Racial profiling case in Hamburg

Berlin/Hamburg – The Hamburg Administrative Court is rehearing several cases in which the police racially profiled a man from Togo starting tomorrow, 12 August 2020. So called Drug Task Force police officers arbitrarily and thus illegally stopped him four times in Hamburg’s Saint Pauli district in 2017 and 2018. The task force has been operating priority missions in the Hamburg districts of Saint Pauli, Saint Georg and the Schanzenviertel since April 2015. The plaintiff is represented by ECCHR partner lawyer Carsten Gericke.

Below you find a statement by Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, on the occasion of the oral hearing on 12 August:

“The Hamburg police’s grounds for stopping people of color are racially motivated. The only reason the plaintiff was stopped was because of his skin color. This had nothing to do with policing and therefore violated the plaintiff’s fundamental and human rights. German security forces and police officers racially profile systematically. Arbitrary police stops of Black people are an expression of structural racism in Germany. Comprehensively addressing this in the justice and political systems is long overdue.”

This is not the first time that the constitutionality of the Hamburg Drug Task Force’s racist practices have been challenged. As early as 2017, the Hamburg police had to admit that it illegally stopped the Togolese plaintiff without cause.

To counter injustice with legal interventions – this is the aim and daily work of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.

ECCHR is an independent, non-profit legal and educational organization dedicated to enforcing civil and human rights worldwide. It was founded in 2007 by Wolfgang Kaleck and other international human rights lawyers to protect and enforce the rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as other human rights declarations and national constitutions, through legal means.

Together with those affected and partners worldwide, ECCHR uses legal means to end impunity for those responsible for torture, war crimes, sexual and gender-based violence, corporate exploitation and fortressed borders.

Maria Bause
T: +49 30 69819797
M: presse@ecchr.eu

Philipp Jedamzik
T: +49 30 29680591
M: presse@ecchr.eu