By Luke Alsford
The number of reported hate crimes against Asian people in County Durham has increased by more than 50% since 2019. Data from a Freedom of Information Request to Durham Constabulary also shows that hate crimes against Chinese, Japanese and South East Asian people in particular has not returned to pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels. Campaigners believe that a high rate of underreporting is obscuring the true number of racist hate incidents and crimes faced by Asian people.
Palatinate has spoken to members of Durham University’s Asian community, all of whom said that they and their friends had experienced some sort of race- motivated hate incident in Durham, about their reaction to the data and the reasons why there is a problem with underreporting.
In 2023, Durham Constabulary reported that there were 156 hate crimes, which is defined as a criminal offence carried out because of hostility or prejudice based on disability, race, transgender identity or sexual orientation, against Asian people. This is the highest number recorded since 2017, the earliest point for which data is accessible, when there were 108 reported hate crimes against Asian people. 101 race-motivated crimes against Asian people were recorded in 2019. In 2022, Durham Constabulary noted 137 hate crimes against Asian people, a slight decrease from 144 such crimes in 2021.
Durham Constabulary also records rates of hate incidents, which are non-criminal acts motivated by hostility or prejudice, but does not assign an ethnicity to them at that stage.
The hate incident and hate crime data was requested by the group End Violence and Racism Against East and Southeast Asian Communities (EVR), which has campaigned against structural racism and inequalities directed against East and Southeast Asian people since the Covid-19 pandemic. Data specifically pertaining to people from this community shows that hate crime numbers peaked in 2021, when there were 33 recorded against…
Read the full article here
