 Okay, hello one more time. Welcome to Dijkstra for our next talk Is it legal for State and institutions to collect and publish data from ethnic minorities in which consequences will that have for the people Affected by this those are some of the questions that the following talk will address Specifically they're talking about the criminal crime statistics by the Berlin police Where Cindy and Roma are linked to specific criminal acts This is a population group. That's already stigmatized very strongly. Anyway How problematic these ways of data collection are this is what Leah backman and I know Royce will be talking about Anya Royce is a political reference For the Central Council of German Cindy and Roma about topics such as anti-gifted system and racial profiling Leah Beckman is a lawyer and works at the Society for Civil Rights with a focus on the protection of civil and basic rights Well, and in that sense, please I'd ask for a warm round of applause for anya Royce and Leah Beckman Yeah, thank you. Thanks for this welcome I'm really happy to that there are so many people who came for this that are interested in this topic and I think it's also the first time for Anyone to be talking about anti-gifted system and at Congress and that's what I'm especially happy about Because I think it's extremely important for us to get wider reach for this topic and these issues In the beginning I it was already mentioned that there's a long tradition of data collection for Cindy and Roma And I will Give a brief historical overview over this later on So I will do that because you haven't done that so far So there will be a quick historical overview Over how this data collection grew historically because I think it's important to get a sense of How this is being practiced today? at the very least Cindy and Roma have always been framed as a Security problem have always been presumed guilty by association and put under general suspicion But because we have very little time we basically used two examples that we want to use it as highlights and as examples To show what this practice or police practice policing practice looks like but basically it's important to bear in mind that these are Just highlights and examples and we have some links for further information if you're interested in that So maybe just for starters as well What you can see here is a Population polling that the Leipzig University did and That was in its authoritarianism study in 2018 and it's very a pretty obvious in the study that people's Aversion to Cindy and Roma in the population is pretty widely spread and that the assumption that Cindy and Roma Tend to be criminals. This assumption is very high. Why is that the case? That has different has different reasons Part of Antegypsis isn't basically has deep roots in society. So that's an important reason But it's also due to how police frames this ethnic minority And maybe for starters Why it's apparently relevant for the police and why they're doing this why they claim that they're Collecting data on Cindy and Roma in the first place is that they claim that Cindy and Roma are Generally more prone to commit crimes They claim that the police or that's At least the police assumes that they have some kind of expert knowledge about crimes and criminality among Cindy and Roma and how it happens and how it Manifests itself And that's also something that you can very much see in the historical That's also something that's very relevant for the historical part We'll talk about later and then in addition to that the police also assumes That what they the group people who they frame as gypsies the this racist Concept that they also assume that you can somehow recognize people for by just looking at them just looking at the exterior and Yeah So hello from me as well I just wanted to give a quick introduction to the legal basics for this So you can understand my perspective on this because we at the civil society at the society for civil civil rights We are human rights organization And we are different from other organizations because we for example Strategically pick cases that we try to get to the courts where we think that you can Implement and enforce human rights by going to court and taking cases to court One of the reasons we're working together with the Central Council of German Cindy and Roma is because we're working on these human rights issues So in the context of policing with regards to Cindy and Roma one thing that's extremely important is That the international there's an international law that is banning racist Policing essentially so that's use Kogan's which means it's compelling law So even if there was an international treaty This law could not be undermined or ever Been gotten rid of so it's a very basic right. It's also a part of the German basic law And it has specific implications for the work of the police. So whenever Police has some kind of discretion in making decisions. They're still bound by basic rights and human rights And this is where essentially this ban on racial profiling is especially there because they cannot Act based on the assumption based on racist assumption and racist prejudice So they cannot assume that someone's color like color of their skin Or how their color of their skin interacts with their their behavior that cannot make these assumptions and use them To for example conclude that a particular person might be more likely to have committed or to commit crimes in the future In addition to these operative Requirements It's also important with regards to data collection that is being done by the police Because for example, they might help Investigations by and prepare Investigations by collecting data and this is also something that's specifically laid down in the law because it says that any markers That are related to race are a particular category of personally identifiable data. So there's a red flag These data can only be collected in very specific unique cases. So it's absolutely banned to to