Europe must ramp up racial harassment fight – agency

Protesters carry placards as they demonstrates in front of the American Embassy in Pretoria on June 5, 2020 during a protest against the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest in Minneapolis, USA. AFP PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • Floyd died on May 25 when a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, an incident captured on video.
  • His death reignited long-felt anger over police killings of African-Americans and unleashed a nationwide wave of civil unrest unlike any seen in the US since Martin Luther King Jr's 1968 assassination.

EU countries must try to eradicate discrimination, harassment and violence against black people in the wake of the global wave of anti-racism protests, the bloc's Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) said on Friday.

Demonstrations have been held across the world, including in many European countries, sparked by the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

The FRA said in a statement that "racist harassment, violence and discriminatory ethnic profiling are commonplace in Europe".

"No one should be targeted just because of the colour of their skin," said FRA director Michael O'Flaherty.

"No one should be afraid of a police stop, just because they are black."

He called on EU countries to work together to "eradicate racist practices once and for all in Europe".

Almost a third of roughly 6,000 people of African descent surveyed by FRA in 2018 said they had been racially harassed in the previous five years.

Almost a quarter said they had been stopped by the police in the same period, many of whom felt the stop constituted racial profiling.

Floyd died on May 25 when a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, an incident captured on video.

His death reignited long-felt anger over police killings of African-Americans and unleashed a nationwide wave of civil unrest unlike any seen in the US since Martin Luther King Jr's 1968 assassination.