Distinction in travel journalism
Is independent travel journalism important to you?
Click here to keep it independent

2 Jul, 2013

Are the German police using racial profiling? DW.DE

Biplab Basu is waiting at the heavy door of “ReachOut,” a small organization that helps victims of rightwing extremism and racism.

Basu himself has often encountered racism, he recounts. A couple of months ago, he and his daughter were the only ones who were checked by police in a train approaching the Czech-German border. Basu is certain that the officers approached him and his daughter, because their skin was darker than that of their fellow travelers. That he came to Germany more than 30 years ago didn’t matter. Basu has filed a complaint, and might even go to court over the fact that he and his daughter were picked out of a white crowd.

For years, he has fought against “racist police checks,” as he calls them. He co-organized protests in the early 1990s and handed out fliers. He says that if only dark-skinned people are approached by police in trains or airports, fellow travelers will internalize the “dark skin equals criminal” idea.

Read the rest: Are the German police using racial profiling? DW.DE