France: Joint statement following the demonstrations on Saturday, December 12: 60,000 protesters against liberticidal legislation in France, arbitrary arrests in Paris

Paris, December 13, 2020

Around 60 demonstrations against the proposed "Global Security" bill are still punctuating this weekend throughout France. At least 60,000 people marched on Saturday, December 12. More than 150 cities, from metropolises to smaller towns, have already seen at least one gathering since 28 November, thanks to the associ
ative, trade union and political fabric on which the democratic vitality of this country still rests. We welcome that.

tch(err) {} However, as we feared, the Paris demonstration, although duly declared by a collective of organisations and authorised by the police prefecture, turned into a mousetrap.

Many observers observed on Saturday 12 December in the capital unacceptable excesses linked to a brutal police and military deployment and infringing on the right to demonstrate: mass arrests, unfounded charges causing the procession to break up, detention without legitimate reason beyond the legal deadline, police custody notified to the channel on the basis of misguided criminal offences, refusal to contact the lawyer designated by the detainees ... Once again, both journalists and protesters were targeted. The executive branch has given its determination to stop any challenge.

In Lyon and Caen, similar practices were noted.

Let us make no mistake: the total number of arrests updated live on the Home Secretary's Twitter account too often conceals arbitrary procedures. Testimonies are pouring in and confirm this. The government narrative is based on artificially inflated figures. This manipulation has already been used on May 1, 2018 and during the Yellow Jacket movement.

The power seeks to discourage us, but it will not succeed!

Our organizations are seeing that the offensive against our fundamental freedoms continues. The three decrees of 2 December 2020 extending the possibilities of registering activists and their entourage to minors as well as their health or activities on social networks will be challenged in court. The so-called "Separatism" law represents another wedge against freedoms.

This is unheard of in France. We are slowly but surely sliding towards an authoritarian regime, an illiberal state, a police state. The less legitimate the policies of this government appear, the more it uses repression and stifling freedoms to impose them.



Initial signatory organizations:
Association du cinéma indépendant pour sa diffusion (Acid - Association for the Dissemination of Independent Film) - Association des cinéastes documentaristes (Addoc - Association of Documentary Filmmakers) - ATTAC – Black Robe Brigade - Collectif Kelaouiñ - Club de la presse Occitanie (Occitan Press Club) - Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labour - CGT) - La Quadrature du Net (LQDN – Squaring the Net) - Ligue des droits de l'Homme (LDH - League for Human Rights) - Politis - Profession : pigiste - Reporters en colère (REC - Profession: Freelancer - Angry Reporters) - Scénaristes de Cinéma Associés (SCA - Associated Film Writers) - Société des personnels de l'Humanité - Société des réalisateurs de Films (SRF - Society of Human Personnel - Society of Film Directors) - Syndicat de la magistrature (Magistrate’s Union)- Syndicat national des journalistes (SNJ - National Union of Journalists) - Syndicat national des journalistes CGT (SNJ-CGT - National Union of Journalists-CGT) - Union syndicale Solidaires -

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France : Mobilising Islamophobia to mask the deepening authoritarian state

Lisbeth Latham

Since the brutal murder of Samuel Paty in October, there has been a ramping up of rhetoric from the French government against the Muslim community in France. This rhetoric came to a head with the announcement of draft legislation to prevent “Islamic Separatism” by French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin which makes more explicit the state's vision of the Muslim community as a threat to the Government’s vision of Republican values. This attack on the Muslim community, and any critics of racism, islamophobia, or colonialism within French society – is paired with the introduction of new security laws that would further protect France’s repressive state apparatus from scrutiny for violence against France’s social movements -repression which has been dramatically escalating since the declaration of a state of emergency following the terror attacks in Paris in November 2015.

On October 16, Paty, a history teacher, was murdered in Paris, he was publicly beheaded by Abdullakh Anzorov, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee from Russia. The brutal murder had been motivated by Paty’s sharing with students, in a class on freedom of expression, satirical images of the Prophet Mohammed published by Charlie Hedbo in 2015, which had provoked a terror attack on the office of that publication and across Paris. Paty’s display of the images caused significant anger not only within France’s Muslim community, but globally, and followed a familiar pattern of anger at the previous publication of similar images globally. This included the sharing of a video by Abdelhakim Sefrioui an Imam describing the Paty as a thug and denouncing him for displaying the pictures and arguing he should be disciplined.

