Institutional racism, discrimination seen as serious issue in Germany: Survey

A new survey study conducted in Germany has found that majority of the country’s population believe discrimination by German authorities is a serious problem that remains prevalent in people’s daily lives.

Of the 5,000 people surveyed in a nationwide representative study, 65 percent said they viewed racial discrimination by state authorities in Germany as a major concern, according to the study performed by Berlin-based DeZIM Institute, Turkish daily Yeni Safak reported on Thursday.

“Structural and institutional racism is seen as a problem by many people in the country,” said the institute’s director, Prof. Naika Foroutan, during a press conference in Berlin as quoted in the report.

“Racism has become an everyday problem in German,” she further underlined. “It affects not only minorities, but the society as a whole, directly or indirectly.”

Foroutan also pointed out that many incidents of racism were reported widely by employees and in housing and educational institutions.

According to the study, nearly 45 percent of the respondents said they have witnessed a racist incident at least once in their lifetime, while 22 percent emphasized that they have directly experienced racism.

Foroutan further called on German politicians to take a more active stance against racism and develop long-term policies to address the lingering problem.

“Our study shows that a vast majority of the German population would support this,” she then noted.

The survey was unveiled nearly two weeks after US-based press reports said that Germany is evicting hundreds of Afghans to make way for a large flood of Ukrainian war refugees who are arriving in the country.

US-based Foreign Policy magazine recounted the story of helpless Afghan families which arrived in Germany as refugees fleeing the Taliban rule but were quite recently expelled by the German government to make room for incoming Ukrainian refugees.

Even German social workers voiced frustration at Berlin’s treatment of Afghan refugees, the report added.

The German government grants asylum seekers temporary residence that is re-evaluated every six months. But it often does not approve extension and eventual asylum, depending on the situation in their home country.

SS