A committee of United Nations experts accused Germany of discriminating against people of African origin and permitting its government and security agencies to undertake racial profiling, The Independent reported. The group said the focus on the country’s past, marred by atrocities during the Nazi era, has “overshadowed” its racial attitude towards people of African descent.

Their report follows accusations of racial profiling on New Year’s Eve against Cologne police. The force had tweeted that North African men were being screened while referring to the people as “Nafri”.

The panel said people of African descent and other minority groups were subjected to stop and search exercises and that cases of state discrimination and violence were not properly investigated.

“The repeated denial that racial profiling does not exist in Germany by police authorities and the lack of an independent complaint mechanism at federal and state level fosters impunity,” group leader Ricardo Sunga told the English daily.

Sunga said the Working Group had found that “institutional racism and racist stereotyping by the criminal justice system has led to a failure to effectively investigate and prosecute perpetrators of racist violence, racial profiling and hate crimes against people of African descent.”

“There is a serious lack of ethnicity-based disaggregated data, and an incomplete understanding of history, which obscure the magnitude of structural and institutional racism people of African descent face,” the panel noted.