In the wake of the murder, President Emmanuel Macron described the attack as “a typical Islamist terrorist attack”, whilst describing the motivation of Paty’s murder as being “for teaching children freedom of speech”. Seven people were quickly arrested. This included students who had pointed the teacher out to the killer, Sefrioui, and Brahim Chnina a parent of a student at the school who had protested outside the school and sought a meeting with the school’s principal with Sefrioui’s support. Darmanin made a public statement indicating that up to 51 institutions faced dissolution including BarrakaCity and Collectif contre l'islamophobie en France (Collective Against Islamaphobia in France – CCFI) which he described as being “enemies of the Republic”, and threatened to move to dissolve them. This was despite the fact that there was no evidence that the CCIF, which was formed in 2003 to monitor and combat Islamophobia in France, making any statement supporting the attacks. Darmanin went further arguing that it was an “Islamist dispensary”. French Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, also argued that indigenist, racialist, and “decolonial” ideologies,’ imported from North America, were responsible for ‘conditioning’ the violent extremist who assassinated school teacher – a position endorsed by a manifesto of 100 academics published in Le Monde on November 1. This attack on anti-racist academics has prompted a counter open letter against the threat of "threat of academic authoritarianism"

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On November 9, Darmanin announced the final draft of the “law confirming republican principles”. This legislation contained the following proposals: 

• An extension France’s public school student ID system to students enrolled in private schools; Make it an offence to share online information which allows an individual to be identified; 
• Provision for summary trials of individuals accused of “online hate speech”; 
• Make it illegal to intimidate public officials, including teachers; 
• Will allow judges to bar individuals convicted of certain offences, such as provocation of acts of terrorism, or incitement of discrimination, hatred, or violence – from entering places of worship; 
• Requiring associations seeking public funding to agree to "respect the principles and values of the republic" and return the money if found to have flouted the rules; 
• All foreign donations above €10,000 must be declared.

While not stipulated in the bill, the government has requested that France’s Muslim federations form a national council of imams. This council will be in charge of proclaiming new imams. The council must also draft a charter of "republican values", which will stipulate that Islam is a religion and not a political movement in France.

While on the face of it some aspects of this legislation could be seen as necessary protections or limitations, the reality is they are both very vague and open to abuse. This combined with the fact that they are aimed at France’s marginalized Muslim community specifically, rather than France’s Catholic-inspired far-right and neo-fascist organisations reflects a racist vision, shared throughout many western countries, that Muslim communities are the real threat rather than far-right extremist groups.

Coinciding with this assault on the rights of France’s Muslim community. Has been the release of the draft legislation of the “Global Security Law”. This law:

• authorizes the police and gendarmes to film their interventions by "mobile cameras", to access the images they have recorded and to transmit them in real-time to the command post; 
• authorizes the deployment of drones to monitor public space; 
• prohibits the public from disseminating "the image of the face or any other element of identification of an official of the national police or of a soldier of the national gendarmerie when acting within the framework of "a police operation" and when this dissemination is made "with the aim of harming his physical or mental integrity”.

This new legislation has created considerable anger in the context here over the past five years, there have been escalating levels of repression against France’s social movements, most notably the Yellow Jackets, labour and students movements – with “non-lethal” weapons being regularly deployed at protests resulting in injuries, most notably the maiming and death of protestors – with riot squad units in both the CRS (Republican Security Companies) within the National Police and gendarmerie (France’s national police force which is part of the military) acting with impunity against the social movements.

While releasing two such anti-democratic and repressive pieces of legislation would normally be a tactical error, as it would provide an opportunity to unite an even more diverse array of social forces against the bills, in this case, it is likely to have the opposite effect. This is because like the rest of French society, much of the French left and other progressive forces hold deeply Islamophobic outlooks, which are justified on the basis on the need to defend laïcité (the French concept of secularism) and women’s rights. However, these actions, particularly the bans on the wearing of the veil and attempts to control the Muslim community, are premised on anti-secular, racist, and sexist ideas about the right of the state to control not just how people practice their religions, but its right to control the lives of women within the Muslim community.

In the past sections of the French left have supported the ban on the wearing of the hijab in public schools, bans on the burqa and niqab, and participated in attacks on other left parties, like the Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (New Anti-Capitalist Party – NPA), who have stood candidates who wore the hijab. There have also been broader problems of the left being slow or inconsistent in their response to attacks on the Muslim community in France. While some of the left have been very clear regarding their rejection of this attack on the Muslim community, most notably the NPA, other parties have not been so explicit, the Communist Party and France Insoumise however have both argued that while they argue that the law fails to address the marginalization of significant sections of French society and instead seeks to hide the social crisis behind the stigmatization of Muslim communities.

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