BELGRADE (Sputnik), Victoria Mladenovich – On Monday, a panel of UN experts published a report on the magnitude of structural racism and racial profiling by German police, saying racial stereotyping in Germany’s justice system has been preventing it from effectively investigating racist violence.
"The assessment of the panel is a strong confirmation of the criticism made not only by our organisation but by most of the Black Community …The fact that a working group from the UN confirmed this is therefore a proof that Germany needs to end its strategy of denial and stop with its narrow understanding of structural racism," Tahir Della told Sputnik.
"As the result, in many cases of institutional racism — in the education sector, the labor market or in cases of police violence — we are always in the position to discuss the wrongdoings of individuals and not the structure within which these individuals are working," Della explained.
He said the German government needed to differentiate people of color and publish more detailed statistics. Officials use the label of "people with migration background" for all cases of racial discrimination.
"There is no possibility to say how many black people and people of colour are in Germany and therefore it has so far been impossible to say what kind of exclusion and discrimination they experience. But in order to deal with structural racism it is necessary to have such data," Della said.
The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent visited Berlin, Dessau, Dresden, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Hamburg on February 20-27 on an invitation of the German government.
The UN report concluded that repeated denial that racial profiling does not exist in Germany by police authorities and the lack of an independent complaint mechanism at federal and state level fostered impunity.
The experts called on the German government to take appropriate action to end racial discrimination.