collect race in a structurally and broad-based Analyzable way So you cannot just collect data for everyone in Germany who for example is part of Sinti and Roma or another ethnic group In addition to that it also means that in particular contexts So for example police can collect data if it's incorrect if it's absolutely important and absolutely necessary for Preventing a danger like a particular danger or for investigating a particular crime, but so only if it's necessary for those investigations So that also means that if there is a concrete and specific Suspicion and they're looking for and they're looking for someone they can collect that person's color of skin but if If they're for example, just assume that someone who's part of Sinti and Roma is more likely to commit a crime Then they cannot just use that as an assumption to assume that someone is more likely to commit a crime And so that's something that they cannot mention in a police file in a policing file for a particular case That's something that they're only allowed to talk about and use in very few cases So our thesis is however that practical policing looks very different And our practical assumption and that we also want to present here But is that how things work in our opinion is that people who are allegedly Sinti and Roma Are much more likely To be victims of racial profiling and be subject of police enforcement actions such as checking identity documents and then in those Context police will essentially mark down on their files that these people that the people who they watched or Enforced something on that they assume that these people are part of Sinti and Roma and said that there is a collection of data on Alleged Sinti and Roma, which is then in turn Used as the basis for Investigations which are essentially happening on the basis of racist prejudices As I mentioned, there's a pretty long historical tradition within the police And this is also something that goes Further back than even national socialism in the Third Reich It had its kind of high point under the Nazis, but this practice this policing practice is way older So the concept of quote-unquote gypsies is something that first appeared in the early 18th century And at the time in the Empire the first types of data were already systematically collected And then under the Nazis that data was used to Deport these members of this ethnic minority and murder them As opposed to the Jews who Who are also victims of national socialism who essentially experienced kind of like a change with a more moves against anti-Semitism post World War two there was no such change with regards to Anti-Gypsicism and the fate of sentient Roma, which simply this discrimination only transformed gradually and slowly What's important is that sin he and Roma have always been framed as people with an Undesirable behavior as strangers that are outside of society even if they are German citizens And this framing them as a security as a problem of security in public order And that's something that's oh they're always being accused of and that's then used as the basis for Justifying that you have to collect data about them and have to collect more information about them in 1899 The Munich police department even created a gypsies gypsy central quote-unquote Which basically published the first so-called gypsy book in 1905 Which had data on 3,000 people in there including their family trees And other personal data and this is the type of data that was they continued to collect Which was then used during the nationals on the national socialism this institution essentially moved into the security administration and The administration five or amped five then continued this data collection and also past it on to a to an office that was concerned with Hygienic race Research and which then used that to kill murder people In 1938 They had information on 30 that 40 31,000 people which basically was everyone who was part of sentient Roma at the time For all of them they had fingerprints pictures genealogies and personal other personal data As I mentioned earlier this tradition continued post 1945 Basically without any Significant breaks right after 1945 Their police created new so-called gypsy police departments right after 1945 that continued working in the same ways using the same data But to kind of hide and this entire gypsysism a bit They were renamed in 1953 into a data collection For people who And Named into several registry for annotations And so this is one of the publications from lower Saxony Where it's also where it's actually laying down guidelines for what is supposed to be collected and under what conditions in 1970 This new registry Was considered anti-constitutional unconstitutional, but the practice essentially continued This is because From the 1980s onwards The federal criminal agency started collecting data on sentient Roma and also had a specific part within the institution That had it was working was collecting dedicated data about sentient Roma and essentially and essentially answer questions for Questions and requests from the different states that came to them And did this for the entire country. So that's where the state criminal agencies came to ask questions about People who they thought were sentient Roma and committed crimes And so here we have Essentially we have we have kind of like a file that shows That gives you information about someone that police is looking for and here you can say that in their personal data There is something that they're collecting is That they are considered a quote-unquote gypsy even though they're not using the particular name But at this end but then because there were protests By the central council of sentient Roma This was abolished at the time and then it was simply changed. So from 1984 Onwards they stopped using the term gypsy and they replaced another euphemism And then they replaced that with the Framing HWAO, which basically which is essentially the same meaning but essentially