Six out of ten hate crimes in the Basque Country are racist or xenophobic
The latest 2024 Hate Riots Report notes a general decline in the number of cases, but confirms that attacks on racism and xenophobia continue to dominate the hate map in the Basque Country.
Hate crimes for xenophobic and ethnophobic reasons remain the most common (62%) in the Basque Country, although recorded incidents have fallen for the second consecutive year. In 2024, the Basque Country accounted for 236 potentially criminal hate crimes, 16% less than in 2023, and maintains the downward trend that began the previous year, the Department of Safety reported on Wednesday.
According to the 2024 Basque Country Hate Riots Report, since 2016 they have detected significant fluctuations in the data collected and there has been a significant increase since 2020. In addition, the current figure (236) is still high compared to pre-pandemic levels, when hate riots were around 120-130 per year.
Despite the general decline, the report details that 62 per cent of incidents, almost six out of ten cases (146 out of 236), have racist or xenophobic motivations, which, one more year, constitute the main cause of hate crimes in the Basque Country; secondly, attacks on sexual orientation and identity (54 cases in 2023 and 45 cases this year), which increase in percentage weight (23 per cent).
Ideological incidents have fallen slightly, to 16 cases (6 per cent), while gender attacks have halved, from 18 to 9 (3.8 per cent), losing their prominent position in 2022. This sharp reduction is due, according to the report, to the new classification criteria promoted by the Operational Coordination and Technical Investigation Section of the Ertzaintza (SCOTI), which since 2023 has more accurately distinguished hate crimes from gender-based violence and misconduct.
With regard to multiple discrimination, the report has detected 19 cases in which more than one protected character was the perpetrator of the attack, seven of which involved a combination of racist and homophobic motives, and 70 per cent of the multi-motivational cases involved a racial or ethnic component.
By type of crime, injuries (38 per cent) predominate, followed by threats (20 per cent), hate speech (12 per cent) and coercion (9 per cent). There was also a case of attempted murder. Territorially, half of the disturbances took place in Bizkaia (120 per cent), followed by Gipuzkoa (97 per cent) and Álava (about 8 per cent).
Distribution of records: separate male violence
The report concludes that the reduction in cases is directly related to the internal operational reorganization of the Ertzaintza, which from 2023 delegated responsibility for the analysis and management of hate crimes to the Operational Coordination and Technical Investigation Section (SCOTI), a unit that introduced new criteria for analysis based on the criteria of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which has made it possible to avoid statistical cross-categories.
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