A Dutch concert by popular Turkish singer Arif Sag was cancelled this weekend after he gave up an returned home after lengthy questioning by officials at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.
According to the Telegraaf, Sag was furious at being questioned and made to wait for so long that he took the first plane back home. Turkish papers described his treatment as 'scandalous', the Telegraaf said.
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A Cardiff councillor has levelled an astonishing broadside at the UK Border Agency by accusing the authority of “indirect racism”.
Riverside councillor Mohammed Islam claims officers have targeted businesses in his ward following an incident last year where another councillor passed a constituent’s tip-off to officials.
Coun Islam, who has represented the ward since June 2004, claims UKBA is “basically going to every single Asian and ethnic minority business” in the area to check whether staff are legally entitled to work.
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Immigrants held at a reception center in the southern Italian town of Bari said on Thursday that they were treated "worse than animals" by authorities at the structure.
The center for identification and expulsion, with a capacity of 119 people, is currently occupied by 196 foreigners awaiting deportation, the immigrants said.
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A new report from Amnesty International has found that some European Muslims are regularly denied employment and educational opportunities because of widespread cultural and religious stereotypes that lead to discrimination against them.
The report, titled "Choice and Prejudice: Discrimination Against Muslims in Europe," examines the lives of Muslims in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands.
It found that individuals who wear specific forms of dress, like a head scarf, or other symbols associated with Islam, do worse with jobs and schooling because of prejudicial attitudes and legal impunity in these European states.
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Integration Minister Gerd Leers is planning to tackle pubs, restaurants and discos which discriminate against people with a non-Dutch background.
He has told parliament that he intends to discuss with police and city councils what can be done to combat discrimination. He doesn’t rule out carrying out undercover operations and withdrawing licences. Mr Leers also wants something done about temping agencies that discriminate.
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Nearly 60 percent of the French say they distrust youth from the 'banlieues', France's impoverished, immigrant-dominated suburbs, according to a new survey that has laid bare the country's divisions.
"The results are extremely worrying," Thibault Renaudin, national secretary of Afev, the youth organisation which published the poll, told The Local.
"Youths from the banlieues already suffer from discrimination, unemployment, and this suspicion just adds their difficulties."
A poll conducted by Afev shows that while 75 percent of the French have a positive opinion of young people, 57 percent have a negative opinion of youths from improverished suburbs.(source)
The Council of Europe’s human rights chief has called for an overhaul of Swiss anti-discrimination law and policy.
Intolerance and racism are “dangerously on the rise”, the commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, said after a four-day review of Swiss policies and practices.
The review was part of the Council of Europe’s ongoing assessments of the human rights situation in member states. The last such Swiss review was in 2004 and this time around it paid particular attention to how Switzerland was fighting racism and xenophobia.(source)
A Turkish parent residing in Italy has launched a campaign following an incident where a schoolteacher in Rome made his students write down a paragraph denigrating Turkish women, according to a report published on the front page of the Sabah daily on Sunday.
Yasemin Taşkın, who works as a Rome-based reporter for Turkey's Sabah daily, launched an anti-racism campaign after her daughter was forced to write a passage claiming that Turkish people believe women only exist to get married and have babies.
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Experts call it "discrimination with a smile" when describing the practice of gently fobbing off those who don't typically look like they fit in. They might be given a paltry, but friendly excuse such as "the flat is no longer available," or "the restaurant is closed for to a private function" or "the hostel is fully booked."
But there is also the daily discrimination that is intended to be friendly. "Your German is pretty good," is actually an insult for many fully integrated Germans, born and raised in the country but deemed "pretty good" because they don't fit another person's definition of what a German looks like.(source)
Many Somalis in Sweden feel dismissed when visiting a doctor in Sweden, according to a new study, which shows that many end up looking abroad for medical treatment as a result.
The findings come from a new doctoral dissertation by Kristian Svenberg with the Sahlgrenska Academy at Gothenburg University.
Svenberg's research, which is based on the experience of Somali refugees in Sweden, found that people from other cultures sometimes find there is an unnecessarily authoritarian approach toward them by Swedish healthcare personnel.
Many Somalians, in particular, feel they are not taken seriously when they seek help for health problems.
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Auxerre president Gerard Bourgoin called for an investigation on Saturday after his player Kamel Chafni claimed he had been racially abused by an assistant referee.
Chafni, a Morocco international, was sent off following an altercation with the official, Johann Perruax, in the 55th minute of Auxerre's 1-0 loss at Brest in the French top flight.
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"There was a serious incident and the player has sworn on his honour," Bourgoin told reporters afterwards.
"It appears that the official told him: 'Sod off, Arab.' If that's the case, it's very serious.
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A group of allotment owners in northern Germany have been told to turn over a new leaf after they set a limit on how many people with foreign roots should be allowed to join their garden community.
The mayor of Norderstedt, near Hamburg, demanded the group drop their “migrant quota” which sets a 12.6 percent limit on what share of the allotment spaces known as Schrebergärten be granted to people of foreign heritage.
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Of the 12.6 percent of allotments set aside, 25 percent would be granted to those with Turkish or Arabic backgrounds, a further 25 percent given to those with eastern European roots and the other 50 percent for miscellaneous “others.”
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One of France's most well-known singers and actresses, Marie Laforêt, will today appear in a Paris courtroom to defend herself against charges that a job advertisement she placed discriminated against Muslims.
72-year-old Laforêt, who first found fame as an actress in the 1960s, placed an ad on an internet site looking for someone to carry out some work on her terrace in 2009, reported daily newspaper Le Parisien on Thursday.
She specified in the ad that "people with allergies or orthodox Muslims" should not apply "due to a small chihuahua."(source)