United We Can ask the Interior for more actions to avoid police controls for "ethnic profiling"

Register a question accompanied by Serigne Mbaye, who was recently identified and his party said it was because he is black

MADRID, 26 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

United We Can has demanded that the Ministry of the Interior in Congress detail the measures adopted to prevent police controls from being carried out based on racial or ethnic profiling.

This is stated in a parliamentary question formulated by the deputy of the confederal group and leader of En Comú Podem, Ismael Cortés, who was accompanied at the time of registration by the deputy in the Madrid Assembly, Serigne Mbaye.

Precisely, the spokesman for United We Can in Congress, Pablo Echenique, recently denounced that the National Police had registered the Secretary of Anti-Racism of the formation and deputy in the Madrid Assembly, Serigne Mbayé, on a train after traveling to Valencia to participate in the 'Spring Festival' of the party, in his view, for being black.

In the exposition of his initiative, the leader of En Comú Podem argues that already in 2005 an Open Society study showed "firmly that rational profile practices were "prevalent" in law enforcement officers.

It also recalls that in 2009 Spain was condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee for rational discrimination in the case of Rosalind Williams, whom the National Police asked for documentation at the Valladolid railway station in 1992.

"Since then until today, studies have been carried out in this line and there have been multiple organizations, entities, bodies and the media who have been denouncing this type of action and asking for control over them, so that the identifications are as objective as possible. Cortes reasons.

For example, it cites that the Ombudsman has been making different recommendations since 2013 to the National Police and that, despite a circular issued on this practice, complaints continue to be received based on ethnic criteria.

It also points out that a study pointed out that between 2011 and 2013 the identifications of foreigners, despite accounting for 11.7% of the population, 54.5% of the total number of identifications carried out were on this group.

In the case of ethnic appearance, North African gypsies and Afro-Latin Americans were arrested in greater proportion, with 60, 45 and 39% respectively. "That is to say, the Police identified 10 times more Gypsies and 7.5 times more Maghreb than the rest of the population," says the deputy from United We Can.

In turn, he points out that a study published in the journal Logos Ciencia y Tecnología reveals that the identifications of people with Caucasian features represent 9.3% of those made in total, while people with other characteristics concentrated 90.7%.

In turn, Cortés points out that another report from the Council for the Elimination of Rational and Ethnic Discrimination, from 2020, pointed out that this feeling had diminished in all groups in relation to police treatment.

However, it specified that the population from non-Mediterranean Africa was the one with the highest rates of perception of discrimination, with 37%, followed by the North African community (26%), the Roma (24%) and the Indo-Pakistani (22%). ).