Papers! Papers!

From Deutsche Welle:

"Police get right to stop 'foreign-looking' travelers"

While much of Europe has done away with passport checks, German police received judiciary approval to demand official ID of "foreign-looking" people. Human rights groups call the ruling discriminatory and illegal. Passengers on trains travelling from Germany to France don't have to show their passports to cross the border, but a ruling from a German administrative court this week allows police to require "foreign-looking" passengers traveling on German trains to produce identification papers regardless of whether they are under suspicion of any wrongdoing. The court said police had authority to check people's identity and residency status based on their appearance to fight illegal immigration. The ruling added that such checks were permitted only on rail lines that could be used to provide illegal entry to Germany or lead to breaches of Germany's Aliens Act.

^ This has the feeling of the old war movies where the Germans walk into a place and demand everyone's ID Card shouting "Papers! Papers!" then they arrest and deport the people to camps. I'm not saying that they are now going to open concentration camps, but the identify checks do have that war feeling to them. What's strange to me is that the police can do this because under German law you are required to have either a German ID Card or a Passport, but do not have to carry it with you at all times. So how can the police arrest you for not showing them your identity document when you are not required by law to carry them? Unlike Russia, where you are required to carry your ID with you at all times and the police have the right to stop you whenever they want and can arrest you if you don't have the right documents - although I wish someone had told me that as I never carried my passport when I was in Yaroslavl, but luckily I did in Moscow as I was stopped (I only had it with me because you needed it to travel by train.)It seems that the Germans either need to change the law and not allow the police to check documents on trains - or elsewhere - or change the law saying you don't have to carry your documents with you since the one cancels out the other. ^

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15846180,00.html