British-Zimbabwean businessman racially profiled at Birmingham Airport

British-Zimbabwean businessman racially profiled at Birmingham Airport by West Midlands Police.

A British-Zimbabwean businessman Dr Forbes Madziya is livid after being racially profiled by police at Birmingham airport earlier this week from a business trip in Dubai. The businessman took to his social media to describe how he felt racially targeted by law enforcement.

Dr Forbes as he is affectionately called landed from Dubai at the airport Wednesday evening and by 8pm he had passed through the immigration checkpoint, having cleared of both covid-19 and immigration status, and was heading towards the airport exit along with a loosely knit group of 20 something travellers.

“I was the only one approached by a plain clothes police officer from the counter terrorism unit. It did not require any permutations to notice this was more racial than random.

The police officer asked a series of very offensive and irrelevant questions, some of which were downright stupid, like why I went to Dubai. Excuse me ! He also wanted to know nature of all my businesses.”

The officer is alleged to have advised that there was a legal obligation to answer the questions and there was no right to reserve reply under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000, and failure to comply with the police could result in him being detained for up to 6 hours. “ They ran checks on my name and history and found nothing against me. I was delayed for an hour but I promised the officers (badge numbers tel:21003 and tel:20613 West Midlands police) that a vivid complaint was coming. The police action was totally unwarranted and a flagrant abuse of policing powers”, he said.

Birmingham Airport is serviced by West-Midlands Police Department and according to Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000, the examining officer has powers to stop, search, question and detain a person travelling through a port/airport or the border area. The UK government believes that examining people at ports and airports is necessary to protect public safety as recent attempts to attack flights show that aviation remains a high priority target for terrorists. These powers have however been used disproportionately by racist officers against Africans.

According to the Center for Crime and Justice Studies UK, racial profiling is the use by the police of generalisations based on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin, rather than individual behaviour, specific suspect descriptions or intelligence.

“ I am taking my fight further and doing so for my kith, kin and children. There is no place for racists in the police force anywhere in the world, their party ended decades ago”, he concluded.