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Blacks, Asians still suspect in U.K.

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON NOV. 12. Black may be beautiful elsewhere but not on the streets of London, where if you are black you are eight times more likely to be stopped by the police and searched than your white neighbour.

Browns — Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis — are slightly safer, but still three times more liable to be publicly humiliated by the police than the white saheb, according to a Home Office report which confirms that contrary to official claims and despite a plethora of ``initiatives'' to promote racial equality, racism is rife in Britain.

The report has prompted calls for an end to the practice of stop-and-search altogether as it is seen as a pretext to intimidate people simply because of the colour of their skin. Besides, according to the government's own figures, the tactic has failed to tackle street crime as only one out of 10 searches is successful.

Experts said profiling criminals on the basis of their ethnic origins, according to which blacks and Asians are more likely to be involved in certain kinds of street offences, has not helped and instead led to racial harassment. In fact the Home Office Minister, John Denham said it was ethnic minorities which were ``more likely to be victims of crime...and (yet) they are more likely to be stopped and searched''.

``If it is the case that certain types of crime are more likely to be committed by certain groups, whether white, black or Asian, we need to acknowledge this and work with those communities to tackle it,'' he said.

The practice of targeting blacks is so widespread that even those blacks who work for the police are not safe. Wesley-Walters-Stephenson, a black race-relations trainer for the police, said that he had lost count of the number of times he had been stopped and searched since he was a teenager.

``The last time I was stopped I was in a bar with friends — I was wearing a suit. They just walked up to me. No matter how you look they are still going to stop you,'' he told a newspaper. Several others echoed his experience saying every time they went out they feared a tap on the shoulder for no obvious reason except that they were black.

Some years ago, the government set up a committee to look into racist attitudes in the police force after the racial murder of a black teenager, Stephen Lawrence.

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