Racial Profiling Muslims in France

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/25/france-landmark-ruling-racial-profiling-checks-police-paris-terror-attacks

The strained relationship between French police and the country’s non-white population is under fresh scrutiny in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks as a Paris appeals court considers a landmark case brought by black and Arab men who say they were openly stopped by officers for no other reason than their skin colour.

Racial profiling – in which French people of black and north African origin are routinely pulled over on the street and asked to show their identity papers with no explanation – has long been a fraught issue in France, contributing to tension and urban rioting on housing estates.

But the current political context, in which France is soul-searching over race relations, discrimination, antisemitism and hate speech in the wake of January’s terrorist attacks, has thrown the spotlight on equality issues more than ever before. Campaign groups say that since the attacks, which began with a deadly assault on the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and ended in a bloody siege at a kosher supermarket, French people of “Muslim appearance” – black and Arab – are complaining of an increase in incidences of arbitrarily being pulled over by police.