Published 23 September 2021 at 07.15
Law & Law. The Dutch border police may continue to check people with a foreign appearance more closely than they check people of European descent. A court in The Hague has ruled that such checks do not constitute discrimination, writes DutchNews.
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Mpanzu Bamenga.
“The mere fact that ethnicity matters… does not by definition mean that it is a matter of discrimination, and therefore a general prohibition cannot be justified”, the court writes in its judgment.
< p>According to the ruling, there is no clear definition of what ethnicity is, but assuming that it means external appearance characteristics that can not be changed, such as skin color and racial affiliation, the court does not consider the law to be an obstacle to using ethnicity as a selection criterion for which to be checked at the border.
Behind the lawsuit were Amnesty International and two abusive immigrants, one of whom was Mpanzu Bamenga, a local politician from Eindhoven who was stopped at Eindhoven airport while wearing a suit, walked quickly and looked like a “Nigerian money smuggler”, according to border police.
When Bamenga began to question why he should show passports, he was told that the police were conducting an internal aliens check and were looking for criminals and asylum seekers. He assumed that he looked like someone that the police were looking for, but when another black man with a family was also stopped, he realized that the police prioritized checking people with a foreign appearance during their alien control, which he perceived as a scandal.
– It made me angry, he told RTL Nieuws at the time.
– Ethnic profiling is not about me personally, but it affects many people. Knol, for his part, denied that it is strange that the police prioritize checking potential foreigners at an internal aliens check, and stated in a hearing in parliament last week that the border police work with risk profiling based on information they receive from the security service and other risk indicators. During the checks, the police are expected to take into account such things as the traveler's racial affiliation, travel companionship, behavior and itineraries, according to the minister.
to make the Netherlands more politically correct.
– The door to discrimination and racism is now still wide open, said Klaas.
The verdict will be appealed, according to him.