Sat 05 December 2020:
Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned Friday a decision by France to shut down a leading anti-discrimination group.
The US-based rights advocacy NGO said the move threatens basic human rights and liberties including freedom of expression, association, religion and the principle of nondiscrimination.
“Whatever its intention, this measure risks further stigmatizing Muslims in France,” said HRW’s Western Europe researcher Kartik Raj.
“Shutting down an organization that raises legitimate concerns about anti-Muslim prejudice is blaming the messenger rather than addressing existing discrimination,” he said.
The heavy-handed action will make it harder for victims of anti-Muslim prejudice in France to seek appropriate redress and could leave others afraid to complain, according to Raj. “It could also backfire by fueling the narrative that French state policy is anti-Muslim.”
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced Dec. 2 the dissolution of the anti-racist group Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF).
“In accordance with the instructions of the President of the Republic, the CCIF was dissolved in the Council of Ministers. For several years, the CCIF had consistently carried out Islamist propaganda, as detailed in the decree that I presented to the Council of Ministers,” Darmanin wrote on Twitter.
The controversial move followed a meeting of the Council of Ministers. Under French law, the council can dissolve any group or non-profit organization by decree, without requiring prior judicial scrutiny.
On November 24, a separate Global Security Bill, which contains worrying restrictions on media freedoms and the rights to protest, expression, and free association, and new police surveillance powers, has been approved by the National Assembly and will soon be debated by the Senate.
On December 3, the interior minister announced that the government would take measures against 76 mosques suspected of “separatism,” closing them if necessary. The controversial Law to Strengthen Internal Security and the Fight Against Terrorism includes broadly worded authority to close places of worship. The law, which incorporated emergency powers into ordinary law, has been in force since France’s two-year-long state of emergency ended formally in late 2017.
In addition to undermining protection of freedoms of opinion, expression, and association, targeting an organization like the CCIF, which works on issues of nondiscrimination, sends a message that France will not tolerate Muslims exercising their civil and political rights to voice concerns and protest injustice on an equal basis as other populations in France. This risks inadvertently assisting the efforts of Islamist armed groups to vilify Western governments.
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