just means someone often changes the place of Residence, so they just use different words, but the basic framing and assumptions have essentially remained the same throughout time And because this collection of so-called gypsy names Was a ball or was supposed to be abolished The police essentially started collecting other types of information And use different words to kind of mark people as sentient Roma without using the terminology They'd used before and the police was extremely creative in doing this and had a range of different terms that they used for this That they've been using since the 1980s to essentially mark sentient Roma And that's also something that continues into the present So these are two requests from Baden-Württemberg, which is a state in southern Germany From and from Saxony Where it became very in there from 2014 2016 respectively where it became very obvious that Police are still using similar framings Such as this person often changes their location of residence and ours. We assume that this is Essentially a category That is probably being used to collect data and sentient Roma Be when being asked about this repeatedly in Saxony Police basically stopped answering questions and it's impossible to get quite like get further answers about what exactly this category is doing We now want to show you two examples How does this work how can you register sentient Roma? We only have these personalized personalized data and the state databases Have these kinds of Terminology that can't be used that have been identified as racist So one term that they're not using anymore is for example this hw a o term In some other places. We don't know what type of terms they use As Anna already said in baden-Württemberg. They essentially continue to use this terminology And so we were essentially wondering how is this practice being continued today and one assumption that we have is that the category traveling criminals That Officially only collects cases where the person who committed a crime doesn't live where the crime was committed But that we think that if that is combined with additional information such as a member of an mobile ethnic Community those that's kind of terminology that people are using then it's very clear for For police men and police women that basically these are coded as sentient Roma and that there is a particular suspicion Towards them, but we also see this as an example that this Marking people as sentient Roma continues and this is also something that appears in crime statistics I don't know who if you have looked at those statistics before So statistically taken where criminality is Being followed so this exists on a country's like on a county site, but also on a country level So the police is in charge of this like obviously it's only registered where police is actually investigating, but There's a few Points of interest where we can understand this so I'm going to give you some examples of what actually happened in these kind of incidences historically We have these statistics by the police This marking or labeling of sentient Roma this is from 1953 traveling Criminals perpetrator, okay, there we had it so the definition of the traveler Travelers are people that Due to origin are traveling from place to place usually in caravans and are traveling in the country in these and do not have a permanent place of residency and If they do have This Even if they have a permanent place of residence them the assumption is that they do not get rid of this Marker of being part of the traveling community. So it's basically genetically based racism But it seems that once you're part of this community, you're always part of this community. I'm giving this example There's other examples. I'm just gonna give you one this criminal statistics by the police from Frankfurt from 2005 We have this section so criminal acts from people who belong to mobile ethnic minorities like again Once again, we find these kind of labeling or marking That traces back to being racist in 2007 we again see this how this is continued as a tradition in the investigation So investigations were targeted towards specific ethnic groups So this sort of like racist investigation is obviously a great danger of this How do we came to work together so obviously like also in the In Berlin also they had like 86 perpetrators seems to be a great risk in Berlin and they have the additional section gonna launch this The people who were suspects in this cases were on almost all cases part of the group of the city of Roma these family clans are living in Germany for many years and most of them have the German citizenship at this point There's obviously no coding here. This is clear calling And especially in the first sentence, but also in the second but these family clans are by now living in Germany for many years and are largely Having German citizenship like what type of family clans are we talking about in this case? So the People who are being under Who are being suspects are they the family clans are like who are the family clans like this is and obviously also the hint that like German citizens They're like obviously our German citizens But they want to they want to kind of enunciate and stress that they are not actually German because they have been living here for a while But they they're not actually quite German. I find this quite ultra racist and we asked ourselves So why where does this data come from like so you are taking this data? And then you're interpreting or you're not interpreting it and you're writing it, but that's also quite unlawful So why are you actually collecting this data? What do you want to do with it? And how do you do it? How do you know that somebody's a sin to aroma? Do you ask every suspect and about this or can you smell this? We're not really sure So after that The Central Council of Cynthia Roma started talking to the Minister of the Interior and they asked the question and they got a response from the Interior Minister