A network of Telegram channels linked to Russia is encouraging residents of the United Kingdom to attack mosques and Muslims, offering cryptocurrency in return.
This was found out by members of the human rights group Hope Not Hate, The Guardian reports.
These channels have already been linked to other incidents, including Islamophobic graffiti on mosques and schools in east and south London earlier this February. These cases are being investigated by police.
The groups also distributed PDFs with bomb recipes and 3D-printable weapon blueprints. And posters with QR codes for these groups and their associated TikTok accounts appeared on British streets.
However, in recent weeks, human rights activists have been particularly concerned that the groupʼs language has changed from encouraging graffiti to outright calls for knife attacks.
Members of the groups openly discussed burning the Quran and posted videos of arson, acid attacks and the testing of homemade bombs. Each channel on the network invites British citizens to contact the channel owners privately via chatbots.
Hope Not Hate representatives have already submitted dossiers on these channels to the Anti-Terrorist Police and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The movementʼs members are concerned that this network poses a much greater threat than the incitement to violence that is regularly found in other far-right Telegram chats.
Charities Community Security Trust (CST) and Tell Mama, which monitor hate crimes against Jews and Muslims, have also drawn attention to these networks and their links to Russia.
- Concerns about the Telegram channel network have emerged amid a surge in Islamophobic attacks, which have increased by 73% in the UK in the past year. For example, last week, a fake bomb was left outside a mosque in north London.
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