E/CN.4/2000/16 page 13 by witnesses/injured parties if the suspect is unknown, or by the police if the suspect is known (and present) during the identification procedure; only the outward appearance, and not the actual membership of the Sinti or Roma ethnic groups is of relevance here.” 42. “For practical reasons the police consider that this procedure should not be altered because significantly reducing the number of characteristics described fails to meet the needs of the identification process. To this is added the not insignificant issue of data protection laws, for using generic - and thus mostly inexact - terms will produce a greater number of possible suspects, meaning that more photographs of innocent people have to be shown to eyewitnesses than is in fact necessary.” 43. In this context the accusation that the police justify recording membership of the Sinti and Roma ethnic groups as “preventive crime combat” and say that Sinti and Roma can present “a danger to the public” is dismissed as unfounded. On the basis of many statements from the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior, the Bavarian Commissioner for Data Protection informed the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma on 1 August 1996 that there is no reason to object to the police procedure described above. 44. In reaction to the comments of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma on the eighteenth Activity Report of the Bavarian Commissioner for Data Protection dated 16 December 1998, the following information was communicated: “The procedure described in paragraph 5.3.5.2 (p. 48) of the above-mentioned report has been abandoned as of year-end 1998, so that for all practical purposes the matter that gave rise to this report is settled. No general record is kept of people's membership of the Sinti and Roma ethnic groups, nor of the membership of nomadic groups in general. Data relating to nomadic groups are only recorded in cases of actual disturbance of the peace (e.g. when prosecuting criminals).” B. Australia Case 1999/1: Allegations of discrimination against indigenous children 45. It has been reported that “indigenous children are still being removed from their families and communities at a disproportionately high rate”. Allegedly, “this trend was linked to the effects of past removal policies, poor socio-economic status and the systemic racism in broader society”. 46. It has been further stated that: “It is the contact with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems which leads to many indigenous children being removed from their families. Indigenous children throughout Australia still remain significantly over-represented in care, particularly in long-term foster care, and a high percentage of these children live with non-indigenous carers.”