Border police can ethnically profile people, Dutch court rules
Al Jazeera
Hague District Court says that ethnicity can be used to single out passengers for checks, but activists pledge to appeal.
A Dutch court ruled that border police can use ethnicity as one of the criteria for selecting people for checks at the border, a legal defeat that rights activists immediately promised to appeal.
The decision on Wednesday came in a case brought against the government by two citizens, backed by rights groups, who argued that they were singled out for checks by officers from the country’s Marechaussee police force because of the colour of their skin.
Lawyers told the court that one plaintiff, Mpanzu Bamenga, a city councillor from Eindhoven who was born in Congo, was selected for a check as he returned to the Netherlands on a flight from Rome in part because he “didn’t look Dutch”.
