caradh O'Donovan here.