Arthur Geisel. He would like to Stress that there is no structural registration. However, there's a bit further That it's not based upon whether or not suspects are part of the group of Cynthia and Roma, but it is made by the experts within the police departments the professional estimation and then there's an final Thing that they want to announce it that they see that it's quite problematic, but they also understand the police understands This is a problematic measure So there's like very little political pressure that generates any positive outcome. So that's how we came together So what can we actually do in a lawful way? And that's quite difficult to like get to this If you ever deal with Rachel profiling it's you understand is really complicated So we have two thoughts So for the data collection, there is there's clearly like a data production officer in Berlin and we Filed a complaint and she asked the police a few questions in the first round Based upon What are you making these assumptions? The assumptions are based upon the expertise And again like this is it gets even better Many many years the police has developed this expertise knowledge about specific groups of Ethnicities and obviously this is like based upon Investigations of structures of large families and their cultural Ideas and concepts so that was the first question around of questions This is quite vague kind of question and it's got a quite vague response and the data protection officer asked another more specific question and The data protection officers Well, we didn't really see the response yet. Otherwise, we would have shown it to you guys We probably would have gotten all our answers in January. We'll know more So the next step and the next thought and this is how I want to close like in Berlin We have a new law that's being passed the anti-discrimination law that is also going to have to be applied to any public office Which gives us a new legal ground and gives us a new tool for organizations such as ours to see how we can make Like get to the responsibility of the police and the responsibility they have and carry so also the next year is going to be clearly exciting yeah The other subject that we that I Chose as an example was a case from Investigative praxis from the NSU complex. It was oftentimes it's it's kind of swallowed up in the whole Subject about this is so it's the the murder of Michelle Akiza Veta There were mainly Sinti and Roma family that were targeted by the investigation. So what happened in this case? 2007 the police officer Michelle Kizaveta was killed in her while being on duty the police Could find a DNA trace However, they were they investigated and realized that It is a female DNA and the police did what they usually do They checked it against the database from the German Federal Federal Bureau of investigation of Germany and They realized that it was showing up in a lot of different places in Germany and Austria and France since 1993 so there was large mobility and a lot of common offenses and They also realized From a different subject where this is relevant is further DNA analysis Was done with the help of Austria and they could Understand on a grander scheme what the DNA work exists about and they analyze the bio Geographical origin of this DNA and according to the analysis Back then it there were traces leading indicating that it was coming from Eastern Europe all of these findings came to the conclusion that romance and he became a group of interest in the investigation and All of these came together for the investigators and So they clearly found this DNA trace female high mobility high rate of criminality It can obviously only be a Roma or Cindy the operative case analysis comes to a quiet anti-gypsicist conclusion that leads to the traces that the investigators then follow through on and what they focus on and I will not read all of this out, but It is It's somebody who clearly keeps traveling around so it's part of the traveling community lives on the border of society lives a vagabond lifestyle is does not belong to a well-established group of society but only sees its roots in there and Definitely has Eastern European or Southern East European Appear appearance so based on this case analysis we can there's a DNA specific analysis of and Part of this analysis was that they asked 3000 Cynthia and Roma to Supply their DNA to check against the DNA traces that found And they were then questioned this clearly shows how this kind of database Collection is being used in operative measures and so I what I did was I looked at the file I looked at the case and Investigation case and in the main case main file you can see that Against all other groups That were present on the day that the murder took place so Everybody that was there was not asked as a witness, but they were referred to as Landfarer so traveler so they were all directly categorized as Encoded as Cynthia and Roma clearly and their ethnic group So in this file itself we find a completely different set up of the file a lot of long lists of Roma with person personal data and Fingerprints DNA profiles you name it. It's in the list And what exists what is existing in other cases and files All right, so we can also find in this file a lot of pictures of Roma Also, you will not find this in any other file In any of the other witnesses in this case All the questioning of the witnesses was completely different to any other witness that was on the ground who is less about the day itself, but investigators mainly focused in and this really in the tradition of anti-gipsist Police investigation We find an overview such as this one a genealogy about the Roma Family Which is a hundred-year-old tradition And what really was fascinating for me in this regard was that not only could we find the Name but also Find their minority belongings so that was what used to be called the so-called gypsy name So they would also have their children that of course and are not related to the crime