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Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

> Out of curiosity, what do you think it's like to travel to Europe as someone who is dark-skinned, has a beard, and does not have a European passport?

Depends on which part of Europe. In the more diverse parts, nobody would bat an eyelid (even if border police might profile you).

EU Eastern Europe, you might get funny looks but it's still not an extraordinary situation to have various shades of skin colour (e.g. Syrians, various Central Asians are migrant workers in a few of the countries in question; a lot of e.g. the Balkans are on a palette of skin colours).

Non-EU Eastern Europe (referring more to Belarus than Montenegro here), might get casual racism.

Nobody will throw you in jail in indefinite detention in another country with no human rights because of your skin colour, beard, tattoos or anything of the like. Other than of course the usual suspects of Belarus, Russia, Azerbaijan and etc. who could for any reason.

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> Depends on which part of Europe. In the more diverse parts, nobody would bat an eyelid (even if border police might profile you).

As a person who matches the description above, and has traveled to Europe extensively and frequently, I can tell you that as much as Europeans like to believe this is this case, it is absolutely not true.

> Nobody will throw you in jail in indefinite detention in another country with no human rights because of your skin colour, beard, tattoos or anything of the like. Other than of course the usual suspects of Belarus, Russia, Azerbaijan and etc. who could for any reason.

Unless you're making some extremely critical assumptions about how much wear the word "indefinite" can bear, this is unfortunately not true either.

How many weeks have you spent detained by EU border officials?

A couple years ago my girlfriend and I spent about 2 months travelling through europe. We visited about 10 countries on our trip. A lot of our travel between countries was by bus. After a few bus trips we started noticing something strange - the busses often pulled over for rest stops just after we'd changed countries. Everyone would all get out of the bus to stretch our legs, and some police would miraculously appear and decide they wanted to talk to some of the people who were on our bus.

Now, officially the shengen zone means there's no need to show your documents between countries. But countries still don't want certain people coming in. And they don't want drugs smuggled in either.

It was really interesting who they decided to pull aside for a chat. It was almost always men who were travelling alone. Almost always men who were in the 25-45 age range. And I wouldn't be surprised if there was some racial profiling going on as well. The police never questioned me - probably because I was with my girlfriend the whole time. If she wasn't there, I bet I would have been pulled aside every time too.

Anyway, I believe your experience in Europe. But if you were a man travelling alone, its possible it was partially or fully due to that. For about a decade, every time I went through security at an airport I was always "randomly selected" to have my bag swabbed for chemicals. It never happens any more, and I'm as white as they come. I assume it was a gender + age + travelling alone thing - but its still a mystery to me.

"Now, officially the shengen zone means there's no need to show your documents between countries."

That is not what it means.

Checks became way more frequent.

I think a good part of it is 'wealth' profiling.

I'm white, male. I travel to some lower-income countries for work. I can dress like a neat, well-paid software developer with the €2000 laptop and €1000 camera in my bag. I'll sail through security in Europe and at the destination, then have a horde of people hassling me for a taxi, sometimes pretty aggressively, and I feel I stand out as an easy target for robbery.

Instead, I wear some old, faded clothes for the journey. Then I get the "random" drug swab check in Europe, border control at the destination might ask to see my hotel booking, but the taxi drivers and street kids will ignore me as another cheakskate backpacker.

>Now, officially the shengen zone means there's no need to show your documents between countries.

Since EU has problems with the illegal immigration, there are some checks and they happen more frequently.

> Nobody will throw you in jail in indefinite detention in another country with no human rights because of your skin colour, beard, tattoos or anything of the like.

Most EU country police don’t need probable cause to detain you. It does happen to be detained for no reason outside of profiling. For example, in France, you can be sent to jail for up to 24h with no probable cause.

The difference between EU and USA is: "can" vs "is happening".

And as you describe in the EU it's "up to 24 hours". And in the lawless authoritarian regime? That Canadian girl was detained for 11 days and was told to prepare to be held for months: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jasmine-moon...

A friend's family flew into a EU country with a letter, they thought this letter was their visa but it turned out to be a rejection from the EU country's consulate (maybe it was a request for more information for their visa application). They were denied entry, but there was no indefinite detention, they were just told to get on the next plane out of the country and had to wait in the "international area" of the airport until said flight.

> For example, in France, you can be sent to jail for up to 24h with no probable cause.

There must be a probable cause : https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F14837

Also, a 24 hour detainment in reasonable conditions is very different from an indefinite detention with a possibility of torture (solitary confinement) or being sent off to an El Savadorian prison with no hope of being returned.

This is different.

In the US you need probable cause to get pull over or temporary detain you. In France, you don't need probably cause for temporary detaining you, but if they suspect you of something they can also send you to jail. You can't be sent to jail in the US just on them just suspecting something.

> You can't be sent to jail in the US just on them just suspecting something.

All the people sitting in an Salvadorian prison for having a shitty tatoo would strongly disagree.

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