Amnesty International accuses Germany of failure to combat racism

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) - Human rights organization Amnesty International has published a report saying Germany is not doing enough to combat systemic racism and does not sufficiently recognize its causes.

The report presented in Berlin on Wednesday identifies structural problems, including the methods of the police in dealing with hate crimes and in reparations for colonial crimes.

The secretary general of the German Amnesty section, Julia Duchrow, explained that Germany had already committed itself to protecting all people from racial discrimination and violence in the 1960s.

“But the authorities fail time and again,” she emphasized, referring to the right-wing extremist series of murders by the terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSA) and racist attacks in the German cities of Munich, Halle and Hanau.

Duchrow continued: “State discrimination, such as the headscarf ban for Muslim women in the public sector or blanket bans on demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians, must be tackled in the same way as discrimination and violence by non-state actors.”

The organization accuses the German police of having racist stereotypes through categorizations such as “clan criminality.” Amnesty International is calling for racism in law enforcement to be investigated and countermeasures taken.

Germany must guarantee that all allegations of police’s racist behavior are independently investigated and consistently punished. This would require independent complaints offices at the federal and state levels.