France launches major anti-racism and hate speech campaign
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Version 0 of 1. The French government has launched a major campaign to contain the country’s steep rise in racism and hate speech, using the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks to tighten the law on hate crime and crack down on racism online. “Racism, antisemitism, hatred of Muslims, hatred of foreigners and homophobia are all rising in an unbearable way in our country,” the prime minister, Manuel Valls, said. After January’s terror attacks at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and at kosher supermarket, which left 17 people dead, the French president, François Hollande, vowed to make the fight against racism one of his main personal causes. The government will spend €100m (£72m) on a three-year plan, including the setting up of a new unit to monitor and fight “hatred online”. “Passivity on the internet is over,” Hollande said. Teacher training will be reinforced, headteachers will be encouraged to report incidents and pupils will be taken to visit memorial sites. There will also be tougher penalties for crimes deemed to have been fuelled by racism and antisemitism. Hate speech, already a criminal offence, will be moved to France’s general penal code. It will no longer be part of a separate specialist criminal code dating back to the 19th century that deals with freedom of expression issues and offences such as incitement to racial hatred and libel. This has caused consternation among anti-racism groups, which argue that the move was unnecessary and sent a message that “repression” would end racism when in fact there should be broader work to promote equality and end discrimination across society. Placing hate speech into the general penal code means that suspects can be fast-tracked through the courts for immediate sentencing, which has also raised concerns among rights groups. Campaigners had already expressed fears about the crackdown on speech deemed to “glorify terrorism” announced after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, which has seen cases rushed through the courts for immediate sentencing and resulting in long jail terms, including for people who had drunkenly insulted police officers. Dominique Sopo of the campaign group SOS Racisme told the Guardian: “Although we’re waiting to see the detail, the anti-racism plan is positive in that the government is at least now talking about this. For years we’ve seen a rise in hate speech against blacks, Roma, Arabs, Muslims and Jews and often the government’s words have been lacking.” He said action must be taken to specifically combat the high level of inequality, discrimination and racism faced by young French people from minority ethnic backgrounds in high-rise suburbs. In the first three months of this year, 226 Islamophobic acts were recorded by France’s Islamophobia watchdog, a sixfold increase on the same period in 2014. The number of antisemitic attacks in 2014 was double that of 2013. The government announced its anti-racism plan in the Paris suburb of Créteil, the site of a brutal antisemitic attack last year in which a young Jewish couple were held hostage in their home, the woman was raped and the attackers ransacked the flat, saying: “You Jews, you have money.” |