Specific fundamental rights issues

• Author: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (EU body or agency)
• Pages: 33-39

33

SPECIFIC FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS

ISSUES

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As the last in a series of FRA bulletins on the immediate impact of the COVID-19

pandemic on fundamental rights in the EU, this section returns to several

important issues covered in previous reports. It provides additional, updated

information on:

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racism linked to COVID-19;

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asylum and migration in the context of the pandemic;

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COVID-19-related disinformation;

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data protection and privacy concerns in the context of technological

tools to support exit strategies.

. RACISM

Bulletin#1 reported racist and xenophobic incidents linked to the COVID-19

pandemic targeting certain national or ethnic communities in many EU Member

States. Most related to incidents against people of assumed Chinese or Asian

origin. Since then, evidence indicates that the pandemic was increasingly

exploited as a pretext to attack minorities already subject to racial discrimination,

hate speech and hate crime, such as migrants, people with an immigrant

background and Roma, particularly on social media. The EU-wide interactive

map of COVID-19 impact on racialised communities released in May by the

European Network Against Racism, documents further hate speech and hate

crime incidents linked to COVID-19.

Some countries reported racial prof‌iling and disproportionate enforcement

of COVID-19 related restrictions with respect to people with North African

background, Black people and other ethnic minority groups.

FRA will include information on hate speech and conspiracy theories affecting

Jews in its annual update on national data collection on antisemitism, to be

published in September2020.

4.1.1 Racist hate speech and violence against minority groups

The Austrian NGO Zara reported in May that 43% of the 93 COVID-19 related

racist incidents registered since mid-March targeted refugees, often through

online hate speech. The Belgian equality body Unia received 19complaints of

alleged hate speech and hate crime linked to COVID-19 between 1April and

30June, mostly involving people of Asian origin, but also including social media

posts blaming migrants for spreading the pandemic.10 An article published in

Estonia under the headline ‘Barbecue party of Africans scared the people

of Tallinn’ claimed that locals felt threatened by a large group of black people