Human rights group accuses Spain of discriminatory identity checks

Dec 14, 2011, 15:27 GMT

London/Madrid - Spain must stop police from selecting people for identity checks based on their ethnic or racial characteristics, the human rights pressure group Amnesty International (AI) said in a report published in London on Wednesday.

Deliberate identity checks on foreigners in the absence of any security concern are widespread, according to the report.

'People who do not look Spanish can be stopped by police as often as four times a day,' any time and anywhere, said Izza Leghtas, Amnesty International's researcher on Spain.

Some Madrid police stations have been given weekly and monthly quotas for the number of undocumented immigrants they have to detain, thus encouraging officers to target people belonging to ethnic minorities, AI said.

'The Spanish authorities are using stop and search powers abusively as a way to control migration,' Leghtas said.

'Spain has the right to control migration, however that should not be at the expense of the rights of migrants and minorities to equality and protection from discrimination,' the researcher added.

'The issue with migrants is very serious in a number of countries, such as Italy, Greece and Cyprus,' an AI spokeswoman told dpa.

'However, the discrimination does not necessarily express itself in the same way' as in Spain, she added.