Reducing Ethnic Profiling in the European Union - Open Society ...

266. To undertake this kind of analysis, researchers need data on police stops including the ethnicityof the person stopped. These data sets are generally lacking in Europe; many police forces donot record their stops or do not make this information publicly available and, for historical reasonsdiscussed further in Annex II to this report, almost no countries record ethnic data. The UnitedKingdom is the only EU Member State that collects and, since 1992, regularly publishes statisticson ethnicity and police stop and search practices.267. In a decision on admissibility in Cissé v. France, App No. 51346/99, January 16, 2001, thecourt declared inadmissible the portions of the application alleging a violation of Article 14 in conjunctionwith Article 5 in relation to a police evacuation of a Paris church that had been occupiedby “a group of aliens from various African countries who had settled in France without residencepermits” and who “in 1996 decided to take collective action to draw attention to the difficultiesthey were having in obtaining a review of their immigration status in France.” The Article 14/5allegations related to the following facts: When evacuating the church, the police stopped and questionedall of the occupants. “Whites were immediately released while the police assembled all thedark-skinned occupants, apart from those on hunger strike, and sent them by coach to an aliens’detention center.” Noting that a majority of the occupants of the church, including the applicant,belonged to the group of aliens from Africa who did not possess residence permits, the court notedthat “the system set up at the church exit for checking identities was intended to ascertain the identityof persons suspect[ed] of being illegal immigrants. In these circumstances,” the court “[couldnot] conclude that the applicant was subjected to discrimination based on race or colour.”268. For example in Cobzaru v. Romania, a case involving police violence against a Roma victim,the court observed: “that the numerous anti-Roma incidents which often involved State agentsfollowing the fall of the communist regime in 1990, and other documented evidence of repeatedfailure by the authorities to remedy instances of such violence were known to the public at large,as they were regularly covered by the media. …. [U]ndoubtedly, such incidents, as well as the policiesadopted by the highest Romanian authorities in order to fight discrimination against Romawere known to the investigating authorities in the present case, or should have been known, andtherefore special care should have been taken in investigating possible racist motives behind theviolence.”In Cobzaru v Romania, App. No. 48254/99, Eur. Ct. Hum. Rts., Judgment of July 27, 2007, at 97.Far from taking “special care” to investigate possible racist motives behind the violence, Romanianprosecutors had “made tendentious remarks in relation to the applicant’s Roma origin throughoutthe investigation.” Id., at 98. The court found that these comments disclosed “a general discriminatoryattitude of the authorities,” id., at100, and that this, together with “the failure of the lawenforcement agents to investigate possible racial motives in the applicant’s ill-treatment,” constituteddiscrimination in violation of the ECHR. Id., at 101.269. D.H. and Others v the Czech Republic, App. No. 57325/00. Eur. Ct. Hum. Rts., Grand Chamber,Judgment of November 13, 2007.270. Id., at 184.271. This case involved a challenge to discriminatory practices in public education.272. Eur. Ct. Hum. Rts., Gillan and Quinton v. the United Kingdom, Application no. 4158/05, Judgmentof January 12, 2010, at 85.REDUCING ETHNIC PROFILING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 225