4.21 On the basis of the above, the State party states that the Government complied with its obligation under article 5 (a) and article 6 of the Convention to ensure that the victims of racial discrimination have effective legal protection and where necessary receive compensation for any damage suffered as a result of such discrimination. The State party also concludes that it did not commit any violation of the Convention in relation to the author. Counsel's comments 5.1 Counsel notes that there are a number of inaccuracies in the State party's submission, (1) which show that his case has not been looked into very carefully. For instance, prior to his studies at the NPA the author lived in the Netherlands for six years and not "many years", as the State party indicates. Moreover, the author did not study at the School of Social Work; he studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam from 1987 to 1990 and never worked as a teacher. 5.2 Counsel claims that being part of the group of ethnic minority NPA students who did not need extra study facilities (Dutch lessons, for instance) did not protect the author against racial discrimination. The exclusionary mechanisms at the NPA remained intact despite the fact that the teaching staff were given the opportunity to attend a training course in order to learn how to deal with students with different cultural backgrounds. 5.3 The letter in response to the "Cry for immediate help" did not come from other ethnic minority students (2) but from white students, and it transpired from it that incidents which could be described as racist had taken place. The white students called for dialogue in order to find a solution. 5.4 Although the Boekraad Committee concluded that there was no institutional discrimination at the NPA it did state that discrimination occurred, and recommended that the NPA institute a specific anti-discrimination code. 5.5 The author complains that the SAS Committee never looked into his case, despite the fact that he was one of the signatories of the "Cry for immediate help". He does not understand why the SAS Committee only investigated the cases of 9 students out of the 21 signatories of the letter and expresses doubts about the independence of the SAS Committee with respect to the Ministry of the Interior. He says that the Secretary of the Committee was a staff member of the Police Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior and that the Chairman had been a member of the Boekraad Committee. The author claims that an independent investigation should have looked into all aspects of the problem and not just the case of a few individuals. He also expresses doubts about the independence of the NPA medico-social team, whose members were all affiliated with the NPA. The team did not fully believe him when he explained the reasons for his absence from the Academy. In fact, everything he said was called into question. Further evidence of discrimination is the fact that the dismissal from the NPA was communicated to him with only two days' notice,