There were 1,353 racist incidents and 839 racist crimes recorded by police in the 12-month period, the highest since records began in 2004/05, according to the PSNI and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA).

Around half of the recorded incidents were in Belfast.

The same period also saw 1,091 sectarian incidents and 730 sectarian crimes reported to the police, as well as 452 incidents and 282 crimes with homophobic or transphobic motivation.

The number of reported racially-motivated hate incidents in Northern Ireland has exceeded the number of sectarian incidents since 2016/17.

Patrick Corrigan, Northern Ireland programme director at Amnesty International, said: “The rate of incidents motivated by racism now outstrip those motivated by sectarianism, despite the relatively small numbers of people in Northern Ireland from ethnic minority backgrounds.

“That means that a member of an ethnic minority community is vastly more likely to be a victim of hate crime​.

“We need a zero tolerance approach to racist and other hate-motivated crime in Northern Ireland. Yet that is not what victims of these crimes see, with all too few offenders held to account.”