Briferendum Series: UK hate crimes surge shows Brexit to be a first victim of EU refugee crisis

Reports are coming in from the United Kingdom suggesting that hate crimes and racial abuses have gone up since the referendum on Thursday, where people have snarled at ethnic communities calling them to leave the country. Though there are no official statistics at this point, private numbers suggest there has been 60 percent rise in such attacks since the referendum voting.

A Romanian man complained that few people were flying the national flag, while shouting: “We voted you out. Go home you f****** immigrants”. Similar incidents are being reported almost all across the country. Many say that they have never experienced anything like this in their decade or more in the country. Most shocking was a graffiti attack on a Polish community center.

While these attacks will spark a new kind of uncertainties across the European continent, they strongly suggest that the referendum was more about immigration than anything. The European Union had taken a decision previously to distribute millions of migrants appearing from Syria and other war-torn regions, among its members and fear of such migrants reaching its shore has spooked the country, though Britain opted out of that arrangement. It also shows that the “Leave” camp was successful in igniting the racial anger towards immigration.