These "event-unrelated controls" were first introduced in Bavaria in and were instituted in all but three of Germany's 16 states by The legality of this legislation, however, was called into question by one court that ruled police cannot stop and ask people for ID based on their skin color. In the United States, racial profiling has been at the center of heated debates for years. There's even a term for a driver being stopped by officers for no discernible reason other than his or her skin color: driving while black.
Going by the letter of the law, racial profiling is illegal in the United States. Protesters took to the streets in Ferguson, Missouri, after teenager Michael Brown was shot by police in August But since the deaths of black men like Michael Brown or Eric Garner at the hands of police, public confidence in law enforcement has suffered, the law against racial profiling notwithstanding. In the UK, police officers are allowed to search an individual without reasonable suspicion under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act.
A senior police officer has to authorize the use of this policy in his or her district. Ministry of Justice statistics show that black and Asian people are more likely to be searched under Section 60 than white people are, which is why numerous British activists have been fighting the law for years.
They accuse the police of racial profiling. But in January the UK Supreme Court ruled that Section 60 was in accordance with the law and did not need to be changed. In a bid to prevent a repeat of last year's sex attacks, state police focused on men of North African descent on New Year's Eve. Should you be allowed to call people from North Africa "Nafris"?
The police in Cologne did, but it was actually an internal code name. We have bigger problems right now and should keep cool, writes DW's Jens Thurau. Visit the new DW website Take a look at the beta version of dw. Racial Profiling. Living while Black on Campus: a Roadmap for Student Activism We rely on the police to protect us from harm and promote fairness and justice in our communities. Take Action. Mapping the FBI. Donate Today. They demand justice, and an end to police abuses.
Politicians must heed these requests. The reform of the police is a long-standing issue in many European countries. Discriminatory police checks and excessive use of force are often the top layer of the daily lived experience of racism for many Europeans. Structural discrimination still keeps millions of our citizens belonging to ethnic minorities on the margins of our societies, in particular in employment, health, education, housing, and the criminal justice system.
Ethnic profiling by the police illustrates this problem well. In France a national survey showed in that young men of Arab and African descent were twenty times more likely to be stopped and searched than any other male group. In the UK — where the law requires police to collect and publish disaggregated data on police stop-and-search practices — official statistics for show that Black people were nine and a half times more likely to be stopped than white people in England and Wales.
Ethnic profiling is unethical, counterproductive and most importantly, illegal. It is immoral for the police to discriminate against people on grounds related to their physical characteristics. It is also counterproductive because ethnic profiling deeply damages the relationship between the police and the population, which is a fundamental element of a peaceful and prosperous society. And it is illegal because it violates well-established international human rights law protecting equality and human dignity.
A growing body of national and international judicial decisions has reaffirmed this principle with great clarity. In a case against Spain regarding checks aimed at identifying migrants in an irregular situation, the United Nation Human Rights Committee found that the use of physical or ethnic characteristics by themselves as an indicator in the context of these checks was incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
In the Court of Cassation in France delivered a landmark decision which condemned the French state for discriminatory identity checks carried out solely on the basis of physical characteristics.
In the Supreme Court of the Netherlands found that the national police programme stopping cars with plates from Eastern European countries was discriminatory. In the same year, the Svea Court of Appeal in Sweden found that the inclusion of several Roma persons in a Swedish police register solely based on their origin amounted to ethnic discrimination.
Despite this abundant body of evidence, European governments have all too often been slow or ineffective in preventing and sanctioning police abuses and ethnic profiling.
Now, the massive mobilisation of people of all origins should change the game.
0コメント