[WCAR] Spain: Groundbreaking Lawsuit Challenges Racial Profiling by Police

Open Society Justice Initiative

Phone: +1 212 548-0157
Fax: +1 212 548-4662
info@justiceinitiative.org
www.justiceinitiative.org 

Women's Link Wordlwide

Phone: +34-91-185-1904
Fax: +34-91-185-1907
info@womenslinkworldwide.org
www.womenslinkworldwide.org 

For immediate release

Contact: Indira X. Goris + 1 212 548 0600 (Open Society Justice
Initiative, New York)

Contact: Viviana Waisman + 34 91 185 1904 (Women's Link Worldwide, Spain)

GROUNDBREAKING LAWSUIT CHALLENGES RACIAL PROFILING BY POLICE

Geneva, September 12, 2006

In the first-ever legal challenge to racial profiling filed with an
international human rights tribunal, a coalition of advocacy groups today
submitted an application to the United Nations Human Rights Committee,
seeking to halt racial profiling by police.

The application challenges a ruling by the Spanish Constitutional Court
which held that police could target blacks for identity checks because
racial appearance is a proxy for immigration status. Racial profiling is a
growing problem in many European countries, including Spain, and the
application asks the Committee to rule that race may not be used as a
criterion in police stops.

The case, Rosalind Williams Lecraft v. Spain, concerns an African-American
woman of naturalized Spanish citizenship who was stopped and asked for
identity documents by a National Police officer in the Valladolid train
station in 1992. When Williams asked why she, and not the Caucasian family
members accompanying her, had been stopped, the officer, pointing at
Williams, explained that he had been told to identify persons who "looked
like her," adding, "many of them are illegal immigrants."

"This case is important because racial and religious minorities are
increasingly being subjected to police stops and scrutiny," said James A.
Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. "We
are asking the Human Rights Committee to make clear that racial profiling
is unlawful."

Williams is being represented before the Human Rights Committee by the
Open Society Justice Initiative, Women's Link Worldwide, and SOS
Racismo-Madrid. In appealing to the Committee, Williams is arguing that
the police action breached her rights to non-discrimination and freedom of
movement, as enshrined in Articles 2, 12(1) and 26 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In 2001, the Spanish Constitutional Court condoned the police practiceof
relying on specific physical or racial characteristics as "reasonable
indicators of the non-national origin of the person who possesses them."
The Court reasoned that racial criteria are "merely indicative of the
greater probability that the interested party was not Spanish." The
Court's endorsement lent legitimacy to a pervasive, discriminatory policy
of racial profiling in Spain that has been widely documented by monitoring
bodies.

"Discriminatory police stops are not just wrong—they're bad policy,"
observed Viviana Waisman, executive director of Women's Link Worldwide.
"They are an invitation to police abuse and often put especially
vulnerable populations, such as minority women, in dangerous situations."

The racial profiling suffered by Williams was not an isolated event.
Rather, it is emblematic of a larger pattern of racial profiling and
discriminatory conduct by Spanish law enforcement officers. A recent
report on racial profiling in Spain, Ethnic Profiling in Spain:
Investigations and Recommendations, written as part of a larger Open
Society Justice Initiative project on ethnic profiling in Europe,
demonstrates that Williams's experience is common among racial and ethnic
minorities in Spain. The report (available at
www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2?res_id=103400) documents the
pervasiveness of racial profiling by law enforcement in Spain, including
repeated stops and searches of ethnic minorities without explanation and
the use of racist language by police officers.

As Spain attracts a growing population of immigrants from Africa, Latin
America, and elsewhere, the use of race as a basis for immigration control
not only violates fundamental rights; it is also irrational and
counter-productive to the many efforts Spain is undertaking to welcome and
integrate its growing immigrant and ethnic minority population.

Further information on these cases is available at
http://www.justiceinitiative.org and
http://www.womenslinkworldwide.org.





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