scene at all because they were at the Time of the crime actually only eight years old but regardless of this fact despite all of this they were they were put into the file and and so then I Looked at all the investigative measurements. They've taken Throughout the whole entire investigation and I try I analyze this So there were 335 measurements 176 Focused on this phantom trace that they had found of the DNA so it's about 52% these phantom trace three years later found was found to be in Unreasonable It was a deception because it was actually happened in the lab Where the the sample was compromised? And it matched the woman who Packaged the the swiping things so after this This deception this is this false Thing was clarified they still focused in on the Sinti and Roma community and 60% of the whole investigation Was focused in on Sinti and Roma To close this up before we summarize I want to mention two more things That make quite clear what's going on here one of them is a measurement Where the Inside here we can see the Guideline to Please Systematically analyze the papers based upon specific terms and where they use terms such as gypsies and so-called Roma Sinti or similar terms and terminology So there should be an excel sheet that should be used for a future police walk for Getting DNA profiles from people another measurement that I want to take a closer look at here is an investigation in the very northern Westphalia and Hess and the state of Hess It's a focus point of this Concept of investigation was about traveling perpetrators Again, this is about Heilbronn I personally do not know the Evidence case file, but That's why I don't have the full concept of this But I mean you don't need enough fantasy to understand what was in there in that file But in Wuttenberg at the end of the day of investigation said that they took in 15 and 12 15 male and 12 female persons who match the person Description and and they were free freely gave their saliva samples So now we're going to get to our final points. We would like to Have like a clear and concrete Decision about the like from the inner Ministry of the interior on the on what is racial profiling and forbidding racial pro-wrestling. We actually want control and investigation of by the data protection officials To take a closer look into the police cases and we want a better measurement of controlling and checking this We want to extend the AGG so that the discrimination So there was going to be like a fast law in Berlin to that make discrimination unlawful we want to extend this So we also want to make sure that we want to make sure that police is held accountable also using the courts and then in addition to This we'd also like this topic of anti-egypsicism to have a broader societal alliance behind it rather than always being Something that is being pushed by the people who are affected by it and who are ready the victims of this Antegesis in addition to that I think there needs to be into investigations into what has happened and but police have done so far and into Policing practice as it's happening today. I think We also will allow a few questions So for the stuff that we will not be able to talk about in the next few minutes because of timing issues We also have a stall in the rights and freedom area with the civil society With our civil society organization So it's kind of in that rights and freedom area. So Unfortunately the central council does not have a stall, but you should come and visit us and talk to us So, yeah, we'll take questions All right, we have a few more minutes left for questions. There's Mike one two and three Please just go there and Ask your questions if you have them if you don't I will ask the internet if there's a question Do we have questions from the internet? Okay, I see There's a question from the internet. Hi the question from the internet is if You whether you have suggestions how to prevent this racist Categorization but still keep operative measurements up Well, that's an interesting question because the assumption is that the operative capacity will be limited if you stop being racist I think this marker this marking of people as Cynthia and Roma that has to be racist that has to disappear from the Databases and then police needs to engage with the fact that this kind of causal linkage of Association with a particular ethnic group being associated with a probability propensity for committing crimes That's something that is absolutely not an option not acceptable and that is racism So if there's a specific description of a one particular person that may be okay But to assume that in particular cases for particular crimes You need to look for people based on their their looks and the color of their skin and can and act operative measures on People members of a particular ethnic community. That's absolutely untrue. And I think in my opinion the opposite is the case Yeah, Leah already said it and summarized it well In my opinion as association and membership in an ethnic group cannot be a reason for Investigation and cannot be a way of approaching police investigations People do not commit crimes because they are part of a particular ethnic group. Every individual is responsible for their own actions And that has nothing to do which ethnic group those people belong to or the suspect belongs to him And what's important? So the last point that Leah already mentioned we really need a change in thinking and in political in terms of political practice It's not enough for them to just relabel everything again and to become more creative and just use Different terms to continue the same racist practice But it has to be clear that association and membership of a particular ethnic group has nothing to do with what a person does I'm so sorry, I think we're out of time for the questions. Thank you so much You have probably have the option to talk to them after this session in this sense Give them a good final applause. Thank you so much for listening into also