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Dateline: Aug 23

Dateline explores a rise in racist UK comments since the Brexit vote and what life is like in a post-Brexit Britain.

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On this week’s Dateline, Seyi Rhodes explores a rise in racist UK comments since the Brexit vote, the debate still raging in Britain and what life is like in a post-Brexit Britain.

Britain’s vote to leave the European Union came as a shock to many around the world – but it has also had unintended consequences. Directly after the vote, a spike in the number of racist comments was recorded on social media.

Since 9/11, Islamophobia has been on the rise in Britain and around the world. More than half of all mosques and Muslim centres in Britain have been targeted since then. Terrorism, the rise of ISIS and the Rotherham child grooming scandal have all exacerbated the situation for Britain’s Muslims.

But just months after the Brexit vote, it’s not only Muslims who are now the target of hate online and on the streets.

“I don’t think it’s made people racist all of a sudden, but I think Brexit has definitely given confidence to people who were closet racists… I feel like they think that half the country basically agrees with them, which has given them confidence to basically speak out” – Arfah Farooq tells Seyi.

Seyi meets employees from Tell MAMA (Measuring Aniti-Muslim Attacks), a service established in 2012 that allows people from across England to report any form of Anti-Muslim abuse. In the three days that followed the Brexit vote Tell MAMA received more than 35 calls reporting anti-Muslim abuse.

He also speaks to the team at Demos – Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. The teams at Demos have developed software that recognises abusive language on social media, enabling them to monitor racist and Islamophobic tweets.

After the referendum on 23 June, 2016, Demo’s Carl Miller tells Seyi, “After the decision was announced we saw a general very large increase in discussion about migration and immigration on Twitter… more than thirteen thousand tweets that used terms that could be seen as xenophobic and racist.”

England’s taxi drivers feel like they’re also under attack. The Rotherham child grooming scandal involved gangs of Muslim men sexually abusing mostly white girls – among the perpetrators were taxi drivers. Since then, taxi drivers have been recording the ongoing abuse being hurled at them on a daily basis.

Nasar, a taxi driver, tells Seyi, “I’ve even known of a taxi driver who had to denounce his faith because when a customer asked him if he was a Muslim or not, he had to tell the customer he wasn’t a Muslim because the passenger had threatened to throw acid on a Muslim.”

Since the referendum, the U.K government has said it’s going to publish an action plan to tackle hate crime.

Karen Bradley, the Home Office Minister, tells Seyi, “There have been more reports than we’d perhaps seen previously. But I want to be clear it’s a snapshot and we need to understand whether those reports are because of an increase in the prevalence of the crime or because more people are reporting the crime.”

She also says: “There can be no excuse for hate crime and for abuse being hurled at people, innocent people, who do not deserve it. And so the very suggestion that the EU referendum and the comments that were made during it are in any way excuses for abuse and for crime is simply not acceptable.”

Tuesday 23 August at 9.30pm on SBS.

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